James Fairhead

Sailing the uncharted waters of the Pacific in 1830, Captain Benjamin Morrell of Connecticut became the first outsider to encounter the inhabitants of a small island off New Guinea. The contact quickly turned violent, fatal cannons were fired, and Morrell abducted young Dako, a hostage so shocked by the white complexions of his kidnappers that he believed he had been captured by the dead. This gripping book unveils for the first time the strange odyssey the two men shared in ensuing years. show more The account is uniquely told, as much from the captive’s perspective as from the American’s.

Upon returning to New York, Morrell exhibited Dako as a “cannibal” in wildly popular shows performed on Broadway and along the east coast. The proceeds helped fund a return voyage to the South Pacific—the captain hoping to establish trade with Dako’s assistance, and Dako seizing his only chance to return home to his unmapped island. Supported by rich, newly found archives, this wide-ranging volume traces the voyage to its extraordinary ends and en route decrypts Morrell’s ambiguous character, the mythic qualities of Dako’s life, and the two men's infusion into American literature—Dako inspired Melville’s Queequeg, for example. The encounters confound indigenous peoples and Americans alike as both puzzle over what it is to be truly human and alive. show less

It's hard to review The Captain and "the Cannibal" without giving too many surprises away because the story continually takes unexpected turns. It's technically an academic history published by Yale ie. potentially unappealing to a broader audience, but it's part of the series "New Directions in Narrative History" .. narrative history is code for a strong storyline and interesting characters, you might even say it's "fiction that happens to be true". Fairhead has done a prodigious amount of show more research and has written the definitive account of Benjamin Morrell, a captain with many faces. I felt like I was transported back in time exploring the Pacific in the 1830s, but also discovering with Fairhead answers to long forgotten mysteries buried in family archives. This was simply a whole lot of fun and I'm delighted to have discovered it. show less