Empire: World History - 109. The Endeavour: Into the Unknown

Episode Date: December 28, 2023

With Alexander Dalrymple sidelined, Captain James Cook and Joseph Banks are ready to set off on an expedition to track the Transit of Venus and see whether there really is a great southern continent. Over the next three years, they will encounter the indigenous populations of the Pacific antipodes for the first time, nearly get shipwrecked on the Great Barrier Reef, and change the course of world history. Listen as William and Anita are once again joined by Peter Moore to discuss the incredible journey of 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.mpower.com. And welcome to this very special Christmas edition of Empire. With me, Anita Arland, and... Me, William Drumple. And our very, very special guest, Peter Moore, who in the last episode was, just hilarious about the fate of Darlampal because we could have had...

I thought it was a very tragic too. I mean, it was a bit funny. I mean, but for a flounce. But for a flounce. But for a flounce. He could have been a major figure in the history of discovery. But he didn't. It was James Cook instead who gets this command.

He's quite a boring figure compared to Joseph Banks, who is a... Anita's warming up with Joseph Banks. We're going to get a lot of pictures of Joseph Banks on the Nita's in. He's a clever, clever man. I like a clever, clever man. Okay, so there they are. When do they actually set sail on the endeavour? In August of 1768, they're off.

And let's see where we go. Okay, all right. So, I mean, how many people are crewing for them? So they've got Banks as a scientist with their mission. You've got Cook, who is dependable, like the flat bottom boat, quite steady. How many other crew on this show? All told, with the sailors and Banks' parties. which is sizable, probably.

I don't know, about half a dozen, a dozen, I'm not sure. And it's this wonderful little area at the back of the boat. Yeah, they have all the... Where he's got his little trestle tables and his test tubes and his bottles. That's right, yeah.

So it's probably about just over 90, I think. So if you imagine what I said before... 90, it used to be 15, and now it's 90. You were saying that the old Earl of Pembroke. They've completely refitted the boat. They put in new floors where it used to be just a big coal hole. Yeah. They've cleaned it all up.

Is it comfortable? I mean, or is it quite basic? Really? Not comfortable. in any way that we'd understand comfort, I don't think. But hammocks, I mean, what are we talking? Master and Command are kind of hammocks underneath the decks. Yeah, the 14 inches regulation hammocks are like banging into each other.

They had, I'm trying to remember now, but it was hard work in a way. But I think the most difficult thing about it would be the emotional environment in a way that you're kind of hemmed up with people without any release. Like the Big Brother House. And does the ship sort of change livery? Because now it's this great, you know, royal by royal command ship. Does it have a figurehead? Does it have like a beautiful kind of livery behind it?

I mean, yes and no. I mean, it's painted up to look a bit nicer. It gets the, you know, the flag of a naval vessel on commission. But essentially, it's a weird hybrid of a coal ship with this, you know, ephemera of a Royal Navy vessel. So we were sort of it like a cart horse with lipstick, you know, it's like kind of thing you're talking about. Yeah, it's a kind of thing that you can imagine if you were like somebody knew about ships in that time, they'd look at it and go, hmm, what the hell is that? It's a kind of strange apparition. But it's the Banks bit of the expedition that you obviously love

because in your account of it, Banks is absolutely centre stage. He arrives at Madeira, the first stop, and he's immediately out there collecting specimens. He's with his butterfly net and everything else. Well, I mean, this is just a price that doesn't stop. Whenever they get to land Banks is off, it's like you press a button and it's botanized, botanized. In Madeira, you say 700 specimens in less than six days. Yeah, well, there you go.

that's, I can't remember the numbers, but this is illustrative of what they were doing. I mean, Madeira was known. This was like the Watford Gap for, you know, on the way across the Atlantic. What they wanted to do was get out as far away as possible. And Banks had decided he might find some new species. In Madeira. But it's really a warm-up. Well, anywhere.

On the whole trip. And you have him in some sort of contraption fishing on the back of the ship, trying to pick up fish. Yeah, the Lighterman's skiff, I think it was called. So he'd often be trailing behind when they were be calmed or they were, you know, he didn't stop. And they had this idea, I think, that they would collect in the mornings and they would classify in the afternoons. And if you do read, people are interested in Enlightenment's philosophy, they just read this journal. It's very, very brisk. There's always something happening. He's on to the next thing.

His insights are very poetic sometimes. He's got a nice expressive voice, I think, they use. And he's drawing, or his friend Salander is drawing? He's got a young Scott's. called Sydney Parkinson, who I have to say is my hero, because he's... You're very keen on him, right? Yeah, I like Parkinson because he's a very thoughtful quaker. He's an introvert.

But his journal doesn't survive, but his, the foul copy of it does. So there's lots of notes, which you can put together. I always think that Parkinson's journal is a great lost document. I bet you went looking for that. Yeah. Why is it lost? I mean, just... I don't know.

I think it disappeared in Banks's house afterwards. But anyway, that's a whole different story. But the Parkinson is, like, he's a... a very humane character as well. So, for example, Banks is charging around in Labrador like fashion all the time, whereas Parkinson actually stops to think about what's happening. And so, Parkinson will record when one of the sailors dies, for example. Oh, I see, and Banks doesn't mention it. Well, if Banks mentions it, it's like we were delayed two days by the drowning of this. It's quite inconvenient because Fred died. So he's very crass sometimes. But Parkinson is a considerable

artist and the illustrations that you include in your book, beautiful botanical paintings. Yeah. Okay, so they carry on. They're on the voyage. They've left Madeira. They're getting closer and closer to the equator. But crossing the equator is a really big deal for the endeavour and crew. Tell us a little bit about that moment. Well, they had a traditional ceremony at that point. This is a great thing in all these travel accounts. Crossing the equator is a big deal. Crossing lines, this isn't particular to Endeavour, but this is one thing that they did observe at the time. And so crossing from the north into the southern hemisphere, they said, required some. sort of ceremonial moment. And weirdly on the endeavour, there was a very long account of what happened, which involved a subversion of authority. So all of those commissioned officers had to buy themselves off or agree to be ducked by the ordinary seamen. So it's a bit of a bizarre thing which goes on in the middle of the...

Be ducked? I mean, is that exactly what it sounds like? Yeah. And I think banks paid himself off and so would cook, for example. I write about this in the sense that really in light of what happens later on with things like the bounty and shipboard management and like how it was important to cohere as a social group and these things interest you. There's a lot of drinking at this point too, isn't it? Yeah, they drink. But camaraderie-wise, and are you saying that there was a

distance between Banks, Cook and their crew, or that actually it was a good thing that there was a distance? I mean, you're describing two men who are slightly aloof. Yeah. Is that good or bad on a voyage? Well, I think one thing that was going to be central to the successor of the voyage was the relationship between Cook and Banks. And this is where Cook is just superb. He always rises in people's estimation by degrees, not really by specific acts, but you can just tell when you read the accounts, they say, well, this guy was really good. The way he did this was really clever. And he kind of just grows in stature. And you have to remember at the beginning of this voyage, you have Cook who is not Captain Cook at this point. It would be called Captain by convention

by when they were on the ship. But he was a left tenant by rank. He was very... Okay, I don't see, I took that for granted, Captain. He's always been Captain Cook in my head. And he was a farm labourer's son from North Yorkshire. He had no status. He had no hereditary honour, which is how they used to talk about these. He's a common man who ran the colliers, yeah. He was a common man, and he'd been put in charge of this.

The potential for it all going wrong was huge. If they didn't respect him, if they thought that he was... Weak. Yeah, if they thought he was weak. And in particular, Banks poses a problem, because Banks is the kind of person who's used to getting his way. He's in charge. He's, you know, from aristocratic background.

but actually on ship it's Cuckoo's in charge and I think looking at these power dynamics is interesting I mean I should say that on Endeavour the best cabin should be the captain's cabin which is above deck or is it below in the main hall? It goes off the great cabin at the back and there was a particular one and who went into that cabin banks of course banks did so Cucco was relegated to a side cabin for one of the left tenants so you see that power dynamic was confused from the beginning but as you say he's in charge you know it's just as I say cook, he grows in stature as the voyage goes and actually Banks realises that he can't do without this person. And if you're going to put your life in the hands of someone, then you better,

better really have a steadfast man. And the time when people's lives are most at risk at this time in history is rounding the horn. And so as they get to the horn, what is the situation and the condition of the ship and its crew? It's fine. I mean, they're going well. They have this moment where they stop in Rio and have a row with the local authorities. And then they go down. A bad rap. Really bad rap. For the reason I told you, because the Portuguese viceroy doesn't believe that it's an exploration vessel.

They said, we're going off to measure the transit of Venus. Oh, yeah, pull the other one. But what are you actually doing here? No one trusts the British. In many ways, it is quite fair because often exploration voyages from France, England and Russia are spies going out. I mean, they're not doing what they say. Yeah.

So that's a really, like, an annoying diplomatic incident. But they go around Cape Horn pretty well. I mean, those of you have read David Griswold. Rand's book on the Wager this year, which had been one of the big books about maritime life in the 18th century. We'll know about Anson's voyage, which happened. It was the big one before the Endeavour one, basically. And I think two-thirds of the people on Anson's voyage died. Right. Like two-thirds. That's a mortality rate which is higher than the song.

So they round the horn, that's fine. They managed to do that with great aplomb. And Banks manages to get ashore and get some... And he gets what he wants as well. But how long before they reached the Pacific islands, which is really what makes this voyage. Yeah, so this is, again, this is just points out how good Cook is, because he follows his orders and he actually arrives in Tahiti, which is where, I mean, there's a whole backstory to this as well, but this is the place which the British call George's Island. You know, the British were very fond of crowning new things George.

You never went out. Yeah, when they're discovered a planet in the 1780s, they called it George. but there was a planet called George. Yeah, that was Uranus, yeah. Uranus was called George. Yeah, to begin with, yeah. That's what the British first called. I would just say, I find that just utterly delightful.

I think we should always call Uranus George from that one. And so they were heading to this island, they had called George's Island, which is in the middle of the South Sea, is perfect for transit observations. Yeah. Of course it wasn't called George's Island. First person to get the proper name of the island

is my friend Sidney Parkinson, who the day that, you know, he says it's called Oetah, Actually, like the O is an article, so it's actually just Tahiti, but they persisted with calling it O Tahiti for a long time. Right in the middle of the South Sea is in an area that we call the Society Islands, French Polynesia is named today. And that's where the transit observations happened in, I think, June of 1769. 1769. And how do they, you know, in the first meeting with the people who have lived in Tahiti, straight O Tahiti, straight George. I mean, what do they like? What do they describe them as being like?

Had anyone, there had been some voyages. Yeah, so, I mean, this is a really fascinating bit of history that Anne Salmon that the New Zealand historian has written about at length. I would suggest people go and have a look at those books if they're very interested. But there's a series of encounters which happen on the voyages. The Society Islands, I'll call these ones,

form the first series of encounters, and there had been some voyages that went through in the years before. firstly by Borgonville. After whom Borgon Villar is named. Yeah, and before that, sorry, there was a voyage of Byron who went, but I'm not sure Byron saw Tahiti, but Wallace, who also went in the Dolphin, the same ship, did. And you can imagine, and Ansonman describes these islanders

as living a life of cosmic loneliness in the middle of the certificate. Cosmic loneliness. Yeah, it's a beautiful phrase, which just stays with me, where you are alone in this watery world, you know. And the Polynesians who are the greatest seafarers in human history by miles, I mean, whatever the Imperial British did is nothing in comparison to that great question of how there was a colonial wave from Hawaii to New Zealand. I mean, how did that happen? That's a bonkers thing. But it happened because of Polynesian seafaring.

Okay. And they, the period of long distance voyaging had stopped in about the year 1400. And then these strange vessels start turning up. Okay, so what do they say about, you know, the first time? again, the first contact, as we call it. What does Banks say about it? What does Cook say about it? And what does your man, in Parkinson, say about it?

Yeah, I think one thing that really everyone points out is the vividness of the colours. When you're in the middle of the Pacific, it's the kind of the turquoise blues of the water, you know, different areas of colour in the water, the jade green of the mountains which rise up from the sea. These kind of things are very prominent. One thing that modern science has actually added to our understanding of these accounts is that often the sailors were quite scurvyed by this point. And scurvy has a weird effect on the function of the human brain. And one thing that we know now is it has a kind of like a sensory distortion thing. So often it's a bit like finding out about unreliable narrator in fiction, finding out about these voyaging accounts.

Because what they were seeing was obviously pretty striking. If you and I went to Bora Bora or Tahiti today, we go, well, this is pretty, you know, pretty, you know, pretty. intense. But what they were seeing them was probably heightened by the fact that they were starved of vitamin C. Hang on a minute. What does scurvy do-do? What does a scurvy do lally look like when you're looking at something? So this is all very new research and this is something that I found fascinated when I was writing the book. There's a disturbance of the sensory modulators basically in the brain. So like taking the LSD. Yeah. So it's almost like taking drugs. And in a way, there's a disruption of serotonin and dopamine. So you get people acting in quite

irrational ways and looking at things. So even Cook himself, he was very like on a level. Yeah, even he goes a bit strange at some points. And nowadays, with modern science, people have looked at fresh at these documents and said, actually, we think he might be scurvyed at this point. Okay, so we know what they thought it was vivid, it was beautiful. Do they talk about the people that they met? It do, very much so.

And they interact with them very closely. Yeah, exactly. So these preceding voyages of Borgonville and Wallace had established some form of meaningful connection between the two. You've got to imagine that the Europeans saw the Tahitians in very cartoonish 2D varieties. They talked of Queen O'Barreas being this kind of beneficent queen who overruled the island and it was a land of sexual plenty and all rest of this. Which Banks makes particular.

Yeah. So, I mean, they give lots of these people names from ancient Rome. So you get lots of, it's almost like the slavery story where you find lots of Pompeys and Catoes and Caesars coming up in their account because it's an ideal landscape. They don't have the vocabulary or the means to understand it. But there's another side to this story as well, which is what the Tahitians made of these British voyages coming in. And is there any written record?

No written records, but there's lots of oral histories, and these have kind of passed down, and we do have quite good understanding now. They found them very dirty because the Haitians were famously clean, weren't they? Yeah, exactly. Things like this. And I think one of the most interesting ethnographic parts of it is Parkinson again, who creates wordless from Tahiti.

He goes to quite considerable lengths to actually watch the ceremonies as taking place and trying to decode them. And so he ponders very interestingly about, so for example, the British think that the Tahitians are great thieves. Based on what? And the fact they steal a lot of things off the ship. But then Parkinson looks at their dwellings and says, well, there's no locks on their doors. so they can't steal from each other. So that's a kind of example of like how Parkinson is quite, you know, he's a deeper thinker.

Different attitudes to property is what it actually is. Yeah, I mean, this is also at the time of Rousseau when there's lots of speculation about noble savage and barbarity and civility. More on the oral tradition, though. I mean, more on what we know of what people thought, apart from being smelly and dirty. What else did they think about these people who'd come from across the sea in these strange vessels?

Yeah, I think there's always a temptation Because there are descriptions which have come down of people saying that it was like a floating cloud coming in. There's like an alien ship coming in or a house full of divinities or all the rest of this. There's lots of these descriptions of the endeavour which are rich and they're exotic. But actually, I think very soon after this, they would have actually realized that it was a very big canoe, basically, or a party. And actually, in Parkinson's, wordless, one thing I noticed, I was looking through, Parkinson's obviously eliciting words from one of the Tahitians. And he asks the word for a canoe and they say, Pahy. And then he asks the word for ship, which is the next one down.

Presumably, he's pointing at Endeavour and saying, well, what would you call that? And they say, Parhi. So they think it's a canoe. Okay. They're not that impressed. They're not a big canoe. Big canoe. Okay.

Right. And one of them joins the voyage. Yeah. It's probably one of the most extraordinary characters of the 18th century. Topaya, Polynesian Star Navigator gets on to Endeavor, leaves with them. I mean, this is after the transit observations have been taken. So that part of the voyage is pretty much done. Achieved, ticked off.

Yeah, to a degree. And so now they're onto the Dalrymple leg. So in September, 1699, Endeavour becomes the first European vessel to reach the islands of New Zealand for 127 years. Yeah, so New Zealand at this point was the one certain landmass that people knew existed down there at some point. They'd somehow managed to get to New Zealand before they got or recognised that they found a continent. Yeah, and it was a great schism on board. Some people thought this was a coast of the great southern continent that Dalrymple had predicted. Poor Darampo.

I really do feel sorry for Dalrymple now. He's sitting in new hails outside in Edinburgh. It's winter. Cold and angry. Ice out of the gutters. He's hearing all these stories, imagining all these stories are going to be happening. Yeah, I think that's pretty true. And so you get the other party, which is like the Cook ones, who say this is actually just New Zealand.

It's part of an island. But that landmass of New Zealand isn't understood by European maps at all. Who'd been there already? The Dutch had been there. Tasman went there in 1642, I think. There'd been a very brief violent episode with the Maori. Did he go anywhere beyond Tasmania? I mean, did they know the scale of it?

Was there a shape of New Zealand on the map? Not really. There was like a kink on a map. And there was, I think, the encounter between a Tasman and the Maori. I mean, it happened in a place that was called Murderers Bay. I think that's right. And it was very brief. It was like it wasn't meaningful in any sense.

And this is, again, a story which kind of repeated when a Deva makes it to New Zealand. They get to this place on the eastern coast of the North Island, called Gisborne today. The Maori called it Taranga Nuiakia Kiwa. And that's where a pretty infamous encounter with the Maori happened. So what happens? So Cooks guys go onto land. The Maori meet them. They meet them in friendship or they meet them in war.

The relationship in the society islands had been pretty friendly. Very friendly. Yeah, very friendly. Lots of relationships were forged of different types, and I won't go into all of them now. But the Maori were a different cast of character. They were warriors. They were warriors. Yeah, there was an important part of that, was part of their culture.

But some absolutely extraordinary things happened in Taranganoi, which has still talked about today. First of all, there's a shooting which happens very soon after the endeavour arrives, which results in the death. of a Maori man called Tim Maro and that shot is still debated in New Zealand to this day whether it was an act of self-defense or violence or whatever and I'll leave that to one side for the moment today because I know we've got lots to get through but shortly after this you have this moment where the endeavour crew come ashore and they try to do what they did in Tahiti which is to establish some kind of relationships so they can take water and things back on board and they like line up on the opposite sides of a river, which is, I think, the Taranga Nui River. So one side,

the Maori, the other side, you have the Endeavour crew. In the middle of this river is a rock. And, you know, this is a kind of very loaded moment in encounter history. And you get Cook. I mean, first of all, they see a hacker, the first hacker ever witnessed by British crew. I mean, if anyone doesn't know, but I'm sure everyone knows, it's that war dance and rugby fixtures now most commonly seen it. And then an unknown Maori man comes onto the rock and Cook comes onto the rock. And there's a moment, I think, before that, when Topaya translates between the two. So he kind of ameliorates the language in Tahiti.

But I mean, what a weird moment in European history, in world history, sorry, where you have someone like Topaya trying to bridge two cultures that he's not part of with a language that. that surprisingly works. Anyway, then Cook and this unknown Maori man stand together and they have a hongy, which is a joining of two breaths into one body, the traditional Maori greeting, which is basically a kiss, is it? It's rubbing nose is.

It's when you rubbing noses. It's when you rubbing noses. The hongy, yeah. And so, you know, and then this situation from being quite promising and descends into violence. Do we know what happened?

Or is it mis... Yeah, essentially, I think what's recorded by the British is there is a moment of theft. So someone has a hangar stolen from them. A hangar? This is a kind of sword, like a small sword. Okay.

Which is the kind of thing that I suppose would be stolen in a situation like this. The Mary have no idea of gunpowder at this point. And one of them is shot. And then there's a kind of general retreat. After that, Cook does something which is quite foolish, where he kidnaps some people, which he thought he was going to take as a kind of bargaining tool. It's described by his shipmates as a good Christian-like activity.

I don't see. And even Cook himself said it was a really bad idea. This ends up in a skirmish because the Maori fight back. And there's, I think Cook says three or four people are killed in this skirmish in Taranganoioki. And it's just, I always think that's very revealing that Cook, who's the most precise person in the world, is into approximation that he can't actually look squarely in the eye at what happened. Yeah. Well, I mean, and also important to say, you know, people talk about Cook being this great explorer and navigator.

But New Zealand, he's seen very much as a bit of a murdering bastard. This is a very important thing to acknowledge in this voyage, that it is seen as the end of olden times. This is the language that's often used and the beginning of a painful new history. And this is also an important moment when Cook gets back, we should say that he is censored by certain people. Yeah, I think actually, this is at the point which is worth mentioning Dary and Paul, because he, He had, sorry if I could do this again, but he... Yes, no, please go ahead. There's a few things that he said, which I think you should be proud of, actually.

One of which was that no accession should be made to the British Empire by fraud or violence. And this was one thing that he was very... So if the British Empire was to expand, it was to do so... Honourably. Honourably. How that was to happen, I don't know. Second thing that I always think showed him in a very, very good light is that he had very high standards for how people should treat both indigenous people and indigenous knowledge.

So, for example, he hated Cook's habit of renaming places because that was a cultural vandalism. Right. Oh, God, I like Darwin. Yeah. He's all right. So he said, well, why are we calling this place Poverty Bay when it's already called Taranga Nuiakiwa, which is so, again, you see him as actually. On his time, me. Yeah, really very nice.

Well, I just think this was the Pacific, the absolute episode, which, I mean, Cook and that he screwed up. He said, you know, in his own journal, he said, I made a mistake. And later, when they got back in Britain, Dalrymple said that, you know, Cook was incompetent on many levels. And he was not only incompetent, he was a murderer. And that was, you know, that was, it's a serious charge. It's a very serious, and with any legal backup or just something where they're basically hitting each other around the face with gloves. They've been of both. Have you ever known a Dalrymple charge into an accusation? without thinking of the consequence.

I don't know. It's one of those, but it was a pretty serious thing. So I think those two perspectives are worth showing. But Cook never accepted that he'd done anything wrong. I think Cook did accept that he did something wrong. Yeah, I think he said in his journals that I know I will be censored for this, but he said, having got myself into the situation,

was I to stand around and let myself get hit over the head? That was his kind of point. So from New Zealand, and I think we'll probably talk about this in the next half of this, How long before sites are set on Australia and do they know they're heading for something called Australia? Well, not really, not in the sense that we think of Australia. Again, geography is very patchy. They have this idea of a landmass where they know about Tasmania or Tasman's land or whatever, Van Diemen's land, I think it was called at the time.

And then above that, they knew there was somewhere called New Holland, which is the place that the Dutch generally collided with when they were on the way to Batavia or something. Zealand is in Denmark. So I don't know quite how it ended up being named after the... the Danes. That's me questioned. I'm not sure.

Yeah, so they had to decide how to get back. They are almost at the opposite side of the world. You know, when you get to New Zealand, you've gone a very, very long way.

I'd love to say more about the New Zealand portion because it is really interesting. But essentially, they have to decide how to get back and Cook decides that he's going to go and fall in with the coast

of New Holland, go north, get to Poteva, and then come back across the Indian Ocean on a very familiar route. By that point, you're fine. At this point, they're completely off the chop.

So I love this. Okay, we're going into the break. Now, join us after the break when we put a coastline to that bit of gap in the middle of the map. Welcome back. So we were talking with Peter Moore about this discovery of the gap in the map, which has a place called Australia. We now know it as. Tell us about the journey of Cook to Australia.

And is it simple or straightforward or disastrous? Yes, we should just say at this point that they're not sure what they're looking for. What they've got on their charts is odd bits of land. They've got Tasmania. They've got Zealand and they're expecting to find possibly a great southern continent, an enormous landmark. And they don't know whether all these bits join up. So, I mean, there's a huge degree of uncertainty. And Cook's got this idea that he wants to fall in.

I think that's his language with what would be the eastern coast of this and work its way up. But, you know, all this idea we have about Australia today is not really understood. And so very soon after the New Zealand portion he does cross the Tasman Sea gets over to to the east coast of Australia, they spend a bit of time in Botany Bay, and this is where that first landing point is. So in Australian history, this is often seen as a coming of the British moment. A watershed moment. But of course we have to say that this is not the beginning of Australian history. It's 50,000 years since the Aboriginal people. People were there first. 50,000, yes.

As much as that, yeah. And the world's longest continuous, like, civilisation is this. With, you know, this kind of strange moment in 1770 where the British turn up. So again, we have this third area of encounter. We've had the Society Islands, if you like. New Zealand and New Zealand. Mary. And then New Holland, which won't acquire its name Australia for another few generations or until about 1800 with Flinders.

What happens here as well? She just characterise the friendliness in Tahiti, the violence maybe in New Zealanders. New Zealand. There's something more unsettling for the British crew, particularly for people like Banks in Australia, because they're met with a kind of apathy. So the Aboriginal people they meet, they don't understand them. They don't accept their gifts. They will often ignore them. They won't regard the ship as a machine of any particular significance. And this really throws them. And it really muddles them. They don't know what's going on. And so into the sense they actually

prefer the Maori because they can understand that reaction. They understand a fight. Yeah. They can understand the fight, but they can't understand the apathy. What do you put the apathy down to? Is there any oral tradition that explains what they were thinking? They just wanted them to go away. That is to distill a very long process of oral history. They were watching. It was a wholly different culture which had arisen over such a huge portion of time. So if you think about the ship going a mile away from the shore, there might be a mile between the ship and the shore, but there's something like 50,000 years of divergent human history between the, in the, you know, that space, it's incredible.

And you think, like, people who just don't understand each of at all. And we're talking about a specific enlightenment culture that Banks exemplifies of gathering, of expanding. And sometimes I have to admit, when I was reading Banks' journal, you really cringe. It's uncomfortable because he's thinking of human beings as specimens and there is nothing tender, human. It is that colonial instinct. You have a very complex picture of Banks in the book and you're quite fond of him personally,

but he shows himself in his least good colours at this point. There's this great ambivalence. You wouldn't want to be dogmatic about it because I think you can see how you could turn us into a flag-waving history, and I never wanted to do that. I think this is a story of different perspectives, and that's why for the subtitle,

I chose this, the ship and attitude that changed the world. But changed is an ambivalent word, you know, it's ambiguous. It could mean change for the better or change for the worse. And for these guys, it definitely wasn't for the better. No, no, no, no. And a lot of, almost everyone in the Polynesian heritage would say that this was not a good moment for them. No, it's disastrous.

And it's disastrous. Okay, so they come on board, they're ignored. At what point does, you know, what does Cook do while he's there? If they're just saying, la, la, la, la, I can't hear you and just ignoring them and wanting to go away? Can I tell you? Yeah, yeah. One of the things I think is so, so this is being handed down in oral memory by the Bachela people of Kogari or Fraser Island. This is a really haunting song poem.

And this is them looking out at the endeavour as it went up the eastern coast. And it says, Strangers are travelling with a cloud, R.E. Ram. It has fire inside. It must be a bad water spirit. It's stupid maybe. It's going directly to that rainbow serpent place. This is the truth that I bring.

It's breathing smoke rhythmically from its rear. It must be songmen and sorcerers. Coming up and going back with the... the wind at its rear. It's like a sand crab. The sea carries the ship here. Why? And do we know how old that is? I mean, we have, we, it's just old. It's one of these which has been passed down in oral memory. So there's lots of complexities there of how that evidence should be treated and it's probably subject to all sorts of dispossession narratives which have happened over time. But it's kind of the best we've got. And you have to

always imagine people looking out at this ship and wondering what was happening. It's a very, very interesting moment. And this is that one that we've come across in previous episodes. of empire. This is a bit like the Balfa Declaration. For Jewish people, it's a moment of a whole new world opens up. A state is about to be born for the Palestinians. It's the Lakhber. It's a catastrophe. The same is true here. This is the beginnings of the modern nation of Australia. For many Europeans, this is a new life, a new world, a whole new horizon. For the people that are living there, it's a catastrophe. And there follows a century of shrinking and shrinking of reduction of rights, of kidnapping of children, diseases,

and that familiar process of encounter with Europe, which leads to every kind of disaster. How long is Cook there, and what does he do while he's there? So he just spends these few months on the eastern coast, but we're talking about encounters. One of the most significant encounters is with the Great Barrier Reef because they sail straight into the thing. And this is a crucial moment.

You painted as a moment of enormous sort of the ship has literally seafloy. isn't it, in history, where things could have gone very differently. And they're very lucky. This is where the acorn and the quality of wood comes in. There we go. We got there. Okay, so tell us why this is important. So the ship gets caught on the coral.

Gets caught on the coral. It grinds. The coral grinds at the ship's hull. It goes down a tide, so the pressure is increasing all the time. I have to wait until the tide comes up. Cook decides that he's going to basically drag the ship off the coral. And he has to jettison. He has the jettison stuff, doesn't he?

Throw it out. Yeah, but that would have been, I mean, had the ship sunk at that point, that would have been the end. No one would have heard. No one would have known. What they'd done? Where they've been. And surely the history of Australia might have been different. But all the banks' specimens that he'd been collecting by this point, they would have all gone.

Anyway, they do manage to get it to, how'd they get off. Well, they wait for the high tide, so the maximum pressure upwards, and then they kind of pull it off. And they're very lucky because a bit of the coral is stuck in the hull, and it kind of plugs the leaf. And then they do this thing where they kind of plaster the ship up with a technique called Fothering, where they tire sail underneath and the pressure of the water pushes the sail. It's a very clever thing to do. They managed to take it into the... Dry dock almost, doesn't it?

Yeah, this river, which, again, this is colonial, because this river is now known as Endeavour River. Warholmeau-Berry, I think, is its proper name. But there's another series of encounters here with the Aboriginal people, which very lucky, again, the endeavour because where they bring this ship into beach is a sacred ground where no blood is to be spilled. So the story goes. So they're not really in the danger that they might have been elsewhere. But this is where this famous moment happens where they encounter a kangaroo for the first time. And no one has the vocabulary to describe this creature which lays, you know, I just see what are these hopping past? You think what the hell is that? So there's

lots of funny explanations in journals saying, well, we think it's a hair or it's a deer or is it, you know, whatever. And so, yeah, they have the kangaroo there. Actually, more dangerously than the reef, the first encounter with the reef is the second ones when they go back out to sea because they have to get through this whole coral sea. I don't know if you spent time on the Great Barrier Reef, but that whole Queensland coast, it just completely covered. Is it like to sail through? Yeah. Yeah, Cook never went back.

He just got out of there as quickly as he could. But actually, like, weaving through all of these reefs was really hair-raising. And they thought that they'd had it a number of time. And they're very nearly. But they bandage up the ship. They managed to sort of bandaid it up with the sail. I mean, I love that detail of it. And then they are on the return.

Are they then resolved? And they've gone as far as they can and they've got to go home. Yeah, I think like at this point, there's just two last things I have to tell you. They get to Batavia, which is modern Jakarta, isn't it? Yeah, that's right. And when you go to Jakarta today, there's the old area of Batavia where there's a wonderful museum of seafaring and with all the... But this is really where they have, in a way, the most deadly portion of the voyage,

because a lot of the sailors are taking ill at Batavia where there's a very bad climate, I suppose. It always happens throughout colonial history and area and dysentery. And this is where, yeah, exactly. Like Cook reproached himself mostly because he'd brought most people safely around all of these free reefs and around Ireland,

around Cape Horn, most people died at Patavia. And Sydney Parkinson dies there, for example. Entipaya. Leaving all his pictures behind. And to fire, the star navigator. Oh, right. As I say that. I mean, his history itself is an extraordinary story.

The weird thing is in a sense that the Dutch, having got as far as Batavia, turn it into their capital, but never go and explore or try and draw maps of these. Well, do you know what I should tell you, actually? Press a Dowrimple button here because there was this great question. So the world is like a big maze, basically. And when you put the winds on top of that, then it's actually quite like kind of going between some places, it's very easy. Going between others is very difficult.

So Cook was the very first who really went across the Pacific that way. It was easier to go the other way. And it's not quite right, but in broad terms it might be. And he was the first person to go up the eastern coast of Australia. But how did he get up from the Coral Sea to Batavia? And he went through a passage that was in Dalrymple's book, which I told you, if you remember before. I think it's called the Torres Strait. The notes that he handed over.

Wow. And but for that. And Cook acknowledges this. doesn't he? Yeah, and so, and Dalryump, when he finds out about this, is just incandescent, because not only has Cook taken his voyage, he's taken his glory, he's got home thanks to his his pastures. So the ship is now home.

Does it come home to a hero's welcome? Does Cook get sort of lifted onto everyone's shoulders and is the endeavour then you'd thought of as this amazing part of history then and there? You were well, you'd have thought that that might be the way it goes. kind of right yeah actually cook is promoted captain becomes captain cook for tree i mean he's yeah he's in in reality and he is um poised to go on two further voyages so that that's a separate history which is ends with his death in hawaii on valentine's date in 1779 banks is the celebrity he is the you know he's lord of round he's the rock and roll star yeah and um i think

he knows how to do p r well captain cook is reticent and Yorkshire and... The ship itself... Keeps quite. The ship itself is pretty much forgotten about it. No point in talking about it. But nobody wants to turn... Nobody wants to turn the ship into a museum or a monument or nothing like that.

So what happens is it's sent out again on new commissions. So again, as Endeavour, it goes down to Falkland Islands a couple of times and comes back from that. And I think its life would have been pretty much at an end because it was pretty worn out by this point. It had been through the barrier reef, yeah. the barrier reef, well the barrier reef had been through it. But then this last, and this is the thing that I'll kind of end with in a way, because this is

the twist in the tale, because this is the story of your discovery. Yeah, well, I won't claim this, but it's not as well known, let's put it that way. The ship was then renamed the Lord Sandwich, and it was commissioned as a troop carrier. Now, in 1775, 1776, we all know what was happening now. American Law. Independence. The biggest logistics. In America, yeah.

The biggest logistic problem in your world history to that point is how do you take a British army from Britain across the Atlantic in such massive numbers? And yeah, this endeavour was renamed Lord Sandwich and it sailed to New York Harbour in 1776 with all these Hessean troops. I have to say Alexander Drimple's cousin, William Drupal is in charge. But we'll get over that. Oh, my God. They can't get away from. Yeah. Having just committed to the Boston Massacre, I'm ashamed to say.

Yeah. So you should be. Oh, there is. Is that your one as well? William Drupul. You can't move for tripping over them these days, I find. Okay. So that, and it ends its life there as a truth carry.

And so the very last, like, chapter, I suppose, is in Newport, Rhode Island and Narragansett Bay, where it's used as pretty much a prison ship. And it's pretty sad end to what was... It's a great exploring vessel. Yeah. And in 1778, it's scuttled, which is deliberately... The French are coming for Rhode Islanders. You just talked over the saddest bit. It's scuttle, so it's basically the heart is taken out of it and it's sunk.

Where's its body then? So this has become a huge hide-and-seek operation over the last, I mean, the last 20 years, it's been the subject of this investigation by people in America, by the Australian National Maritime Museum. We were very keen to find it. There's been a process of narrowing down where it was, they found it was definitely part of one of 12, then it was part of one of five. Then they've narrowed it down to one, which, you know,

you would have thought would be enough to discover it. But actually, that's not the same as a positive identification, because you've got to find something. So I'm hoping my oak trees from Yorkshire might be useful one day as a identifying DNA. Yeah, maybe I don't know. You know, it's such a fabulous story. You tell it so well, Peter.

Thank you so, so much for being one of our Christmas ships. It's a sad ending. From the Whitby Coast to Newport and Rhode Island, 14 years. It lived a life, though. Quite epic for 14 years. Peter, thank you so very much. And, well, there's not much else to say apart from ding-dong Merrily on your high.

Thank you so much for being with Empire. We're going to be with you after Christmas. Until then, it's goodbye and ho-ho-ho from me, Anita Arnon. And goodbye and ding-dong from me with your report. Ding-dong. Bye.