Dan Snow's History Hit - Captain Cook

Episode Date: May 22, 2025

Dan tells the extraordinary tale of Captain James Cook. Born a labourer's son, he would rise to become one of history's greatest explorers. He went about as far as it was possible to go, sailing the Pacific Ocean and arriving on the shores of Australia and New Zealand.For these voyages, he assembled an A-Team of maritime explorers - marines, scientists, and a Polynesian explorer who had memorised the constellations of the stars. So what trials did he face on these epic voyages? Which peoples did he come across? And how did it all end? Tune in to today's Explainer to find out more.Written by Dan Snow and edited by Dougal Patmore.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.We'd love to hear your feedback - you can take part in our podcast survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on.You can also email the podcast directly at [e-mail].

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. I'm going to tell the story of how the son of an illiterate labourer, who grew up pretty far away from the ocean, became one of history's greatest naval officers, sailors and explorers. Captain James Cook. James Cook. As a thrusting young naval officer, James Cook once said, my ambition leads me not only further than any man

has been before me, but as far as I think it is possible for man to go. Well, in 18th century context, he went pretty much as far as he could go. I think he was talking about his status, his social status, as well as his voyaging. And he triumphed on both counts.

When I was a kid, we studied a topic in primary school that changed my life. I was probably about seven and we used to spend whole terms, whole semesters for my North American audience, studying one particular thing, whether it's castles or the Anglo-Saxons. And through that topic, we'd learn our maths and our English and sciences and other subjects. We spent one whole term studying Captain Cook. And listeners, it's what sold me on the history thing. I always remember the feeling that I felt. I thought it was something almost magical about that little community of people

sailing out in their tiny, self-contained wooden world, that little ship to the other side of the planet. And it was a crew of people. There were experienced mariners among them, there were scientists, there were marines, they were joined by a Polynesian wayfarer, and they explored. They hugely added to the European understanding of the world, and they had one hell of an adventure, as you'll hear. They also brought about a meeting of two of the greatest maritime cultures in history,

that of the South Pacific and of Northwest Europe. At the end of the term, we all dressed up for a play, of course, and my parents came to watch. And, joy of joys, I was selected to be Captain Cook. I still have the yellowing picture of me, which my parents blew up and put on the wall because I was so proud of it. I might post it if you're going to check out my social feeds. And I'm standing outside my childhood home in a cardboard tricorn hat. I got tinfoil buckles on my shoes and I've

got a grin from ear to ear before I walked across the common to school. And since then, I've always had a passion for that voyage. I've travelled in his wake, sometimes literally on a boat, around parts of New Zealand and Australia. I've tried to learn more about the amazing Polynesian culture that he encountered and he was so impressed by. I've interviewed Mari and Aboriginal Australian historians to hear some very, very different points of view. I'm going to tell the story of Cook's early life. I'm going to tell the story of his first voyage, how this labourer's son from Yorkshire sees the opportunity presented by Britain's maritime journey, its rise to greatness, to sail around the world, rise to greatness, to sail around the world, to fill in the map of the globe in North America,

in the Pacific, and become fated by his country and by his king. This is the story of one of the most remarkable voyages in maritime history. Enjoy. T-minus 10. The Thomas bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king. No black-white unity till there is first and black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And lift off, and the shuttle has cleared the tower. Young James Cook was born in a little thatched cottage. I think there were two rooms. It was in Martin and Cleveland,

now a suburb of the sprawling city of Middlesbrough, in the very north of Yorkshire. He was born just south of where the River Tees opens into a grand estuary before meeting the angry, inevitably grey, North Sea. The cottage was made of clay and it was roofed with thatch. He was born the 27th of October 1728. We see from his baptism record his name, James, and that his father was a day labourer. He was one of eight children, four of which died in infancy, half the number of children, which I think was sadly around average for those times. One of his surviving brothers died in his 20s. So really only James and his two sisters reached full adulthood, if you don't count people in their 20s. His father had moved down from Scotland looking for work. And Scottish education in the 18th

century was very celebrated. It was more advanced than English education. So his father was literate. He was a keen self-improver, very aware of the importance of education. And James was sent to the village school, we think paid for by a wealthier local man who his father had impressed with hard work on his farm. teenager, we find James Cook working in a shop in a local fishing port. And we can be fairly certain that it was there, the crash of the sea and the stories reported by fishermen who dried their nets on the quayside after hectic adventures afloat, that he discovered his passion for the sea. Perhaps to live a life less ordinary, to escape from behind that till, that desk, and head out there into the wide world beyond. The shopkeeper he was working for was kindly, he made inquiries, and he took Cook around 20 miles or so up the coast to Whitby and found him a job as an apprentice to a master mariner. Whitby was an important place. It built ships.

It built particularly the so-called Collier barks, which are going to be important. We're going to return to those. Strongly built, sturdy ships designed pretty much for one purpose, and that was to carry coal down from the northeast to London and elsewhere. The northeast of England was the Saudi Arabia of coal. In the middle of the 18th century, 1,000 ships a year exported coal from the Tyne, the Tees, and 400 of those went to London alone, the great industrial city with its insatiable desire for power, for energy. You could expect as a crewman probably to do 10 round trips a year. And a few generations after Cook, it's not at all surprising that the world's first locomotive-pulled passenger

and freight-carrying railway was built on the banks of the Tees to carry coal from the mines down to the waiting ships. This was a place where the future was being forged. This was a place where the future was being forged. Cook's first ship was called the Free Love. I think the name has changed its connotations from the 1960s onwards. But anyway, it had three masts, it was square rigged, 340 tons. It would look very similar to the much more famous later ships that Cook chose to take with him on his adventures. The east coast of England, the North Sea and the Thames Estuary are a nursery of seamanship. And we're not talking a huggy, watching Peppa Pig all day kind of nursery. This is a savage apprenticeship. It's a place of wrecks, of storms, of uncharted spits of land, of lee shores, of riptides, of sandbanks that move with

winter storms. And a place unlike the southwest and west coasts of Britain, a place with limited refuge when the weather turns nasty. Look at a map of Britain. That east coast is straight and featureless. A powerful easterly wind blowing off the North Sea and you're on a lee shore with few options. And all that meant it was a well it was a pretty robust form of meritocracy you as the owner of a ship are not going to hand your expensive asset over to someone who's average you're going to find people who you can trust who've got the miles in the logbook the experiences and the scars to show for it and out there in a storm on lee shore, with a flood tide dragging you towards the sandbanks, it didn't matter who you were. Grew up in a palace or a pigsty. The only thing that mattered was talent.

We don't know much about his own personal experiences, but we can be certain that he was no stranger to clinging to a fully-reefed topsail yard as a master down below roared at him to take sail in faster. As he thumbled with ropes tying up the sails, reefing the sails, his fingers numb with cold. He rose through the ranks, took about nine years, and in fact he didn't just go to London, he went as far as St. Petersburg, he went to Ireland. He got to know one of the hardest and toughest stretches of ocean in the world, intimately. We know he was good at it because at age 26, he was offered the captaincy of a vessel. But he did something rather strange. In the summer of 1755, rather than taking

this route to professional fulfillment and some fortune, he joined His Majesty's Royal Navy instead as, well, pretty much the lowest rank, an able seaman. Now, the 8th century Navy has an unfortunate reputation, which I don't think it deserves. People like Churchill have referred to it as all just being rum, sodomy, and the lash. But even Admiral Vernon, who was an explorer, a great naval officer, first lord of the Admiralty, in fact, he said the Navy was defrauded by injustice, manned by violence, and maintained by cruelty. So even people who served at the time could be critical of it. And Cook has now thrown himself on the tender mercies of this system. He would have taken a significant pay cut. But I think Cook's decision to do that tells us something important about the

Navy. It wasn't just all press gangs. It wasn't unwilling recruits herded below and kept there through the threat of violence. Men like Cook, professional sailors, wanted to join. Why? I think part is interesting. It's exciting. Probably more fun than the dangerous but slightly unchanging routes they used to sail on the colliers. It could be remunerative, potentially, if you capture enemy prizes, enemy ships. I think it was exciting. And critically, I think it was easier to get ahead than we might think. It was still a world in which a lot came down to how you spoke and whether you knew the right people, but even a man from Cook's lowly background could rise through the ranks on merit in the Navy. The son of a labourer could end up an officer,

perhaps even commanding his own vessel. It's very telling that within a month of being sent to HMS Eagle, his first ship, he was a master's mate. They saw his talent very quickly and they promoted him. One of the reasons that Cook joined is the navy was going through one of its periodic, enormous phases of expansion. The 18th century navy would grow through huge sizes during its frequent bouts of war with France and Spain, and then the penny pinchers would come in and slash the numbers afterwards. Well, in 1755, Britain was teetering on the edge of a global war against first France, and then France and Spain. It was the Seven Years War, which didn't last seven years, but that's not the podcast.

The Navy was the bedrock of Britain's war effort. Cook was sent to the North American theatre, and clearly any operations by land forces in North America had to be supported by the Navy. Troops had to be taken across their stores, their supplies, and probably transported around the rivers and estuaries of North America once they got there. And in fact, the first shots fired by the navy were when a British admiral, before war had been declared, ambushed a French transport fleet heading off to Canada with reinforcements. Not the only time the Royal Navy ever dispensed with the niceties of war when it came to dealing with its ancestral foe. necessities of war when it came to dealing with its ancestral foe. Cook was on board with an HMS. Eagle battered the French ship Esperance, a 74-gun ship, as it was escaping across the Atlantic from North America. She chased it, and a day from port, she was battered into surrender after heroic

resistance. In May 1777, Eagle chased a 50-gun French merchantman off Brittany, also in the Atlantic, and at very close range, blasted each other for about an hour until the French ship surrendered. Eagle had nearly 100 casualties, and Cook reports that our sails and rigging cut almost to pieces. The French had suffered even worse. The four main and mizzenmasts were all blown away the ship was completely dismastered there were 97 shot holes through her hull cook's early career left me no doubt as to the brutal reality of 80th century war at sea the following month in the summer of 1757 cook passed the exam for master this doesn't really have a modern equivalent this job it. It's an essential job. It harks back to the time when the state would hire ships rather than build them itself. So for example, Queen Elizabeth and the Spanish Armada, the state would simply charter a bunch of ships and the master of that ship would

come along with the ship. He wouldn't be one of Her Majesty's naval officers, but he would come along and be responsible for the sailing and navigation of the ship, or the captain was responsible for the fighting of the ship. The rank lived on into the 18th century navy, but it effectively means he was a very senior person on board, usually very close to the captain, who would respect enormously his, well, you could call it, lived experience at sea. Technically, they were subordinate to the young gentlemen the people like the lieutenants but often the master was one of the most important people on board his first job as master was on the 64 gun pembroke hms pembroke and the captain simcoe and they headed back to north america where

the war was going badly i will not bore you about my favorite topic the 70th war but you may have heard me talk about other podcasts how general br Braddock's men marching towards what is now Pittsburgh, but was then Fort Duquesne in the Pennsylvania backcountry. They were ambushed, routed, destroyed by French and indigenous forces. Young George Washington had been very lucky to escape, I think, with a bullet or two through his clothing. Another episode of the war was at Fort William Henry, where the British garrison had been forced to surrender. Another episode of the war was at Fort William Henry, where the British garrison had been forced to surrender, and some of them were massacred by indigenous warriors as they attempted to escape.

The frontier of the British colonies, where they met Native American land or French land, was a terrible place to make war. So Britain had been frustrated heading west into what is now western Pennsylvania. Britain had been frustrated in the traditional invasion corridor running between Montreal and Canada and Albany and New York, a more beautiful stretch of country you'll never see, and bursting with history makes for a great road trip. But Britain had a plan, and that plan obviously involved playing to their strengths, which was naval might. Why? Well, because of the Royal Navy, essentially. You have pretty much the most perfect tool of maritime warfare ever forged.

You should probably use it. And so they used it to surge reinforcements into North America while starving the French, blockading the French. Then they launched a large amphibious operation to capture Louisbourg. This was France's magnificent coastal fortress, beautifully reconstructed. It dominates the St. Lawrence River. It sits at the southern tip of the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, a huge waterway into the heart of the continent. That fort was invested, those red-coated soldiers, escorted there by naval ships, landed by naval ratings, and naval ratings helped those

redcoats to haul big artillery pieces into position. The French fort was slowly blasted. The French were forced to sink some of their own ships in the harbour. It's not the last time they'd sink their own fleet when faced by the British. Another French ship was blown up by a stray British shell, and others torched, burnt down to the waterline. There was no help coming from France. More British fleets were bottling up the French in harbour on the European coast. At one stage, the British Admiral Boscawen rode into the harbour under cover of cloudy weather to capture the two remaining ships. One was captured successfully, the other was grounded as it left the harbour and the Brits burnt it to the waterline as well. On the 26th of July, the governor of Louisbourg surrendered. Cook was

present for those operations and the following day, Cook met a curious looking man on the beach and he was taking measurements with an instrument and making copious notes and they started talking and it was the most important conversation James Cook ever had in his life. They were the same age. The man's name was Samuel Holland. And Holland explained that he was doing a survey. Holland offered to teach Cook how to survey, immediately recognising the mathematical, scientific spirit in the man he was talking to. They spent a few days at it. And then Cook practised maritime survey on a short little cruise over the St Lawrence, where the British were busy burning supplies of fish and a few villages. Then, back in Halifax over the winter, 1758-59, in between his more mundane duties,

we hear that he's punishing men for stealing alcohol, obviously fighting, Holland and Cook grabbed every second they could to compile a chart of the St. Lawrence. It was the first usable chart of this mighty river estuary for which we have good evidence. And they needed a chart because the St. Lawrence is a 400-mile maze of rocks and imlets. One previous British fleet had been dashed to pieces as it tried to sail up and into the heart of the French Empire in North America. dashed to pieces as it tried to sail up and into the heart of the French Empire in North America. The French did not allow any charts. The French had removed all navigation marks. They thought nature would be the most powerful redoubt protecting Canada. There was one particularly shallow bit called the Traverse, and the French didn't believe that big battleships could make

it across the Traverse. They used to trans-ship everyone into small boats to make the final journey up to Quebec and Montreal. The reason they're making that chart is the following year, the British were planning a bold strike at the heart of the French Empire in North America. Yes, they would be fighting on the frontier where the two empires met in the invasion corridor, Lake Champlain, for example, and in the west of Pennsylvania, but they would also strike at the head of the monster. They would sail a fleet right up the St. Lawrence River to the very walls of Quebec and capture the capital of New France. To do that, they needed to know that their fleet would get there in one piece. Suddenly, Cook found he's one of the most important men around.

We hear from General Wolfe, who would lead the army element of this expedition, that Cook was closely advising the senior naval officer, Admiral Sanders. How close could ships get to various islands? Where the safe pastures were? And we hear slightly later on from a commodore who wrote an account, he noticed that Cook was getting special rewards for his, quote, indefatigable industry in making himself master of the pilotage of the St. Lawrence River. As the British fleet is feeling its way up the river in the spring and early summer of 1759, once the ice has cleared, Cook would often be found out ahead in a small boat guarded by marines clutching muskets. As he conducted soundings, depth soundings, working out

how deep it was, making notes, triangulating on landmarks, working out where the deep channel was for the British ships. And he was enormously successful. To the consternation of the French, the British fleet turned up outside the walls of Quebec in the summer of 1759. The French were astonished. They did not think their own big ships, let alone those of a massive foreign battle fleet, would be able to make it up the river this far. From that second on, all that was left of them was desperate defence against overwhelming odds. They managed to hold out for a couple of months, but in September 1759, Quebec was captured. Appropriate enough, the final landing on the north shore of the St. Lawrence that captured the city was a combined operation that depended on the seamanship, the surveying,

and the professionalism of men like Cook and other naval officers. After that success, as the great French armbar in North America fell into British hands, Cook was put to work doing more and more surveying. His commanding officer recommended him to the Admiralty as a man of genius and capacity who would be ideal for this kind of work. He was 34. He returned to Britain. He married Elizabeth Batts, a somewhat long-suffering woman, as you'll hear. And the year after the end of the war, so in the early 1760s by this period, he was sent back to North America as a surveyor. Britain was suddenly in possession of a gigantic new empire. Canada, what is now the United States of America, east of the Mississippi, it needed surveying. They needed to know what they had there and how it could be exploited.

Cook was responsible for Newfoundland, a very irregular shaped island, tricky navigation, but also has the advantage of being a giant harbour, a giant wharf stuck in the middle of the world's greatest fishing grounds. So it was an important national priority to get accurate charts of the waters around Newfoundland. He was given his own ship, a little 68-tonner, a schooner, renamed Grenville, after the Prime minister. Not one of our finest prime ministers. He had a crew of 20 men under his command. He did five years in Newfoundland and he produced the first large-scale accurate maps of the island's coasts and the first large-scale hydrographic surveys. This gave Cook a mastery of surveying in very tough conditions. Newfoundland is high latitude. It's always windy

there. There are plenty of rocks and shoals. There are massive tides. If you can do it there, you can do it anywhere. And his skill brought him to the attention of the Admiralty and the Royal Society, full of scientists, at a crucial moment, both in his career and in that point of British overseas discovery and ambition. We should say, by the way, that Cook's maps of Newfoundland were used into the 20th century. People sailing in Newfoundland waters would continue to reference Cook's observations for 200 years. While he was in North America, he had observed an eclipse of the sun and reported the data back to London. That data had been used to help calculate the longitude of where Cook was by the St. Lawrence River. So this useful man

on the east coast of the Americas is sending back lots of useful information and data, very impressive. It gets noticed by the men of science of the Royal Society. He was published fantastically in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. And by working out the difference in the time of day between the eclipse being spotted in London and the eclipse being spotted in Newfoundland, Cook estimated that he thought there were 57 degrees and 31 minutes of longitude between that part of Newfoundland and Greenwich. Now, the modern calculation is 57 degrees and 37 minutes. So I think he was about 10 kilometers out, which is astonishing. Now, calculating longitude does

depend slightly on the latitude, and all of that makes my brain hurt. So I will not bore you very much more with it. So as well as making scientific breakthroughs, attracting the potential of the right people in London, he's also developing a reputation with the Navy as a good commander. The ship's logs are pretty free from sickness. He keeps his crew well, which is one of the great battles, especially in the peacetime navy. And also he avoids punishment, more so than many captains at the time. He took good care of his crew and many of them seem to have stuck with him. He looked after their diets, their stomachs, and in return, they behaved for him. They did what he wanted. When he returns from Newfoundland after that

fifth season, that's when he says that quote I mentioned before, my ambition leads me not only to go further than any other man has been before me, but as far as I think it's possible for man to go, well, he didn't have long to wait. The opportunity was upon him. He would not return to Newfoundland. The Admiralty had other plans. The Admiralty had been on the receiving end of ferocious lobbying from the scientific community because there was a transit of Venus coming up. Now, what's a transit of Venus? In the 17th century, Halley had described how long it took for Venus to cross the face of the sun. And he later surmised that if you timed it from two

different places on earth, the positions of which you know precisely, then you can work out the distance from the earth to the sun, which is very useful to know for all sorts of reasons. Apart from the abstract, it also really helps you to improve navigation, helps you to determine your position at sea. Now, knowing where you were in the world was the object of a great global arms race. If you were an expensive warship or a rich trading vessel, you were much more likely in the 18th century to smash into a rock or a hostile coastline because your commander didn't know where you were than be sunk or set afire or captured by an enemy ship. Navigation was essential. Acc accurate positioning would allow quicker journeys better returns more cargos in more hulls it was essential for communication war and trade the scientific

community and the navy wanted to observe the transit of venus the trouble was it didn't happen very often and there was one coming up in 1769. The transit that everyone was interested in. The French were going to send out expeditions and scientists petitioned the king for money to make sure there was a British expedition as well. They said it would cast dishonor upon them should they neglect to have correct observations made of this important phenomenon. Well, the king said, you had me at the French. Listen, here's a lesson from history, folks. Every scientist include a passage on the worrying advances of a competitor power in your pitch document. You will get the funding. George III granted the Royal Society 4,000 pounds. He said he'd provide a ship

and a crew from his Royal Navy, and the expedition was born. Now, the scientists rather sweetly were hoping to launch their own expedition with their own commander, and the expedition was born. Now the scientists rather sweetly were hoping to launch their own expedition with their own commander, and the admirals laughed. Their lordships were not going to let one of his majesty's vessels out under the command of a scientist. They were going to choose one of their own. In April 1768, they chose Cook. Why did they choose James Cook? He was a mere master, not the most exalted rank on paper. Previous expeditions into the Pacific had been commanded by men of noble birth and connection, men like Lorne Anson, who I mentioned earlier, but they chose Cook. Now, I think part of the

reason could have been that they didn't want to waste a senior captain on this mad errand to go and look at a planet on the other side of the world with a bunch of scientists on board? What if it'd be a cloudy day? But part of it, more importantly, I think it shows that Cook had made a huge impression, an extraordinary impression, on the men in the corridors of power in the Admiralty. It was a credit to him and his successes. Interestingly, now they had to choose the right kind of ship. Now, to a landlubber, all boats and ships look the same. But when you love sailing, when you love boating, it is agony. Every single ship and boat has different characteristics.

Do you want them to go in deep water, shallow water, big waves, choppy waves, tidal races, lots of wind, no wind? There is a dizzying array of choices. Cook needed a ship that was big enough to carry plenty of stores. He was going to be at sea for a long time because the place that had been selected for him to view the transit of Venus was Tahiti, recently discovered on the other side of the world. But his ship could not draw too much. Any ship that was sailing through completely uncharted new waters needed to be able to, as the expression went, take the bottom, take the ground. And that meant if the worst came to the worst, you could just drive your ship up on the nearest beach and pause. So you wanted a flat,

strong-bottomed vessel. It also had to be small enough to spot those stores, to be dragged up on the beach. You would have to do running repairs in places without dry docks. That meant that high tide, you'd sail the boat up onto the beach, wait for the tide to go out, lay it on its side and give it a good scrape and a rub and a paint. Cook believed that the only ships that would fit the bill were his beloved northern colliers They had plenty of space, lots of stores, flat-bottomed and very, very sturdy designed for bouncing off the many sandbanks of the coast of Norfolk It was upon these considerations, wrote Cook later, that the endeavour was chosen for the enterprise

It was to these properties in her that those on board owe their preservation. And as you'll hear, that's absolutely true. A collier called the Earl of Pembroke had been built in Whitby, which was of course Cook's adopted port, was renamed HMS Endeavour, and the legend was born. 100 foot long, 29 feet wide at its widest, 368 tons, and it drew a meagre 14 feet. That means there's 14 foot, just over four meters under the waterline. Cook had to race to get ready for the expedition. There was a lot of work that needed doing. As you can imagine,

wooden boats just decay instantly from the moment they're born. And there was chaos in the dockyards. There were strikes, there were riots as workers demanded more wages. Work was interrupted a couple of times. Cook was promoted to first lieutenant, which was probably appropriate for the commander of a vessel this size. Now, the ship would have had about only 16 crew for peacetime trade. Cook was given 70 able seamen, plus about 12 or so marines, soldiers who fought at sea. Few of those men were over the age of 30. Cook was annoyed that his cook, his chef, only had one hand, but he turned out to be a decent enough cook. The hold was stacked with supplies that that cook, that chef, would turn into food.

Sauerkraut, salt beef, salt pork, peas, all of which should keep on long journeys across the ocean. Huge barrels of beer, brandy, and arrack were also lowered in. You can't expect a British sailor to sail half around the world and not get his rum ration. There was a goat to provide fresh milk for the officers. She was something of a veteran. She'd already been to the Pacific on a previous voyage. Now, as well as these sailors and marines, there would be scientists aboard. This was a scientific mission as well. Joseph Banks was a Lincolnshire landowner. He was young. He was 15 years younger than Cook. He was 25 years old. He'd been to Labrador to be a botanist on an expedition. So he had a little bit of experience.

He was to join the expedition. He was accompanied by the Swedish naturalist, Daniel Solander. He'd been a pupil of the great Carl Linnaeus. And there were also two artists accompanying them to draw their specimens. And Banks brought two black servants with him as well, and a secretary, plus two dogs. The crew ended up calling them the Experimental Gentlemen. They never really got on, but these Experimental Gentlemen would go down in history because they would describe thousands of new species, among them Guggenwiller, kangaroos,

and much else. So Cook's orders were to go to recently discovered Tahiti to record the transit of Venus. He was then to, I quote, by all proper means cultivate a friendship with the natives, presenting them with such trifles as may be acceptable to them, exchanging with them for provisions of which there is great plenty, and showing them every kind of civility and regard. So that was it. Go to Tahiti and observe the transit. They hoped and prayed for a clear day when they got there. But, and this is the big but,

there were secret orders. The admiralty told him, when this service is performed, you are put to see without loss of time and carry into execution the additional instructions contained in the enclosed sealed packet. A sealed packet of secret orders. When he got to Tahiti, he was to open it and discover that his job was to look for a new continent. It was assumed by many scientists that there must be a huge landmass in the southern hemisphere to balance out the huge amount of land in the north, Eurasia and North America in the north. It had been the subject of ferocious speculation, and Cook's job was not to go and find it. The secret orders said, Whereas the making discovery of countries hitherto unknown, and the attaining of a

knowledge of distant parts, which though formerly discovered, have yet been but imperfectly explored, will redound greatly to the honour of this nation as a maritime power, as well as to the dignity of the Crown of Great Britain, and may tend generally to the advancement of the trade and navigation thereof. And, the orders stated, there was reason to imagine that a continent or land of great extent may be found to the southward. So this expedition, as so often, So, this expedition, as so often, was a blend of science and empire. As Cook made his final preparations to head to Tahiti, the President of the Royal Society wrote to him with, I think, rather wonderful advice.

I'm a big fan. He implored Cook to excise the utmost patience and forbearance with respect to the natives of the several lands where the ship might touch, to check the petulance of the sailors, restrain the wanton use of firearms, to have it still in view that shedding the blood of these people is a crime of the highest nature. They are natural, and in the strictest sense of the word, the legal possessors of the several regions they inhabit. They may naturally and justly attempt to repel intruders, whom they may apprehend are come to disturb them in the quiet possession of their country, whether that apprehension be well or ill

founded. So, according to this advice, every effort should be made to avoid violence, and the crew should be reminded that these men were lords of their countries. It's rather enlightened. On the 30th of July, Cook sailed down the Thames. He left his wife pregnant with her fourth child. He would be born in early September and would be dead within the month. Cook would not see his wife or family again for years. They sailed down the south coast of England and put into Plymouth. They left that great port in the southwest on the 25th of August, and this was it. They were heading off. The crew had been issued with two months' pay and told not to expect the rest until they returned. Cook wrote that all expressed great

cheerfulness and readiness to prosecute the voyage. Joseph Banks wrote in his journal, all in excellent health and spirit, perfectly prepared in mind at least to undergo with cheerfulness any fatigues or danger that may occur in our intended voyage. There'd be plenty of both. They stopped at Madeira, that little Portuguese island, to buy 3,000 gallons of wine and an absolute boatload of onions. Interesting at this point, Cook orders that two of the crew are flogged for not eating fresh beef. And fascinatingly, this was the only time in the voyage of the years that were to come that Cook ordered corporal punishment as a way of persuading men to eat better. He would use different techniques in future. Sadly, in Madeira, one man was dragged to his death by the anchor, the boy line of which got wrapped around his foot. If you ever see a coil of rope on the back of a ship, folks, never stand in

the middle of it. Because if that rope is suddenly let go, weighed down by an anchor or something heavy, it'll snap up your foot like a python and you'll be over the side and down into Davy Jones's locker. We know that Cook was a superb man-manager from previous expeditions who could have been kept healthy and he had a big plan on this voyage to deal with the threat of scurvy, which is the lack of vitamin C, effectively, which is a horrific disease. Your teeth fall out, your old scars open up, all the rest of it. He was going to deal with that by using sauerkraut and as much fresh food as he could. Whenever he landed, he tried to get fresh food, berry and celery and fresh fish. He thought about punishing the men if they wouldn't eat their sauerkraut, but he soon came up with a far more ingenious way to encourage them

to eat it. A lot more carrot and less lash, as you'll hear. He organized the men into three watches. Typically, a ship was divided into two watches, and they did four hours on, four hours off most of the day. He divided his men into three watches. They got eight continuous hours off duty, and they sailed south. They crossed the equator, according to the old venerable traditions of crossing the equator. Lots of men who'd never done it before were thrown into the sea from the main yard. They sailed into Rio de Janeiro and had a very interesting moment because the Viceroy, the Portuguese Viceroy in Brazil, did not believe they were a naval ship.

They looked like a band of smugglers with this talk of scientific expeditions to the Pacific, they're very fishy. And there's a very amusing set of letters, which I won't bore you with, rather pompous and furious, being sent to and fro, each side accusing the other of a lack of respect for their respective majesties, officials, representatives. Banks snuck ashore and did a bit of what he's called botanising, which is finding new species, plants, flowers, animals. But they did it Rio, a beach, the endeavour. One of the reasons, remember, she'd been chosen for the job. You drive her up on the beach, the tide goes out and you can do some maintenance. They recorked the planks, that is, they got into the seams between the planks and pushed this kind of gooey mixture of cotton and hemp, all soaked in

tar, pine tar, and then sealed with hot pitch. And that was a way of binding these planks together and stopping water getting in. Then you scrape the hull down from all the barnacles and things that accumulate on it, the accretions, and you do the inevitable repairs on the rigging. As they sailed south from Rio, down the coast of South America, they had all the weathers. They had calm weather. The sea was still as a mirror. Sails hung loosely like laundry from the yards. Then they had storms. They had lightning. They even had to lay to at one point, which is give up any attempt to sail and just go where the storm blows them. And everyone agreed that she was the finest vessel they could have chosen. Christmas day brought a fresh breeze and the captain notes in his log,

the people were none of the soberest. Now, thank you to Joseph Banks for providing a bit more detail here. All good Christians, that is to say all hands, get abominably drunk so that at night there was scarce a sober man in the ship. Wind, thank God, very moderate. All Lord knows what would have become of us. Great naval tradition there. They landed at the bottom of South American Tierra del Fuego. Banks and the scientists went botanized and they got caught in a snowstorm. And tragically,

his two black servants died of exposure. So brutal was the temperature. Then they girded themselves for the famous trip around Cape horn with its towering seas and its endless easterly gales that blow around this circumpole ocean the southern ocean unbroken by land the cannon for example was stored low down in the ship so it wasn't too top heavy and they set off the weather was predictably bad yet in a savagely pitching deck, Cook managed to fix the position of Cape Horn, a little headland on a rocky island off the south coast of South America, and it became the most accurate fix ever. It was the precise correct latitude and it was only 40 miles out on the longitude. So until that point, people hadn't had a good idea where Cape Horn was on planet Earth. So he is a stunning navigator and surveyor. He tacked south as far as he could go without the ship freezing up into the Southern Ocean, and then rode a beautiful southeasterly breeze north and west with every scrap of canvas spread, it getting warmer every day, studding sails set on the ends of the yards. That's extra sails that you put right out on the edge of the existing sails

to catch every scrap of breeze you can. They were swept north and west into the heart of the Pacific. There were calm days when Joseph Banks and the scientists would go out in the rowing boat. They'd shoot seabirds and petrels and albatrosses, and the crew would then eat them, gratefully, after they'd been drawn and studied. Some days they'd travel 13 miles. Other days there'd be a fresh then eat them, gratefully, after they'd been drawn and studied. Some days they'd travel 13 miles.

Other days there'd be a fresh breeze behind them and they'd travel 140 miles. Tragically, one night, a Royal Marine was being bullied by his mates who apparently stole a bit of seal skin. He jumped overboard and committed suicide. Life aboard a ship where you're an outcast was obviously intolerable.

You listen to Dan Snow's history, there's more coming up. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanor Janaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings. Normans. Kings and popes. Who were rarely the best of friends.

Murder. Rebellions. And crusades. Find out who we really were. By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit. Wherever you get your podcasts. On the morning of the 4th of April in Happier News, Cook discovered his first Pacific island. The Polynesians obviously knew about it. It's called Vahitai. It was an oval around a lagoon. So Cook called it Lagoon Island. And on the 13th of April,

1769, Endeavour dropped its anchor, 13 fathoms of chain, and she came to rest in Matavai Bay in Tahiti. Cook was seven weeks ahead of schedule. He had perfectly followed his instructions. Not a man among the crew was ill. In eight months, he'd lost four men, one to the accident, one to the suicide, and two to exposure to sickness. And the reason is clear from Cook's journals like Nelson's later on actually he's obsessed with health food with water with cleanliness and he talks about the importance of sauerkraut and on that journey he'd come up with a very very clever way of making sauerkraut hugely desirable and popular he'd made the officers eat lots of it in the wardroom in the officer's mess the men had found out came to believe it was a privilege, something the officers had access to, and so Cook allowed the men to have it. Soon he had to ration it so popularly that it had become.

It's a great source of anti-scorbutics, a great source of vitamin C, and there was no scurvy aboard that ship. Cook wrote of his cunning wheeze, for such as the tempers and dispositions of seamen in general, that whatever you give them out of the common way, although it be ever so much for their good, yet it will not go down with them, and you will hear nothing but murmurings against the man that first invented it, but the moment they see their superiors set a value on it, it becomes the finest stuff in the world, and the inventor a damned honest fellow. Having reached Tahiti, they would now be in Tahiti for some time and Cook had to issue rules of conduct. He told them to endeavour by every fair means to cultivate a friendship with the natives and to treat them with all imaginable humanity. Secondly, trade for provisions was to

be carried out only through a properly appointed person, except with the captain's special leave. Interestingly, he strictly forbade the sailors trading iron for anything except provisions, he says. This clearly relates to a previous expedition when the peoples of these islands who were not iron workers, they did not know the secrets of iron, they would exchange anything iron for sex. And so sailors were pulling nails out of the ship's hull in return for sex. There was inevitably sex with the locals and trouble with the locals, probably in that order, which Cook did his best to sort out. One man was flogged for getting in a fight with a Tahitian man. But meanwhile, Cook was focused on building Fort

Venus, a lab to make the observations. And luckily, June the 3rd dawned bright and clear. Can you imagine if it had been cloudy? The observations went okay, but Cook reports that it was very hard to tell when Venus had absolutely finished its transit, but with the equipment they had available, they did a decent job. The transit having been completed, it was time for Cook to open his secret orders. As that moment of departure grew nearer, some of the sailors tried to desert and ran into the mountains with local women, and who can blame them, but they were hauled back. And interestingly, Banks had made friends with a senior local figure. He was a priest,

he was a navigator, a wayfinder. He's called Tupaya. He had encyclopedic knowledge of this part of the Pacific. Banks admits in his diary that he wanted to keep him, quote, as a curiosity, as well as some of my neighbours do lions and tigers at larger expense. The amusement I shall have in his future conversation and the benefit he will be to this ship will, I think, fully repay me. the Tahitians or his own men. He blamed a Spanish ship that apparently passed through the archipelago a few years before. But that having been sorted out, the crew were told to raise the anchor and leave Tahiti behind. Just before noon on Thursday the 13th of July, in a gentle easterly breeze, the Endeavour sailed out from Matavai Bay. They visited some other islands in the archipelago. Cook raised the Union flag. He took possession of them for King George III. And then they headed south towards this mystical southern continent.

There are odd stories on this leg of the journey. There's one that the boatswain made an odd decision. Described as out of mere good nature, the boatswain gave one John Redding, who apparently liked being drunk, three and a half pints of rum. And that killed John Redding. Such was life aboard an 18th century ship. The officers celebrated their one-year anniversary of leaving England with a slice of Cheshire cheese, we're told. I expect they washed it down with some rum as well. They explored. They searched for land, and Banks and his team

searched for animals. They caught jellyfish, they recovered seaweed, they festooned things to dry around Cook's cabin. They spotted a seal, interestingly, which doesn't stray too far from land. The ocean changed colour. Tupaya told them there was definitely land ahead. At 2pm on the 6th of October 1769, a boy at the masthead, standing right on top of the wasp, where he put the youngest men with the best eyesight. Nicholas Young his name was. He shouted, and they drew closer. On the morning of the 8th, they took to the small boats, having anchored the big endeavour. They took their muskets, their firearms, and they headed to the shore.

The British had arrived in Otora, or as the British would call it, New Zealand. It was not a happy arrival. Locals on the beach immediately tried to steal one of the boats, and one of them was shot and killed. The next day Cook returned to the beach, but was greeted by a large group of Maoris in full warlike mode. Tupaya attempted to conciliate them. He could communicate with them. But then one of them stole an item of a crewman and he was shot. There was a bit more fighting.

A canoe was intercepted at sea. Some men killed, others were taken prisoner. And Cook was deeply despondent by this. He was very unhappy. Banks was even more despondent. He was miserable because he'd actually fired one of the shots. Thus ended the most disagreeable day my life has yet seen. Black be the mark of it, and heaven send that such may never return to embitter future reflection. Cook named this bay Poverty Bay. He called the southern headland

of it Young Nick's Head after Young Nick had spotted it, and only recently have Maori names been used again alongside these names in New Zealand. He sailed south for a bit. Then he sailed north into Hauraki Bay. He saw a river, which he immediately called the Thames. And he met groups of Maori that were keener to trade. He sailed of the Bay of Islands, beautiful place to sail, but Endeavour hit a sunken rock, which thankfully did no damage. They rounded the north of North Island. It was a point he was particularly keen to fix properly, and they experienced a terrible storm. Without necessary sea room, i.e. without enough space downwind, they would certainly have been cast upon the rocks.

Now, very oddly at this stage, Cook almost bumped into a French vessel. We think they're only 50 miles apart. They didn't see each other, but they were 50 miles apart. The French vessel was commanded by Jean-François Marie de Seville, and he had an even worse time with the local Maoris. He had a crew that was straight with Scurvy, and he abandoned New Zealand as soon as he arrived there. He headed for Peru, where he drowned. One historian has written simply, he was an adventurer, not an explorer. Cook, having sailed around the top of North Island, he arrived at South Island, the tip of South Island on the 15th of January 1770. He anchored in what he called Ship Cove, part of Queen Charlotte Sound, right at the top of South Island. He climbed a few of the surrounding

hills to get a sense of the lay of the land. He realised that North Island was in fact an island, not part of a vast southern continent, and a local man told him that he was on an island as well, that it would take many moons to circumnavigate. He then vaguely took possession, as he was in the habit of doing, of that and, quote, adjacent lands for King George, toasted him with a bottle of wine, which he then gave to a very pleased Maori. From there he sailed out into the Cook Strait, which he named after himself rather uncharacteristically,

but it had the insistence apparently of Joseph Banks. The ship came very close to smashing on some rocks. They let out every inch of anchor cable, 150 fathoms. That's 300 meters. And they did that because the ebb tide grabbed them. So the tide was rushing out, grabbed him with no wind in his sails. He was very nearly swept onto the rocks. Luckily that anchor held with that much rope out, that much cable, so much weight on the bottom, it just about held. It then took them three hours to raise that anchor, as you can imagine. The men pushing at the huge caps in this great winch-like thing towards the bow of the ship,

while more men were below, manhandling the soaking wet minging cable into a shape so it doesn't just get all tangled and become a rotting mound of hemp. He sailed in pretty poor weather actually down the east side of South Island. He named one cape, Cape Saunders, after Admiral Saunders, who'd helped capture Quebec. I like that. He just named stuff after people that had a nice impact on his career or important folks who might help his future career. And when he hit the huge swells of the southern ocean he judged correctly that he had reached the end of South Island because he was back in these monstrous ocean waves and he was okay to turn west now at this stage we hear that there were two groups of men on board there were those who

had begun to yearn for roast beef and who were really hoping this wasn't the big southern continent they were going to spend years surveying. And there were also those who wanted to keep exploring forever. And the bottom of South Island, the fact that they discovered that South Island had a distinct bottom, was a great blessing to the first group of people because it meant that they could say there was no southern continent. It meant they could head home. As they sailed on the south and southwest sides of New Zealand, cooking rage banks by refusing to let it go ashore and the massive fjords, you know, the Southern Alps that are so beautiful on the coast there. Those fjords run deep inland and the wind tends to go up them and down them. You don't want to be trapped in one for a month. If you sail up one of those fjords, you're in a dead

end. Until the wind changes, you are very much stuck there. And so he sailed past them, but constantly making notes, making calculations as he went along. The wind turned nasty at a place called Cape Foulwind, you'll be surprised to learn, and it tacked to windward endlessly, crisscrossing the wind without making any ground at all. Joseph Banks noted, it's an excellent school for patience. Cook describes in his account of mountains rising straight from the sea, no country on earth more barren or rugged, snow that he said had lain undisturbed since the creation. But as well as gawping at the scenery, he was carrying out one of the most impressive works

of maritime surveying in the history of the world. And from his trip around the coast of New Zealand, he produced a chart of 2,400 miles in three months. That's the size of the UK. And there are mistakes in it, of course, but it's reasonably accurate if you go and check it out. It's a pretty good visualization of what New Zealand looks like. And the proof of that brilliance is best demonstrated by the fact that these enemies, these competitors, they praised it to the rafters. Lieutenant Julien Crozet, who's second in command of the French expedition that arrived in New Zealand a couple of years later in 1772, he writes, as soon as I obtained information of the voyage of the Englishman, I carefully compared

the chart I'd prepared of that part of the coast of New Zealand along which we had coasted with that prepared by Captain Cook and his officers. I found it of an exactitude and of a thoroughness of detail which astonished me beyond all powers of expression, and I doubt much whether the charts of our own French coasts are laid down with greater precision. I think therefore I cannot do better than to lay down our track off New Zealand on the chart prepared by this celebrated navigator. Listen to that. He thinks Cook's chart is better than the French charts of the French coast. It's extraordinary. Cook wrote in his dispatch to the Admiralty that New Zealand was fertile, ripe for exploitation by the British. The people were divided among themselves, but they

were warlike, industrious, brave, and strong. Tupai, interestingly, the Polynesian who was still with Cook every moment of the way, thought the Maoris were all liars. He was obviously a less forgiving man than Cook. So now Cook had fulfilled his orders. He'd noted the transit. He'd thoroughly explored great southern landmass, New Zealand, proved it was not part of one enormous continent. And the Admiralty had left it up to him how to get home. He could either go back to South America, back round the Horn, or he'd go round the Cape of Good Hope and complete the circumnavigation. He approached this with some carefulness. On the 30th of March, after a wrecky ashore,

he called his officers together and he asked all their opinions. It was one of the more momentous wardroom meetings in naval history. He cleverly, initially, he laid out the case for returning to Cape Horn. He pointed out it might take a laid out the case for returning to Cape Horn. He points out it might take a while because they have to go north to avoid winter in the Southern Ocean. Yet that would be the same if they headed for the Cape of Good Hope, the southern tip of Africa, directly. What they could do, if anyone's interested, is they could sail to New Holland, hit the coast, work out where its northerly point was, and then go to the Dutch East Indies for resupply.

It's clear the way he was selling it that he wanted the third, the latter option, and his officers all agreed. So they would head to New Holland. They would head to what we call Australia. On the 31st of March, they set off from New Zealand. They had a stiff, lovely south-easterly breeze at at their backs and they headed west. The last piece of New Zealand they saw was Cape Farewell. Now, what of this New Holland place? What's going on there? In 1642, while the Brits were lurching towards their catastrophic civil war, find the first shots of that, the Dutchman Abel Tasman was having a far more constructive time. Abel Tasman had sailed from Southern Africa, he'd missed Australia, briefly hit what is now Tasmania, and then sailed up the little bit of the west side of New Zealand before heading home. On a subsequent voyage, he'd

sailed along the north coast of Australia. Hence, it was known as New Holland. But New Holland's other coasts had not been explored, and Cook was now determined to do this. He wanted to do the opposite journey from Tasman. He wanted to sail from New Zealand to Tasmania. He wanted to pick up the trail where Tasman had lost it and follow it all the way north. He had a fortnight of good weather in the Tasman Sea. Then he had one hell of a storm. He ran with his mizzen and his foresails up.

But on the 18th of April, they spotted land. Cape Everard. Pretty much, interestingly, the sort of southeastern tip of Australia. It's where New South Wales takes that abrupt turn north, the bottom corner. It's a little north of where Cook wanted to be. He had wanted to go to Van Diemen's Land or Tasmania, as it's called, but he'd been pushed north by the storms and decided to continue his way up the coast. That coast was 2,000 miles long and all lay ahead of him. He sailed north, amazing descriptions, most of the time only a few miles off the coast. He would often stand out to sea at night in case there were navigational hazards and then he'd close up to the coast again during the day.

He made charts, he did what he'd done in New Zealand, he called features after admirals and officials, sometimes after the weather, sometimes after their appearance or his own state of mind. Banks commented, the country looked like the back of a lean cow, mostly covered in long hair but with scraggy hip bones sticking out. They didn't try and get ashore for another, well, more than a week. It was the 27th of April. Tupaya, Joseph Banks, and Cook sailed in a small boat. Remember, Endeavour will have these small boats, ship's boats that you can winch on and off, sort of open boats, rowing boats, but they have masts in them as well. You can go for multi-day expeditions in them.

And they sailed in towards the shore, but they found the surf was impossible to get through. The following day, though, they spotted a bay and they went ashore. There were some indigenous people on the beach. We hear they had broad white stripes painted on dark skin. They had pikes in their hand. Two of them stayed behind to try and repel these European sailors until they were driven off, terrified by musket fire. And Cook turned to his wife's young cousin who was aboard, a man called Isaac, and let him land first. The first European to land on the east coast of Australia. They explored these bark huts that these indigenous people had left behind. They found some kids who'd been abandoned.

And then they returned to the ship for the night. They stayed in that bay a while. The natural historians loved the collecting, found all sorts of new species. The sailors were fishing. Tupaya couldn't talk to locals, interestingly, that was commented upon. And Cook says, all they seemed to want was for us to be gone. That's one of the great truisms of European contact with people in the rest of the world. He wanted to name this bay, and there were so many stingrays in the shallows,

he thought about calling it Stingray Bay. Then he looked out and he saw Banks and Solander collecting their samples, running around with great excitement. And he wrote, the great quantity of new plants Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander collected in this place, occasioned my giving it the name of Botanist Harbour. Then he writes, Botanist Bay, Botany Bay. So there it was, one of the most famous landfalls in history. Name written down in early May 1770. Cook was standing in Botany Bay. As soon as he was able to drag the botanists away from this paradise, they sailed up the coast. Again, they had following winds blowing them up the coast, studying sails out, a mountain of white, a pyramid of white canvas by day. At night, they'd take in sail, slow down, just in case they stumble across navigational hazards.

If the moon was big enough, they stood inshore. They could go right up inshore, confident they could see any rocks or breakers before they hit them. If there was no moon, they headed way out into the deeper water. The artists were drawing all the plants that Solander and Banks had collected in Botany Bay. The plants were being kept damp in tins to try and preserve them. In two weeks, one of the artists made 94 sketches of new species. Then after a week or so, they started seeing something weird. They were five miles from land. They were in 20 fathoms of water. They could tell because they threw a lead line, a piece of lead connected to a piece of rope in the water and he could measure how deep the water was. But suddenly

they could see breakers on the port bow. Cook was worried. He called landmarks on the shore Point Danger and Mount Warning. And they should have been warned because there was danger ahead. Cook now proceeded with caution. He went slowly under little sail. I wish I could say everyone was cautious on board, but Richard Orton, the captain's clerk, was certainly not cautious. He went to bed one night absolutely wasted. God knows how they still had so much booze on board. Very impressive. And then some people strangely cut all the clothes off his back and for good measure even chopped off part of his ears. This strange attack sent Cook, understandably, fairly bonkers.

He took it as an insult on his leadership and he suspected one particular midshipman, Mr Magra, who he said was good for nothing. Magra was demoted and sent forward as a common seaman. Sent, as they say, before the mast. A miserable fate for a man who had been an officer. Cook was being cautious because he was now off the coast of what is central Queensland, and he found himself in a maze of shoals. He called it Shoalwater Bay, obviously. They had

to proceed very gingerly. The depth would suddenly shallow. They'd drop the anchor. They'd send out the small boats ahead of them. They'd drift along with hardly any sail. It was tense every moment of every day. How he didn't go aground at that point is an absolute miracle. They felt their way up through the treacherous waters with careful seamanship all the while. They were still surveying, they were naming, they were recording. But even Cook's skill eventually would meet its limits. And soon he'd reached a point that he was to call Cape Tribulation because he wrote, a point that he was to call Cape Tribulation because he wrote, here began all our troubles. It's mind bending to think about, but Cook did not know about the existence of the Great Barrier Reef. This enormous barricade of sand and coral at an angle to the coast of Queensland starts way

out to sea and it closes with the coast. It's a giant set of jaws and Cook had been led straight into them and now they were narrowing. Remember his stout collier, this stout coal carrying ship, it could take a sandy bottom. It could touch the sandy bottom. In fact, it was designed to sit on a sandy bottom. That was fine. Nothing can smash into coral without serious repercussions. You listen to Dan Snow's history. There's more coming up. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research.

From the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings. Normans. Kings and popes. Who were rarely the best of friends. Murder. Rebellions. And crusades.

Find out who we really were. By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. It was in the afternoon of the 10th of June, 1770, that Cook decided he didn't like the look of the coast ahead of him. And he did what he usually did. He stood out to sea at night, meaning he headed out to sea at night, double-reefed topsails, only a tiny bit of sail showing to catch the wind. He ghosted out, decent moonlight, flat seas, thank goodness. A man was constantly throwing the lead line out to record the depths. One throw, shout the depth out, coil the rope, throw it in again. The officers went to dinner, believing that they were probably out of trouble for the day.

The man with the lead line threw it. Just before 11pm, the depth rose from 21 fathoms to 17 fathoms. That's about 30 metres. Never a great sign if you're heading out to sea into supposedly deeper water and it starts to get shallow, but not yet terminal. The man quickly coiled his rope, preparing for another throw. Before he could do so, there was a terrible, grinding crash. Cook wrote simply, The ship stuck, and stuck fast. They had hit a coral reef at high tide, which is the worst time

to hit a coral reef, and there's never a good time but at high tide you can't simply rely on being lifted off as the water rises. As you'd expect Cook sprang into action. Top masts were lowered to the decks. Boats were dropped into the water. Anchors lowered into the boats and then rowed out the deep water so they could be dropped and the ship hauled off when the time was right. Soundings taken meticulously all around the boat. Where was the deepest water? Where was the coral on which they were stuck? Everything heavy was thrown overboard. Six and a half tons, that's the metal ballast and rocks from the bottom of the ship. 50 tons of stores. Cannon went over the side. I mean, thank goodness it was flat calm. Because had the ship been rolled about, had it been moved and rolled and pounded by waves, well, the action of the waves would be like grinding the ship's hull with a savage

cheese grater. Instead, in placid conditions, the ship just sat there. Then the tide fell. She rolled to one side and started taking in water at that point quite badly. The tide then came in again. They still couldn't get her off. Everyone manned the pumps, including the gentlemen, including the officers, including the scientists. Banks was very grateful for the coolness and the command of the officers and cook and the obedience of the men. Banks had been terrified that when a ship was mortally wounded like that,

the men would run amok, drinking, robbing, looting, all order breaking down. Instead, they went about their duties,oting, all order breaking down. Instead, they went about their duties knowing that their only chance of getting home, their only chance of survival, was to do what the master mariner, James Cook, told them. The water was gaining on the pumps, it was coming in quick and it could be pumped out, and there was a concern that if they did successfully drag her off, she might just sink instantly. It couldn't quite work out the extent of the damage to the hole below, but they had to risk it. They couldn't sit on the coral reef for the rest of their lives. And at the very height of the tide, they hauled on the anchors that had been laid out in the deeper water and they heaved. And with a great lurch, a great crack, she came away. After 23 hours on the

reef, she was floating. But only just. They did what they could to cover the hole with a sail, spread with oakum and sheep dung. They kept the pumps going 24 hours a day, everyone hauling on the pumps, and they sailed gingerly towards the shore looking for a harbour. Perhaps he thought two islands he'd spotted. He named them the Hope Islands.

Cook says in his journal that no men ever behaved better. The ship's boats were out rowing and sailing, scouring shoals and islands and coastline for a harbour with fresh water because they'd have to be there for some time. She was sailing badly. She was lurching along. They had to occasionally drop the anchor to stop her hitting more shoals. Cook went out himself in the small boats and he surveyed a passage that he thought might take him to a river mouth on the mainland. Painfully, they had to wait for a storm to pass through at anchor before they could get into the river and drove the ship up gently on the sandy bottom of the beach. It was the 16th of June and he would be there for over two months. Now, during all this time, storms, ships about to sink, careful navigation,

Cook had decided that Mr. Mangra, by the way, was not guilty of the ear-chopping incident and restored him to his position, which I always think is remarkable he had time to do that. Once they'd beached the boat, they waited for the tide to go out and they could have a look at the damaged hull the boat laid on its side. And the damage was extraordinary. By good luck, a giant piece of the coral had broken off into the hole and plugged it. Otherwise, the ship would have sunk like a stone. But there was still plenty of damage. The copper sheathing was torn apart. That was bad for lots of reasons. One was that it would allow shipworm to get into the entrails of the ship, the wooden hull, and start to weaken

the planks on their journey through tropical waters. They needed time to repair it. I don't doubt this was great news for Banks, who went and botanized himself half to death. He and Sonder identified, shot, and ate the first kangaroo described by European science, as well as many other species that were until then unknown. The crew also hunted turtles, and Cook made sure that everyone, even the, quote, meanest person aboard, got an equal share by weight. And he wrote, and this method every commander of a ship on a voyage such as this ought ever to observe. He was no fool. He realised that on an expedition like this, the appearance of fairness was very important for maintenance of

morale. They interacted with some Aboriginal Australians. Some Aboriginals almost set fire to the ship by setting the dry grass around it alike, but they affected a kind of reconciliation. Cook climbed a hill to see how the hell they were going to escape this maze of sandbanks and coral, and he felt he was trapped. There was a consistent southern wind, which means they couldn't retrace their steps. They couldn't get outside of the Great Barrier Reef. They had to work their way up north through these islands and shoals. He sent out the small boats on constant reconnoitres. Banks reports back having stood on a hilltop with Cook that we had an extensive view of

the sea coast to Llywod, which afforded us a melancholy prospect of the difficulties that we are to encounter. view of the sea coast to leeward, which afforded us a melancholy prospect of the difficulties that we are to encounter. For in whatever direction we turned our eyes, shoals innumerable were to be seen. And no such thing, added Banks, as any passage to sea but through winding channels between them, dangerous to the last degree. When the ship was eventually fixed, I mean, the speed of these things is fascinating. When the ship was eventually fixed or patched up as well as they could, it took them a week just to get out of the river estuary. That southeast wind just kept blowing and blowing and blowing.

They could not sail out. When there was finally a lull after a week, the crew sprang into action. They walked her out with anchors. That means you put the anchors in the small boats like they had in the coral reef, row them out, drop the anchors, and then haul in the anchors, thus moving the boat forward. Having done that exhausting job, they entered this hellish maze of reefs and found themselves doing very similar work, constantly dropping the anchor, hauling them up, using any little shift of wind to try and creep a few meters further, desperate to find a way

through. They had three months of supplies left. They felt completely trapped. And at this point, the expedition was in dire peril. But day by day, meter by meter, they moved north and they reached Lizard Island, which you can imagine why Cook named it Lizard Island. They climbed to its higher point and they saw something that made them a bit more positive. They saw big breakers on the outer part of the barrier reef. The suggestion was that if you're seeing big breakers breaking on the reef, that means that's the start of the deep water. That's the start of the edge of the ocean. You're in clear water beyond that. And they saw that there were little channels through the reef. The ship's boat was sent to investigate and Endeavour followed

cautiously behind. On the 13th of August, they made their way through one of these channels, and they found themselves in the big swell of the Pacific Ocean. They were free for a while. They sailed up the Great Barrier Reef, up the outside of the Great Barrier Reef, but the wind changed, and it started coming in from the east, blowing them directly back onto the reef. They got oars out. The devil wasn't too big that you could still use enormous oars to try and move them through the reef. They got oars out. Endeavour wasn't too big that you could still use enormous oars to try and move them through the water. It was very inefficient, but you could get some way

on the ship. They sent out all the little small boats to tow Endeavour, but they were still at the mercy of the wind that blew and blew. At one point, they were 80 metres only from the breakers where the deep water suddenly met the Great Barrier Reef. They were potentially minutes away from death. If those great ocean swells had lifted them up and pounded them onto the reef, it would have been the end. Thanks to the extraordinary exertion of the crew, they clawed their way away from the reef, 100 metres, 200 metres, 300 metres away. The men were exhausted. The problem is they could only haul for so long. If the wind kept blowing from that direction, it would eventually overcome their muscle power. Suddenly, Cook saw another gap in

the reef, and he steered for it, anchoring in the flat water beyond. So clearly they're in peril inside the reef, and there's some peril outside the reef as well. One of the crewmen wrote, it was the narrowest escape we ever had, and had it not been for the immediate help of Providence, we must invariably have perished. The men at this point were clearly under enormous stress. Cook's journal is unusually emotional at this point. It expresses exhaustion and trauma. They all clearly knew that they'd been metres away from death. But they'd survived, and they kept going. Every great explorer needs luck, as well as enormous skill and judgment. On the 21st of August, they reached what Cook estimated was the north tip of the eastern coast of Australia. He'd fulfilled his mission. He'd

gone from south to north, along the unexplored coast of what he referred to as New Holland. He went ashore on an island, hoisted the Union flag, and took possession in the name of King George III of the entire east coast. As in his words, all the bays, harbours, rivers, and islands. He fired three volleys with his muskets, and the people left behind the ship replied with three volleys of their own. He then named the island he was standing on, Possession Island. Now he was thrilled that when he looked west, he saw deep water, big ocean swells. And that meant, and he was correct in this guess, that New Holland and New Guinea were not linked by land. They were in fact separate islands.

It sounds so obvious today, but back then nobody knew and these things were important. On leaving New Holland, he summed it up. He called it fertile. He said it was suitable for cattle. He said there was decent fishing, the people were friendly enough. And it's one of the most extraordinary pastures in his journal. He waxes lyrical about their way of life. He wrote, from what I've said of the natives of New Holland, they may appear to be some of the most wretched people upon earth, but in reality, they're far more happier than we Europeans, being wholly unacquainted with not only the superfluous, but the necessary convenience so much sought after in Europe.

They are happy in not knowing the use of them. They live in the tranquility which is not disturbed by the inequality of condition. Now that was profound. By now, the vast majority of the crew were, in his words, longing for home. So badly, in fact, that Joseph Banks gave the condition a name. He said they were suffering from nostalgia, a disease. Only Cook, Banks, and Solander didn't feel it. Cook wrote, Indeed, we three have pretty constant employment for our minds, which I believe to be the best, if not the only, remedy for it. Stay busy, folks. Now they headed home.

They were almost back in charted territory. They would go via the Dutch East Indies, what is now Indonesia, and there they met their first English merchant who told them the news from Europe and elsewhere, said the Americans were refusing to pay their taxes. From the capital of the Dutch East Indies, while he was getting repairs done, he wrote to the Admiralty, sending his dispatches on a departing ship.

The many valuable discoveries made by Mr Banks and Dr Solander in natural history and other things useful to the learned world cannot fail of contributing very much to the success of the voyage. As for the ship's company, he wrote, in justice to the officers and the whole crew, I must say that they have gone through the fatigues and dangers of the whole voyage with that cheerfulness and alertness that will always do honour to British seamen, and I have the satisfaction to say that I have lost not one man by sickness during the whole voyage. Just as he made that proud boast, sickness came to endeavour. Very slightly at that point, everyone came down with malaria. Well, I say everyone, I mean everyone except one remarkable man,

the sailmaker John Ravenhill, who was very old, quite weak, and totally wasted every day. He was completely drunk. He was fine. Many other very good men, stronger men, younger men died, including Tupaya, the Polynesian wayfarer, firm friend of Joseph Banks, whom he would never now be able to show off in the salons of southern England. Cook's ship required a thorough rebuild, and they discovered that they'd been lucky to

survive even with the patching up they'd done in Australia. The bottom of the hull was a shambles. Shipworm had eaten deep into the hull. It needed a lot of new planks, a lot of new braces, a lot of new wood put into the hull of that ship if it was going to reach home. She set sail on the 26th of December, 1770, and apparently she was like a hospital ship. So many men, weakened by malaria. And then they got into the Indian Ocean and dysentery descended upon them. Tragically, in the next six weeks, 23 more men died. Banks was on the verge of death. There were times when there were only eight or nine men who were fit to work the sails. This time, the drunk John Ravenhill didn't survive.

The dysentery took him. The watches, the shifts if you like, were of just four people. The only reason they survived was because they didn't encounter any heavy weather. It would have been impossible to sail the ship through a storm so shorthanded. It would have been impossible to sail the ship through a storm so shorthanded. They stopped at Cape Town, recruited more crew, then again at St Helena, and they made haste up the Atlantic and they arrived off the Silly Isles on the 10th of July 1771 at 6am. They made good progress down the channel. They anchored just off the coast of Kent in the Downs Anchorage. At three o'clock in the afternoon on the 12th of July, he immediately got a boat ashore and landed at Deal.

The expedition was all anyone talked about that summer. Interestingly, the initial talk of the expedition credited it all to Banks. It was called Banks' Expedition. He was brought into the king, the royal society. It was said in the papers that New Holland should be renamed Banksia. And Banks was obviously loving it. He was the darling of every salon. He did behave terribly though. He was betrothed to a young lady, Miss Harriet Blossett, before he'd left. He now desperately avoided her and attempted to row back on the engagement. She'd waited for him and he attempted to row back on the engagement.

He obviously thought he was rather more eligible now than he had been before, less than gentlemanly. Cook made a quieter return. He was obviously far more interested in seeing his wife and children than courting fame at this point. He hadn't seen them for three years. His sons happily were well. They were seven and six years old. But his little daughter Elizabeth had died three months before her father's return. The ship's company broke up. Endeavour was repaired at Woolwich and fitted out for the boring job of carrying stores to and from the Falklands. And Cook, perhaps a little slowly, but Cook got the credit he deserved. He didn't enjoy the instant celebrity. He'd be experiencing something far more enduring, less frothy and passing. The admiralty might have moved slightly slower than the newspapers, but they expressed

themselves well-pleased. Cook was promoted. Finally, he was no longer the most experienced and impressive lieutenant in the history of the world. He was now a commander, the rank between lieutenant and post-captain, and he was soon, as you'll hear, to be made master and commander. You may be familiar with that term. He was, in good time, presented to the king on the 14th of August, and he talked George III through his own charts, told him what he'd seen of the world. And George personally handed him his promotion to commander. He wrote to his former employer way back the night he'd given him a job in Whitby. I may, however, venture to inform you that the voyage has fully

answered the expectations of my superiors. I had the honour of an hour's conference with the King the other day, who was pleased to express his approbation of my conduct in terms that were extremely pleasing to me. I, however, have made no very great discoveries, yet I have explored more of the great South Sea than all that have gone before me, so much that little remains now to be done to have a thorough knowledge of that part of the globe. I sailed from England as well provided for such a voyage as possible, and a better ship for such a service I never would wish for. You get a sense there of both of his modesty and his pride. James Cook had indeed filled in the globe. He had given European

science a thorough knowledge of that part of the world. He'd identified and described Pacific Islands, New Zealand, the east coast of Australia. He'd made thousands of observations, location fixes, depth soundings. He'd made charts that others could follow. He'd introduced the rest of the world to an entirely new Polynesian culture, and he was in great admire of it. He was impressed with the skills the people encountered, the sophistication of the societies in which they lived. He had forged best practice leadership on long-range naval operations, and he'd cemented scientific work at the heart of the naval tradition. It was a transformation in the European understanding of the world,

but it was a bigger transformation for the peoples of the South Pacific. Following Cook in his wake, literally, would come European exploration and colonization, which in turn would bring revolution. It would bring disease, exploitation, upheaval across the Pacific. In 1770-ish, it's estimated the population of Hawaii was in hundreds of thousands, perhaps several hundreds of thousands. By 1880, that population collapsed to around 50,000. The Polynesian world was transformed. Cook in London was desperate to continue with that process of transformation, to play his part. He was restless at home.

He had the bug. He wanted to go back. And you might think about the 18th century as a time of things moving rather slowly, sclerotic bureaucracy staffed by drink-sobbing clients of important politicians, but on this occasion would be very wrong. It all happened rather fast. On the 25th of September, only a couple of months after Cook arrived home, the Admiralty instructed their agents to buy two proper vessels for service in remote parts. Cook was back. He was going exploring again. He wanted the Endeavour, but she was off,

so he bought two more colliers from Whitby. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. They, like the Endeavour, could carry plenty of stores. They could sit on the bottom of the sea. They could be beached and cleaned and repaired. They were also built tough. As he chose his new vessels, it's clear that he wanted them to be as similar to Endeavour as possible, and he eulogised Endeavour in a special text that survives. It was because of Endeavour, he says, that those on board owe their preservation. Hence, I was able to prosecute discoveries in those seas so much longer than any other man did or could do. Although discovery was not the first object of that voyage, I could venture to traverse a far greater space of sea before then unnavigated, to discover greater tracts of country in high and low

south latitudes, and even to explore and survey the extensive coasts of those new discovered countries than was ever performed during one voyage. Captain Cook there writing his own epitaph. It was an epitaph that would not be required for a few years yet. There were more adventures ahead. After a year and a day at home, he boarded HMS Resolution. And with HMS Adventure alongside her, Cook, in command of both ships, he left Britain once again, bound for the Southern Ocean and fresh discoveries. And that, my friends, is a podcast for another time. Thank you for listening to this episode of Dan Snow's History. you