The Wide Wide Sea
A Chaos Walking short story to read with The Ask and the Answer.This moving Chaos Walking short story, set before the Spackle War in a small fishing village by the sea, is a heartbreaking tale of love and loyalty in a divided world. Best read immediately after The Ask and the Answer, it features familiar characters such as Mistress Coyle, but will give a new perspective on the shocking events in the award-winning trilogy.
Themes & atmosphere
What you might want to know about The Wide Wide Sea
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Hampton Sides follows Captain James Cook on his third and final Pacific voyage aboard HMS Resolution, sailing from Plymouth in 1776 in search of a Northwest Passage. Across three years Cook charts the Pacific Northwest, returns to the Hawaiian Islands, and dies on a beach at Kealakekua Bay in 1779.
The most commonly searched is The Wide Wide Sea by Hampton Sides (2024), nonfiction about Captain James Cook's final voyage. The metadata above lists Patrick Ness in error.
Yes. The Wide Wide Sea is Hampton Sides's nonfiction account of Cook's third Pacific voyage (1776-1779), which ended with his death in Hawaii. Sides drew on the documented logbooks and journals of the voyage.
The Wide Wide Sea is 528 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Wide Wide Sea takes most readers 8 to 11 hours to finish.
The Wide Wide Sea is a standalone novel by Patrick Ness, not part of a series.
The Wide Wide Sea is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.