Empire: World History - 108. The Endeavour & the Great Southern Continent

Episode Date: December 26, 2023

In the 1760’s a clever, young, ambitious Scotsman named Alexander Dalrymple began advocating a theory as to the existence of a great southern continent. The idea of a landmass that would counterbalance the known world had long been the stuff of legend. Now Dalrymple wanted to prove it. Momentum built behind his expedition which was a product of the evidence-based scientific approach of the Enlightenment. Soon they had a ship, a Whitby-based collier called The Endeavour. A ship that would go on to change the course of world history. Listen as William and Anita are joined by Peter Moore to discuss The Endeavour. For bonus episodes, ad-free listening, reading lists, book discounts, a weekly newsletter, and a chat community. Sign up at https://empirepod.supportingcast.fm/ Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Jack Davenport + Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mperpoduk.com. And welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Durimple. This is all very exciting and cozy, is it? Look at us all in one place together. I will be punching you at some point.

I'm within punching the hair of distance. You're in the kill zone. Listen, we are joined today. We're very thrilled by this by Peter Moore, the author of Endeavour. And if you listen to our slavery series, you all know, because I have banged on about this quite a lot.

The Francis Barber, that episode, Peter, that we did with you, was absolutely one of my favourites. But we're here today because it's part of our Christmas. Please tell me you know this Christmas Carol. I saw all three ships. Do you know that one? I do, but not well enough to sing it.

You're not going to sing it. No, but if you want to have a go. Solo baritone. I'll tell you, I've said this. A few shanties later on maybe. Well, it was a thing. I said, look, Christmas, we'll do three ships, the history of three ships. And everyone looked to me like, huh?

I swear. We know a way in the manger, but you know it. That's great. So you're one of our great ships and the ship that you've written about, which William, it now says, he said to me, before we started, please leave room for me fanboying. So Endeavour, which is such a great story. Just have to say. that this is one of my all-time favorite history books.

And I read it over a very, very nice family holiday goer with the sea crashing on the kind of beach, on the kind of the dark volcanic stone of the beach below with palm trees. And it was the perfect place to read this great book. And occasionally, our regular listeners will know I do recommend a book above all books. This is one of those.

I mean, he says recommend. He means rave obsessively about it. And yours has been one of those books. But this is an extraordinary book. I just also as someone writing narrative history and biography, I've learned a lot of how to do it. It's a book by an author who's clearly got completely obsessed by the subject and lost himself in the rabbit hole of the endeavor and all the archives and the business of how you build a ship and the creek of the timbers and the splash of the waves on the outside and the barrier reef. And it's just, it's one of the great reads and particularly good for Christmas time. So anyway, that's just me doing my little sales pitch.

I'm done. You're done? You're done? We're past us now. I might have an outbreak again later on. That's fine. We're quite prepared. But for those who don't know, I mean, the endeavour was a research vessel at the time of enlightenment and the name that is inextricably linked and why the timbers of this ship is so important

is James Cook. Tell us a bit more about that. I will leave Cook to one side for a moment because I think the ship is my central area of focus. And I think... Start with the acorn. I start with the acorn. It has literally felt with it. Let him talk.

Let him talk. It's such a clever idea. So my big top line for you is my claim. I do not know what of our ships you picked for your series of ships. My ship, I will make a case for being the most important ship in the history of British exploration, which is... And fighting words, Peter. I'm just saying. But carry on.

So we can interrogate that later on. Endeavour... Beagle being a presumably... I'm talking about a runner-up. Right. I was thinking, right. Yeah, so it's particularly known for this one voyage, which happened between 1768 and 1771,

which was the first of Cooke's big three voyages into the South Seas, which was a period name for the Pacific Ocean, we call it today. Darwin later said that Cork single-handedly added a hemisphere to the known world. Now, that's Victorian, like kind of discovery narrative. Now we look at things quite differently. look at things from a multiplicity of viewpoints, and Cook is obviously a big participant in this. And let me tell you about the book and where the book came from in a structural sense. I was interested. My mother comes from the north, Yorkshire coast, and I'd known about Cook all my

life. And I'd read a lot of biographies of him, and I was always intrigued by a line in the histories. And the narrative line always followed Cook, okay, or maybe Banks, who's another character we'll get to shortly. Wonderful character. Yeah, wonderful character. And so there'd be a line saying that they needed a ship to go to the South Seas. They looked around and they got this one which was purchased and it was repurposed and fitted out and they called it Endeavour. And they gave it this new name.

Previously they said it used to be a coal vessel in the coastal trade. And it was at that moment that the explanation kind of stopped. And you as writers know this, that where your curiosity is, is really peaked. You've got to kind of follow. You have to find out. Yeah. And so I suppose it was that elemental interest in shifting identities like a David Bowie

kind of reinvention. How can this thing, which go carrying coal? Which was, uncudry becomes Ziggy Star Dust. Exactly. And then move on to Aladdin's safe. And this actually happened quite a lot with ships. They didn't move through different identities. They took on different names. They were assigned to different

kind of roles. And this one in particular, I thought, was interesting because, okay, there's a prequel here in a way to the exploration voyage. And what made the story really exciting is there was a sequel to the exploration story. And that was also not known, really, at all. So I mean, specialist academics and there are people who are working on this now. We'll get to part of the story later on as well, we'll say. But really, this is the thing.

So you have one object which has three different names, goes through these three different identities in three different areas or theatres of history, if you like. And there was, I mean, when I started writing a few big books at the time, one of them was Edmund Deval's Hair with the Ambrise, which was the story of the Netsuque, some of you might know, so object history. And then there was this book which the British Museum had brought out, and it was the history of the world in 100 objects. Oh, yes, Neil McGregor. And they, and hugely successful, hugely successful. But also just talismanic objects that you can touch, and they're kind of portals. Yeah, exactly.

It's this whole idea of like the tactile nature of an object. And you could, you know, it's like the touching of something. And I remember reading Richard Holmes, a great biographer, writing about Shelley's guitar, for example, years ago. One of the great writers again. Yeah. And it was this idea that if you had the object and the object takes you into the history. And I thought, well, rather, let's kind of invert the British museum thing, rather than having the history of the world in a hundred objects. What about one object with a hundred worlds inside it?

But that was my thing. It's kind of a pure idea. and it's also a laser-like focus. So, I mean, you mentioned the acorn. Let's start with the acorn. The bloody acorns. Right, okay. So, I have to say.

The moors, the winds sweeping down from the kind of moors. All right, Heathcliff. And the crashing waves against the Whitby. Let me take you back to 2016. So you might remember the whole country was convulsed by Brexit. During that really epochal moment for our country, country when everything was changing, I was looking for the position of some acorns in a forest in Yorkshire.

That's what I was really obsessed by. And I have to say, I mean, you've been very kind about the book and I'm really grateful for that. That's not everyone loves the book because some people read the bit on acorns and say, what the hell is this all about? Because I did go to test. Yeah, they're not not fancying the acorn part of the history. But I thought, well, you know, if you're going to do.

There's a better line than that. God. They're nuts. I mean they're nuts I mean no it's okay Go on carry on Nutses So if my idea was to

Was to tell a not a cradle to grade biography But a kind of acorn Seabed biography I thought I have to start off with these acorns Where does they come from So the ship was comprised of 80 or 90% oak timber Okay And this was an interesting idea in itself

Because you have like You know that the character of the wood Different oaks produce different characters and then, you know, there's so much, if anyone's read, say, Patrick O'Brien or those kind of sea stories, and they talk a lot about, yeah, the characters of ships. They sometimes will work in different ways. You'll get hard ships, you'll get soft ships, you'll get, you know, all sorts of different things. And nowadays we live in a...

Which is the way they cut through the water. But just think about it. And in the way that we live in an age of standardisation now, where things are so similar. You know, one is next, is the same to the next. and actually were ships, they weren't. And one of the big moments in an endeavour's life is when she collides with a great barrier reef. Now, we'll get back to this later on.

You're doing a Dalrymple. What are you doing? But this is important. Oh, my goodness. We should give the story away about that. But at this point, so the ship is balanced in this hugely perilous moment for about 23 hours. What oak timbers it was made from really matter

because if it was made out of wood that was flawed, or weak, the history of the world might have been quite different. Just don't tell that story yet, because we're getting to that story, but previously on this conversation, you were scrabbling around on the eve of Brexit looking for acorns. And how did you manage to, I suppose, assure yourself that you were in the right patch for the right trees, for the right acorns that might have given birth to this ship? Well, the answer is I couldn't be sure in the end because the records don't exist. They may not have existed to begin with.

It was a very informal trade. The man who built the Earl of Pembroke, which was the first name for this ship, did not leave any certain trace. But I did want to look into this as far as I could because, well, for the reasons that I just told you then. And also, there was this kind of national panic at the time in the 18th century, this idea that Britain was being deforested, okay? That the old medieval oaks were vanishing, that something was gone. It was like an early sense of environmental panic. So right then, people were saying, this is not our land. How interesting.

Yeah, so the 18th century is often seen as a kind of blithe and bucolic century. It was a century of almost incessant warfare. There was a lot of chips timber that was needed for building all of these ships. And a lot of forests. British Navy at its peak. Yeah, exactly. And a lot of the old chases and hearse and woods and forests were disappearing within the portion of people's lifetime. And this generated a very early sense of environmental.

environmentalism. You know, like the environmental movement can probably be traced back to this moment, where, you know, people think of the silver and beauty of medieval England and Robin Hood and his merry, merry men in among the oak trees. And like parish oaks, for example, every parish might have its own distinct oak. And that would have... Charles II's sheltering in the... Yeah, exactly. And that's actually an important story. All the royal oak pubs that were made after that, which were almost providential idea that's at this moment of great national trauma, like an oak, lent, It's still here. It's still here. Yes, you can still shelter on. And then, of course, you had oak apple day and things like this. And so I worked out that, you know, you read the literature, you find out pretty quickly that for oak timber to be used in ships, it had to be at least 100 years old, because that's

the point when it becomes, I mean, it's just sufficient. And it continues in that period for another 100 years before it begins to degrade. So you've got a window of time. But you're talking about mighty trees that people have loved and not just they've become used to, but their father's new, their grandfather's new, you know. So these are sort of the heartbeat of what it is to be Britain and British, you know, the O'Kame to represent that. More locally, what it used to be part of your village or whatever. Yeah, yeah, precisely. So, okay, so we don't know which acorn, but we know roughly where the acorn came from. Tell us about,

you know, the, the timber that was taken and who starts to fashion it into a ship? I'll tell you quickly, I think I know where the acorns came from. And it is, you a site of a go ape nowadays in north yorkshire go ape for those who don't know it's uh i've taken my boys there it's uh it's a this is this is an important never we've done it i've done it i've done it i had to go my little one was a bit scared but these are zip wires yeah between tree tops and you climb up to the top and you just basically fling yourself to what feels like almost certain death children love it they just love it well if you want to know my reasoning there's loads of that in the book. But yeah, they eventually came to Whitby. And please, a portrait of Whitby. I went to school

in Yorkshire. It was always one of my favorite destinations. You come across the moors. Yeah. And there is the Abbey, St. Hilda, Cayman, the cowman making his poetry in songs in the shed. Dracula coming ashore there. Yeah. I think Whitby, anyone who goes, I just remember, I think A.A. Gill's last column for the Sunday, Times was his favorite restaurant in England and he chose fish and chips in Whitby. So today it's very much known as that. Whitby is a very small place in a sense, very isolated. So the moors kind of come all the way right up to it. And then it's there right on the kind of northern coast of North Yorkshire facing out towards Scandinavia. In sweat. Yeah, exactly. And so in a way, because the terrain is so, you know,

kind of demanding to cross, it had a distinct regional identity of its own. In a way, it was sometimes more connected to places like Norway. You could make an argument. I mean, it wasn't. But the sea paths were easier to cross than getting to the markets of pickering or down to the society at your course. It has an intellectual life too. There was very early on a Whitby philosophical society. Yeah, exactly. There's this wonderful museum with all the ammonites from the cliffs nearby. Yeah, and there's the alligator. And it's one of these places where, I mean, really is cabinet of curiosity place where they have the glass Victorian cabinets and there's

a hand of glory there and things like this. It's still worth going to today, absolutely. I think the idea that it was a spiritual place, a bit like Lindisfarne as well, it had that, you know, monastic community there. But one thing that was really good about Whitby is it was a haven for ships in storms and around that built up this port, which was, you know, really important. It became a kind of service station on that east. coast between the coal collieries of Newcastle where the coal came down, come down the eastern coast to the markets in London. So you think of all the growth in London. When I'm studying all the Scots going out to India, it's very interesting. None of them go by road. We all think, you know,

you get on the train or go on the, go on the A1 or whatever. You don't. None of that was there. And so what you did was you've got a ship in leaf. And you went down, stopped at Whipby and went on, or Newcastle and went into London. Yeah. And that's one of the things say my mother's family come from just a little bit south of Whitby in a place called Filey. I remember standing on that beautiful beach, which was Catherine Bronte's favourite beach. It's beautiful. Rambo writes a poem about Pomertois. Oh, really?

But just like looking into that eastern horizon and seeing how it's kind of this weird, diffuse, north sea light, but how empty it was. And imagining what it was like back in... With all of these ships just going past. I know, I know, I know exactly what you mean. Yeah, I mean, like busy, like busy and loud and smelly and, you know, just vibrant. Carrying all these Dalrymples from Scotland. Oh, God, well come to them in a minute, no doubt.

But can we talk about, you know, so the Great Oak is felt? Do we know roughly the year that it would have been? So some things we know actually in quite good detail. So the first builder was a man called Thomas Fishburn. Yeah. Who was a very, very competent, upwardly mobile shipwright. Shipwright wasn't a very high status profession, but it was one way you could actually become quite wealthy. So it was like a blue-collar job, we might call it today.

But he'd kind of built himself out of nothing. And Fishburn's ships were really good, solid things. Cook would always sail in Fishburn ships to the South Seas. So this is the maths that I worked on. So we know that Endeavour, was Earl of Pembroke, really at this point, was launched in the summer of 1764. So the oaks that built her were acorns 100 years ago at the time of the restoration. So that's kind of that bit of history. And the process of building would have taken a few months at least.

But it wouldn't have been notable. It was the kind of thing that was happening continuously at Whitby, which was a shipbuilding. So Fishburn is kind of the man people go to for good ships. He's kind of, you know, the, I don't know what you call, the Henry Ford of ships that work, right? But then tell me a bit about Milner, Thomas Milner, who is a really, a really, A really interesting character who's quite important in the early days of Endeavour. Yeah, well, he's the first master. So, again, we're in this community of Whitby ship owners and shipbuilders.

And this is Milner's world, really. So he is someone who leaves very faint trace in the record. You can see his lists of ships. But we don't know anything about him. He's just a kind of hologramatic character. I mean, he, you know, he's the master, which would be the person in command. this is in a merchant vessel, this is the person at the top. And he would sail with maybe eight or nine kind of people with him on these colliers.

They were called as a catch-all term. And he'd been doing this for years and years and years. So he was quite old by this point. And one of the best, so there's a few things that I can tell you about Milner, which are interesting. And both of them are by processes of deduction. First of all, he never had any significant accident. And that was what... That's a big deal.

Which is a really big deal. An accident on the high seas is not great. But his job, it was a really dangerous job to go down through all of those shoals off like East Anglia. And he never had any significant problem. If his job was to take coal to London and bring the ships back again, he did it time and time and time again. The other thing I found about him, which was really fascinating for me, is that he was illiterate. And we know this because in, I think, would be museum, they had an acknowledgement of a loan that he was acknowledging. And beneath this, it had an M for Milner.

Beneath that was just a cross and it said, Mark. So once we know that he's illiterate, you can kind of build a bit of a wider biography. Where he might have come from? Because he was not educated. But, you know, the fact, I mean, you do say in your book that, you know, the fact that he has this extraordinary record of not having disasters, because it's quite hard, means that he ran a tight ship to sort of, you know, abuse.

And at this point, Whitby was always described by the Georgians as a nursery of seamen. So this was a place where the best sailors came from. lots of reasons for this I don't have time to get into today. Once you've mastered those heavy seas, North Sea, you can do anything. Exactly. Well, this is it. So these colliers were lightly manned. They were a little bit...

What do they look like? I mean, you're saying collier, but I want to know what it looked like and how big it was and how many people could go on it. Give me an idea. Yeah, so let's tell you about the Euler-Pembrook as she was launched. It's like 100 foot long, three masts. So you have your mizzen. So your four main and mizzen masts.

So they've got the three masts. It's a very tight, confined space. You might think of ships of having various decks which go down. Actually, colliers were generally hollow. They were built expressly to carry the largest amount of cargo. And so you'd have these kind of small dog hole, like, areas at the front on the folks. Dog hole. Yeah, they have little.

Too much. Master command. Yeah, sorry, too much master come on. But, yeah, they'd have these. A little dog holes. So, but it was also, it was a social space. So it was all quite defined. So as the master, Milner would be.

you know, towards the rear on the quarter deck, and you'd have the young sailors would be at the front, and that would be, you know, something that was really important. There'd be a strict hierarchy, an order of command, all these things. How many people could fit on a ship like that? So with Endeavour, about 100, but if we go back to this point, probably about 10. So you can see... Ten men only to take a ship all the way down. Yeah, exactly.

So you can see why they got very good very quickly, because it was all about economics. So the fewer salaries you have to pay, the more cargo that you can carry. There's a great, I don't know if you have the ability to do this or whatnot, but there's a Turner Seescape which shows these colliers being filled with coal at Shields on the River Tyn, which is where the coal would come from the mines, the collier is. The Northumberland and. Yeah, and they'd load them up there. And there's this kind of moment of exchange where you can see there's money being passed between one and the other.

It's a kind of nighttime scene and there's like bird. I mean, it's one of Turner's beautiful social pictures, really. Do you know what we can do? We can put it on our newsletter for the club. If you'll cut up and you might get to see this. And Dan, they came to London where they were unloaded. Okay, so in 1764 she makes her maiden voyage. Just the boat again, it's broad, round, sturdy and flat bottom.

That's important. Very important. What will come. She's not sleek and beautiful, but she's an incredibly sturdy boat that's built for heavy seas. built to last and to need very few repairs this thing about the flat bottom flat bottoms are important in this story list let's get that let's go around anyway it doesn't sound important but the world was made on flat bottom that um yeah go on too go on don't worry about me they could be beached for running repairs so you can repair them on on the fly if you like

and everything which was really useful about them you could take really close into Sharks. If you can imagine that they had these like projecting bottoms, shall we say, they'd be much more difficult to take in close to Sharks. You're more in danger of running against reefs and things. So for a lot of the surveying work that comes later, these were useful characteristics. You're right.

Okay. And also what I loved is that dimensions mean very little to most people, but it would take 20 seconds to walk from one end to the other. I mean, that's, in everybody's imagination, the endeavor, it's huge. Captain Cook is huge. This is not huge, really. It feels capacious, doesn't it?

It should be. And it was in many ways is the kind of human embodiment of this boat, isn't he? He's also plain, sturdy and sort of unremarkable outwardly. Yeah, I think that's fair to say. There's a lot of similarities between the two of them. Okay, so I'm going to just focus in on this ship. So 1764 is the maiden voyage,

but by 1769, so only five years later, this turns from being a coal-hauling packhorse of a ship, to being a ship of discovery. How does that rebirth happen? So the big driving factor, this is fundamental. So the big catalytic factor, shall I say, is there was going to be a transit of Venus.

So for Georgians, this was exciting stuff. What is the transit of being? A transit of Venus. We've had one recently. I don't think any of us is going to see one again because they happen very rarely. They happen in pairs, eight years apart. You saw the last one?

No, no, I'm married to a physicist. He can talk more about the transit of Venus later. Yeah, so there'd be one in 1761. And there was going to be another one. And behind this transit was a lot of excitable mathematicians. Because if you could gather data from dispersed places on planet Earth and bring all of this faithful data back, it would help them to work out at the distance between the Earth and the Sun. There's another book actually by Andrew. Andrea Wolf's brilliant book.

Yes, of course. He's written, Chasing Venus, which is, it became really this idea of measuring the transit, became a huge international enterprise at a time of war. So even despite the fact there was a war going on between principally Britain and France, there was lots of coordination because they knew that this was an opportunity. This is important. This is bigger than us.

Yeah, it's like a transcendent thing. It wasn't an opportunity to miss. Also, a book about Linnaeus, by the way, is brilliant. So in 1761, things hadn't. gone really well because it was a time of conflict. There was lots of poor planning, bad look. There's stories of, I think, some French observers who'd gone to Siberia with their telescopes and they were suspected to be magicians, so they were chased away and things. So there was a sense that in 1769, when the transit came around again, they really had to catch it this time

because they weren't going to get another chance. And one of the places they had to go really, really vital to get data was the middle of the South Seas. Problem was, no one knew anything about the South Seas. Was it a blank on a map? When you say nobody knew about it, well, does the map just stop? Kind of, I describe it as a loctrine in a manor house where people don't quite understand what's inside and it really entices people. You do have occasional voyages across.

So Byron, Captain Byron, who I think his grandfather of the poet had gone across, but he went at top speed, didn't really stop. And you get goods passing from that area. So, for example, cockatoos, are. passing out of New Guinea into India and appearing in sort of Renaissance landscape pictures painted in Florence. But literally, I guess the coastlines are not a, I mean, they're not really. No, I think also at this point is very important to clarify.

I'm talking from a British Western point of view. There were people who knew. People who lived there, of course. And that's a point which sometimes missed. But, yeah, like getting round Cape Horn was a real big sailing. He's pointing at the Dalrynple coming up. I didn't want to be the one to bring this one. Yeah, yeah. That's why. You just did that. All right.

I could totally. This is only, actually, should we go on to Dalrymple a moment? I'll finish off with the transit thing. So this was the first, the first and most important motive for the voyage. The Royal Society decided that they needed to send a ship to the middle of the Pacific. What's going to happen? And now enter Alexander Dalrymper. Who he? Do you mind if I just roll my eyes at the back of my skull?

Okay. I had no idea of Drupal would tell up for the story. Oh, no, no more Dalrymple. Okay, cool your heels for a second. Join us after the break. We're going to do it. We're going to talk a Dalrymple. One of the great Dalrymples of history.

Join us after the break. Welcome back. Yes, it's happening. We've got a Dalrymple in this podcast. Shock. Go for it, Peter. Go for it. All right.

Alexander Dalrymple. Who was he? And why are we talking about and yet another Dalrymple of history? Well, you're well aware, Anita. The Dalrymples are like the black adders of history. They pop up in every generation to consequence. The where's wallies. maybe actually i'd describe it to my six-year-old boys

like the minions who like kind of they keep popping up better so in this particular incarnation the dalrymples were represented by Alexander dalrymple and there's more you can say here as well to fill in bits that I don't know about very well because he does to add some detail

listen like they say Alexander dalrymple fascinating character much maligned in history because as James as James Cook's reputation really soared after his death. There was a bit of a fall guy in the story and the full guy was Alexander Dalrymple. But early on, let's go back to the mid-1750s.

It was great tragedies of history. When you had a Dalrymple, he was filled with wonderlust for the East. Wanted to go out, yeah. Wanted to go out to change the world. I think he wanted to expand the knowledge of mankind. You're not even original. Fuck. Seriously.

And the second part of this was to add to the glory. of his home country. I'm not sure. Exactly. That's always been one of the main motivations. Anyway, so Alexander Dalrymple as a very young, I suppose,

18 year old or so, 16, 16, gosh. You know, goes to India. And it's not just any time. These are absolutely crucial years. I know from your book, The Anarchy, you say that of all the countries that were changed by the seven-year war,

India was the place that was most contorted out of its previous shape. And Alexander Del Rimple is there throughout. all of this history as a very junior member or, you know, kind of he's growing through the ranks. But he's in Madras, he's working for the East India Company. And his eyes are very much upon the Eastern Islands and the Eastern trade. And now he's thinking that the Dutch have got a monopoly over here. And there's more that the East India Company can be doing to extend British commerce in this direction.

Because the early voyages had really just concentrated on. nutmeg and the spice trade in these dindies. But I don't think we've really said who he is. So is he an academic or is he an explorer or is he a trader? Who was, you know, who was the elder Dalry and Paul? What was the point of him? At this point he's young, he's clever, he's full of

ambition, he's from a mother. Yeah, he's from a notable Scottish family, so he's got some connections. Enlightenment, historians as a father and grandfather, friends of Sam Johnson and all that sort of world. Yeah, I think so. But he does have, he has a vision,

has energy and he has ambition. These are all things which are crucial to the story that unfolds afterwards. He's working in the cartography department. He's a young cartography. He's only 18 or something. There's this moment when the East Sydney Company captures Pondicherry. And everyone else is real because it means they defeated the French. What Alexander Durempal realizes is that it gives him access now to the French map room. So he takes all the English charts of the South Seas down to the French map room in Pondicherry and he puts the two charts together and he realizes that there's a landmass down there that people are hitting and not properly exploring. So, okay, so we've got Daurun Paul on one side who says there's this whole unexplored bit,

which I want to get my hands on. And you've got the transit Venus, which is quite separate from that. And the two interests collide. Absolutely. So this is a Royal Society Club dinner in Fleet Street. Yeah, so really. 1768? Seventh of January.

Mid-1760s, Dahl Rumpel comes back from India. Yeah. He's in line. London. He makes friends with people like Benjamin Franklin, very important figures. Of course, he's flying his kites, isn't it? Yeah, and you can tell you much about Franklin another day, but the advertees there. And what they see is a very, very unusual character. He has a huge knowledge of the East, which actually, you know, is still very sketchy in Britain, who has got an idea for a project. This is the age of big projects. And he says, well, you know what? He'd actually

been on East India voyages out into the East to various different types. islands, he'd got some experience of dealing with what in the period term were called native populations. I know that's a bit of a loaded term now. But in many ways, he's a really good candidate to take this transit voyage to the East Indies. To the point where somebody like Adam Smith gets really enthused by the project. I mean, Adam Smith economist that is much quoted. But does he put money as well as support behind this project? I think it's more his support. I don't think he needs, the money becomes a problem. Adam Smith's from Fife and Duremples from Edinburgh.

So they're neighbours. They're sort of other side. They're very much on the same sort of say. Although Adam Smith doesn't like the East India Company. No, but he likes it. But he likes this idea of exploration and expansion and the possibilities. I think also you have to see him as a context of like the active union. He's a young scott in London and he's also treated a little bit of suspicion.

How old is Adam Smith? Because we always think of the venerable old economists. But how old to see it at this time? There's a long time before. I mean, wealth of nations came out in 1776. So it's before, so it's when he was probably in his more lecturing phase

when he was gathering information. So he's not, you know, the Adam Smith of legend, quite yet. Not the one that's the old thing is. He's a too young Scots have been on the make. Yeah.

And the Scottish had big influence at this point in the world of politics, business and law. You can find lots of Scottish figures in here. And so Darympal was, I think, positioning himself within that milieu, if you want to use that term. He was living.

in Soho Square, which is, you know, good place to live, no, good neighbours. He's hanging out at the Royal Institution. Yeah, he's hanging. Where all the most excellent and clever people. And what you needed at that time was interest and he had interest. He had a vision and he had interest. And throughout the early portion of 1768, you have ideas for the transit going forward. You have Dalrymple lobbying hard to take the ship.

Dalrymple's particular interest is in something which he calls the Great Southern Conflour. continent. So rather than being a kind of airy idea of going to various islands, it's actually this is the Enlightenment we have to remember. And on good, solid, rational, mathematical enlightenment principles, yeah, there was an idea of counterpoys. So the same landmass had to exist in the southern hemisphere as in the north. Otherwise, the world would be out and Kielder. Like a Seesaw. How interesting. Talk to this is all these stray sightings that he'd seen on these maps. One Dutch voyage going this direction, another Spanish voyage being another, and a French one

and he thought put them all together and guessed correctly that there was a continent there but I thought it was the wrong exactly than actually was

and in the plainest terms I think he saw himself as a second Columbus because he was going to be the person to stand on his Dalryple's never underestimate in my experience

so yeah so this is the story of early 1768 okay all right so you've got this whippersnapper Darropo

who thinks he knows a lot but now he's got to put money where his mouth is basically You've got to raise money Yeah I mean the budget is about 4,000 pounds But how does that equate to today's money Do you have any idea how much that expedition will cost today? I mean so a gentleman in Palmaal would have 6,000 pounds a year

I suppose it'd be like a... How would you work? I really I always find financial comparisons really, really difficult because things are so distorted with the past but let's say it's just slightly shy of a rich man's annual salary

but he needs to get the money and as William just blew it the king gives it I mean is it hard to raise the money is that where the king gives it as ever with these things

in history there's a bit of a curveball I think the Royal Society don't have enough money because the accounts haven't been kept well enough so what they have to do is appeal to the king

so we've got it's really important transit coming up it would be of great benefit to your regal honour because it's a race as you say the French are after it

Everyone's trying to go. Oh yeah. The French are going. The French are really serious about. The Russians might be going. Yeah, absolutely. So this is the kind of thing which elicits its royal support. And with the royal support and the royal money, which comes duly, is the involvement of the

Royal Navy, the Admiralty get involved. So you can see here what I've described. Everything I've described now becomes this great blemange of motive and ownership. Because you've got the Royal Society and the Admiralty working together. Those are two separate management strands. And then the bright young thing. like Adam Smith and stuff saying this is a really good idea. So you've got the little buzz going on about this being great idea.

And you've got the kind of confused motive. Are they going to... Are they mapping or are they transit of venus thing? Yeah. Is it a voyage of curiosity or is it a voyage of imperial expansion? Or is it how far as an intellectual voyage studying astronomy and studying the geography of the geography of the size of it? How far does that intellectual curiosity extend?

Yeah, exactly. Okay. So the money then, the raw society doesn't have. have the cash, but they have the influence. So the king says, I shall give you $4,000, $4,000. And the money is there. When does that money connect with the ship we now know as Endeavour? Yeah, so this is early March. Early March, are we talking, what, 1768? So, yeah, this is the crucial month, really. And what I do in the book is try and go through

all the documentary evidence, which is behind this transformation, which begins at this point. So you can imagine what happens is basically Milner in the Earl of Pembrose, is just tuteling along in his collier, comes into the Thames, someone from the Admiralty is on the lookout for, you know, a boat or a bark, I should call at this point, of about the right dimensions, about the right price, which can stow a large amount of materials for a voyage round the world. And that preferably hasn't had an accident, and Milner is really quite distinctive because he's never had a...

So, yeah, exactly. He has this great stroke of fortune, really, because he has... manages to make a big profit because he could sell to an interested buyer. At this point, the Earl of Pembroke is, what, 17, it's four years old, little shy of four years old. So it's in good condition. Some of these collies would go for 100 years. They were that well built. So it's, it's a kind of baby and those two. Yeah, that's probably, I'm trying to think of what it would be on eBay. Pre-loved. Pre-loved. Only recently pre-loved. Yeah, exactly. And then, so yeah, it's brought by the Navy. Now, Dowrimple's important here because

Dalrymple later claims many times that he was the one who selected because there was a choice. There was like, you can have that one, you can have that one, you can have that one. Dao Rumpel says we're going to have that one because it can take an extra anchor. With the Earl of Pembroke. And he makes this claim publicly, yeah, with the Earl of Pembroke. So, and I've always I spent a lot of time trying to work out who came up with the name Endeavour as well because it's a great name. It's full of Vim, you know. And I think it might have been Dalrymple as well, who gave that name Endeavour.

You could have said, right? The other candidate is Amal hawk. We've not mentioned Cook once. There's nothing to do with this yet. Nothing at all. Cook is just the Yorkshire and running the Colchip. So all of this.

So Darrymple possibly says, I want you. Take Sierra Pembroke. And then arguably says, I'm going to give you a thrusting name like Endeavour, arguably. And then... Well, you see,

there's a quite uncompromising character, William. William Darymple Alexander Darympal He I don't know if you want to Sorry Just laughing Half intentional

Now the thing was a question of command Who is going to be in command of this And Darympal We didn't have that issue have we need to No Darampal says That I will go on this And it will be under my command

And my command only And I guess I would have that I don't know how many buttons I'm touching here with this parochial history story. You'll settle down any second now. He tires himself out. Yeah, exactly. So history doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme, they say. Anyway, so he's got a clear vision that he's going to be the Columbus, as we pointed there.

But I think by this point, the Royal Society would have been happy with that. The Admiralty find the idea repugnant. That's a landsman who's not part of the Royal Navy is going to. to command a Royal Navy ship with a Royal Navy's hand. And the rivalry between the East India Company and the Abolty. And all of this kind of explodes. And there's a particular council meeting, the Royal Society where Dau Rumpel is informed

that he is not going to have command. And I think... He's only going to have the scientific end of the extreme. Yeah. And at which point he quits in like high... Disasters of world history. I mean, in a teenage peak, because he's a teenager still.

So having, in his view, outlined the parameters of the voyage. Found the boat. Name the boat. Well, maybe, yeah. Exactly. He then exits the story very, very abruptly. In a terrific bad temper. In a terrific bad temper.

So often, so let me say, so when the story's often told, the story begins with this temper tantrum of a toddler Dalrymple. This is how the traditional story. And he is cast in those lights. It's not a great light to be shown in, but I have to say, I have to say, I'm familiar with the Oof. in Dalrymple's defence he's quite magnanimous actually

he gives a copy of his unpublished manuscript for the voyages into the east which has all the information that you were talking about before he just gives it over to Captain Cook who then becomes so wait wait wait wait don't just cut and cook it like this

and breed so in all this time where Dalrymple is doing all this really quite extraordinary stuff amazing actually for somebody this young to get you know the momentum and the money and everything else and the ship and the name maybe um where is who's cook so cook right who is cook and where is cook i kind of point out in the book that you know at the start of march they had um dalrymple and no ships and had to find a ship and they had the commander by the end of the month they had the ship but they didn't have the commander so it was like they were thrown from the horns of one

dilemma to another and basically they had to look around and find who was available And he was available. This is one of the lucky strikes in Royal Naval history. It depends how you look at it. Well, exactly. But for the Royal Navy in particular, Cook was there. So he was just serving. I mean, he was serving.

So he was, what was his track record and how old was he? He grew up in the collier trade. He'd then joined the Royal Navy as a, you know, kind of an ordinary seaman. And for probably 10 years, I can't tell you precisely, he'd served in various lowly positions. he'd become a master. But he knew these ships. If he was working colliers, he knew this kind of ship. Well, there's a kind of thing about Cook when he said,

he's once asked why he left the collier trade and he says, I want to go and seek my fortune. And the really weird thing about Cook is that his fortune turns out to be a Whitby collier ship waiting for him. So it's like a rejoining. He'd been out, he'd been doing things like he was at the Battle of Quebec. For example,

he'd surveyed the St. Lawrence before that famous moment with Wolf. And then later on, he'd been out in Newfound London. Both of them were surveyors, weren't they? Both of them knew how to do a map. So this hydrograph, it's a kind of new type of person. It wasn't just a good sailor. He was a new kind of scientific character.

He knew how to use. He'd like have a new iPhone if he was around. Alexander & Pals visiting card. He was hydrographer. Yeah, exactly. So he had instruments. So he knew he measured things. He recorded things.

Yeah. But I think by this point he had a reputation for supreme competence. He could do things. So the Royal Navy says, right, okay, Daryunples flounced off in a mood. is it what we're going to do? Why are you looking so pleased with that? So we'll find another chap. This guy, Cook.

Let's find Cook. So Cook immediately accepts this and is given the endeavour as his shit. And Cook is the opposite of Drupal in that he doesn't have tantrums. He is completely steady. He doesn't know any of this scientific stuff, but he is completely 100% reliable,

which is why then they have to bring in another scientist who is. Well, Joseph Banks, right. Okay, so Banks really fixes this. Just before you get to Banks, just talking about Cook's personality and being the anti-Dalrimple, you know, emotional cries at the drop of a hat. This is a pen portrait of Cook from his biographer, J.C. Beagle Hole. Yeah, unforgettable name. Yeah, unforgettable name.

The genius of Cook was not in the ordinary sense creative, nor was it precocious. There was nothing aesthetic, nothing of brilliance about him. he would have been startled by the idea that anything he did might touch the emotions. His energy of mind was that of a mature kind, that is, on the intellectual side, critical, a sort of analytical and detective energy on the practical and constructive side. It was the energy of planning, of administration, and of force. He sounds quite dull to be with, to be honest. I mean, I'd rather hang out with Dalrymple, to be honest.

No, you'd actually prefer to hang out with Joseph Banks. You were so much, I'm going to hang out with Joseph Banks. Joseph Banks, we have to say, is it is a classic, a need to pay. him up. Oh, right, come on. He is Fred from accounts, or whatever. Fabio from account. You just created this image of me, but I'll go with it.

Tell me about Banks. What did he look like? Was he dreamy? Think of a young David Attenborough, but like 1951, kind of scampering around. I mean, he did. I was thinking that he had the absolutely gold star education. He went to Harrow and Eaton, then Christ at College, Oxford. I mean, he was a Lincolnshire gentry family, lots of money.

Charming, charming, good-looking. And Banks had this mania for botany, which was the kind of sexy science of the day. After Linnaeus is still alive or this is... Yeah, Linnaeus was really transformed this idea of botany into something that was really revolutionary and exciting. So it was a great process of classification going on. And Banks, they often say if you want to understand some, on. Look at what the world was like when they were 20 years old. And when Banks was 20, botany was just the thing. And you could, you know, you could botanize wherever. But the real

draw for Banks was finding new stuff to expand knowledge. And so he'd already gone across to North America and Newfoundland again, I think, on one of his botanical expeditions. And this one has great phrase from Vanks where he says... Going to look up his face, by the way, while you're talking about. Yeah, but it's... The great quote from Banks is like, he says, any blockhead can do a... a grand tour. My grand tour, she'll be one round the whole world. So he's full of kind of intent and action. I see what you mean. Okay. Okay. All right. So, okay. So he's charming. He's clever. He's directed. And you've written enigmatic complex driven. Okay. Well, there we get.

You could tell the frog story. My favorite story in your book. Oh, yes. Frog story is a good story. Well, he had this thing, as I say, he was into interacting with nature. Something that he got from his mother who taught him very early on that, Nature was something to be embraced and interacted with and so on. And one of the great contemporary fears in nature was the dangerous, venomous nature of frogs and toads and things like this. And with a party of friends, Banks had stumbled across some frog, I think, which he demonstrated that was completely placid by picking up. And so the story goes, it jumped into Banks' mouth as he was explaining. And this became one of these anecdotes.

but one which I think tells you a little bit about like Banks wasn't too perturbed. A lot of people, a lot of Georgians. No, but that's very Attenborough, isn't it? Whoops. Yeah. And so I know actually even today David Ashtonbury talks about Joseph Banks being one of his great heroes. And when they had an exhibition at the British Library a few years ago, David Attenborough opened that up. I should also say, out of the two, you know, like Cook and Banks.

Banks was the more imperialistic of the two, I'd say. He was the one who thought less about indigenous. populations, for example. He was on a drive to find knowledge. So he had that narrow field of vision that sometimes scientists do have. Can I read a thing about him as well, which I really liked? Banks' journal shows a man who's set to his collecting every morning with the cheer and spring of a pastor on Easter Sunday, which is kind of this evangelism about, you know, what he was

doing and blind everything else. And his journal, his journal, the voyaging journal, Banks's endeavor voyaging journal, is the great I think enlightenment document because it's full of movement, it's full of observation, it's completely empirical, it's quite funny in times. Banks has got this ability to, I mean, he doesn't have any kind of introspective reflections that you might get in a 21st century memoir. So when people thinking about their emotional health and states and things like, that's not how scientists role.

That's not how Banks works. He just, he looks outwards, he sees things and he classifies them. And he's like, he's got this Labradorish. excitement everywhere he did. He's the Labrador. Exactly. Yeah, he's a Labrador. Well, look, okay, so we've got, we've got the Labrador, we've got Banks. And no Dalrympal. We've got, we've got no, we haven't got the Scott Terrier, Tarrable splounced off in a half and a yabby half. We've got Cook, who would be, I don't know, the Basset Hand, quite sort of duo, sad, but the stage is set. And join us to the next episode of this epic three ships. Thank God you knew the Christmas Carol.

on Thursday, unless of course you're a member of the club, in which case you can just click on it right now and it's available. Well, how do they do that if they're not? Just sign up at Empirapoduk.com, where you can also get Peter's wonderful book for a discount. So till then, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arlen. Goodbye from me, William Derrimple.