Pacific: The Ocean of the Future
Travelling the circumference of the truly gigantic Pacific, Simon Winchester tells the story of the world’s largest body of water, and – in matters economic, political and military – the ocean of the future.The Pacific is a world of tsunamis and Magellan, of the Bounty mutiny and the Boeing Company. It is the stuff of the towering Captain Cook and his wide-ranging network of exploring voyages, Robert Louis Stevenson and Admiral Halsey. It is the place of Paul Gauguin and the explosion of the largest-ever American atomic bomb, on Bikini atoll, in 1951. It has an astonishing recent past, an uncertain present and a hugely important future.The ocean and its peoples are the new lifeblood, fizz and thrill of America – which draws so many of its minds and so much of its manners from the sea – while the inexorable rise of the ancient center of the world, China, is a fixating fascination. The presence of rogue states – North Korea most notoriously today – suggest that the focus of the responsible world is shifting away from the conventional post-war obsessions with Europe and the Middle East, and towards a new set of urgencies. Navigating the newly evolving patterns of commerce and trade, the world’s most violent weather and the fascinating histories, problems and potentials of the many Pacific states, Simon Winchester’s thrilling journey is a grand depiction of the future ocean.
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‘Winchester does a virtuoso job. … A giant Aladdin’s rug, which he then gamely invites his readers to climb aboard’ New York Times
‘Revealing … delightful … fascinating … highly recommended’ San Francisco Chronicle
‘Fascinating, provocative, and at times, mildly terrifying. … The hallmarks of Winchester’s best work—a fertile, curious mind, impeccable research and command of complex material—are on full display here’ Miami Herald
‘Winchester writes books like someone telling a good yarn around the fireplace … by interweaving history, fascinating trivia, and acute observation’ New York Times Book Review
‘Winchester has a smooth and easy prose style, one that is trustable and clear … He excels at guiding the reader with a contagious sense of wonder’ Boston Globe
‘[Winchester is] a terrific raconteur with a knack for making connections that might have eluded you between events behind the headlines. … Where Pacific opts to go, it goes with savvy and verve’ Seattle Times
‘Winchester has prodigious gifts as a popular historian and an explainer of faraway events’ Los Angeles Times
‘Provocative … and lively’ Wall Street Journal
William Collins
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.WilliamCollinsBooks.com
First published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2015
First published in the United States by Harper in 2015
Copyright © Simon Winchester 2015
Jacket design by Gregg Kulick.
Photographs and illustrations © Getty Images
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
Simon Winchester asserts the right to be identified as the author of this work
Engraving of the Pacific on title page by Marzolino/Shutterstock, Inc.
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Source ISBN: 9780007550777
Ebook Edition © September 2015 ISBN: 9780007550784
Version: 2016-09-20
For Setsuko
Look East, where whole new thousands are!
—ROBERT BROWNING, WARING
Nick Springer/Springer Cartographics LLC.
CONTENTS
Praise for Pacific
Copyright
List of Maps and Illustrations
PROLOGUE: THE LONELY SEA AND THE SKY
AUTHOR’S NOTE: ON CARBON
Chapter 1THE GREAT THERMONUCLEAR SEA
Chapter 2MR. IBUKA’S RADIO REVOLUTION
Chapter 3THE ECSTASIES OF WAVE RIDING
Chapter 4A DIRE AND DANGEROUS IRRITATION
Chapter 5FAREWELL, ALL MY FRIENDS AND FOES
Chapter 6ECHOES OF DISTANT THUNDER
Chapter 7HOW GOES THE LUCKY COUNTRY?
Chapter 8THE FIRES IN THE DEEP
Chapter 9A FRAGILE AND UNCERTAIN SEA
Chapter 10OF MASTERS AND COMMANDERS
EPILOGUE: THE CALL OF THE RUNNING TIDE
Note on Sources
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
Also by Simon Winchester
About the Publisher
Map of the Pacific—Political
The plutonium bomb Helen of Bikini
The Pueblo’s surviving crewmen, led by Captain Lloyd Bucher
Youngsters’ performance in North Korea
The RMS Queen Elizabeth, in her heyday
The RMS Queen Elizabeth, sabotaged in Hong Kong
Helicopter during the evacuation of Saigon
Destruction by Cyclone Tracy in the city of Darwin
The tectonic architecture of the Pacific Ocean
Inhabitants of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef
A Hawaiian feather cloak, an ahu’ula
The short-tailed, or Steller’s, albatross
The eruption of Mount Pinatubo
The carrier USS Kitty Hawk and a Chinese Song-class diesel attack submarine
Map of the Western Pacific: U.S. and Chinese Military
PROLOGUE: THE LONELY SEA AND THE SKY
Here from this mountain shore, headland beyond stormy headland plunging like dolphins through the blue sea-smoke
Into pale sea—look west at the hill of water: it is half the planet . . .
arched over to Asia, Australia and white Antarctica: those are the eyelids that never close; this is the staring unsleeping
Eye of the earth; and what it watches is not our wars.
—ROBINSON JEFFERS, FROM “THE EYE,” 1965
United Airlines Flight 154 leaves Honolulu International Airport just after dawn three times a week, bound ultimately for the city of Hagåtña, the capital of the island republic of Guam. If the northeast trades are blowing at their usual steady twelve knots, the jet will take off to the east, into the low morning sun over Waikiki, and those passengers on the aircraft’s left side will see the wall of skyscraper hotels along the beachfront and be able to glimpse down at Doris Duke’s great seaside mansion, Shangri-La. Once the plane is two miles high above the crater of the dormant Diamond Head volcano, it will begin to make a long and lazy turn to the right.
