Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 286 - The Death of Captain James Cook

Episode Date: November 19, 2023

Captain Cook shows up in the Hawaiian Islands and pisses off the entire population ending in the funniest possible outcome. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sources: Richard Tregaskis. Hawaii's Warrior King: King Kamehamaha The Great Glyn Williams. The Death of Captain Hook: A Hero Made and Unmade Hawaiian Historical Society Reprints 1787, 1788,1789 Val Wake. Who Killed Captain Cook?

Hey, everybody. Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast, but I guess you probably already knew that. If you like what we do here on the show, consider supporting us on Patreon at www.patreon.com slash lionsledbydonkeys. Just $5 per month gets you every regular episode early, access to our community discord, a digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, as well as its audiobook read by me, and over five years of bonus content. By supporting the show, you support us and allow us to keep our show as it has always been ad-free. Thank you for listening, and I hope you enjoy the show. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Lions Loved by Donkeys podcast i'm joe and with me deep in the content caves in the sunny islands of england is tom what's up buddy bro it's so fucking cold today yeah same

uh it is cold uh but the sky is blue uh so not that that helps at all um but there's your there's your weekly dutch weather report i mean like yeah you uh saw in the production chat like yesterday or was it monday when i got home i realized that like oh my my uh boiler had like depressurized so i had to like look up the manual for this particular boiler to figure out how to repressurize it so it could have hot water then realized the radiators aren't working and like when i moved into the this place like during the summer i was like okay i was like did kind of a check of like okay here's all the stuff i need to do and like one of them what on my list was i needed to reseal the windows before the winter and like i know people

say like oh you could just get your landlord to do that but i'm also like i know what landlords are like and i'm honestly not interested in waiting six weeks for someone to show up with a caulking gun yeah anybody who says oh don't worry your landlord could do that like maybe they're they live somewhere where landlords are like legally liable to do things like that but i know coming coming from either here and from what i've heard uh in in the netherlands they're not gonna do that and from any any single person i've spoken to that lives in the uk your landlord is more likely just to throw you out like honestly i i know i could get the landlord to fix it but it's like with the boiler thing it was like I could ring the agent and say like this needs to be

fixed or I could just figure out how to do it myself and like probably do it quicker and better than someone they would hire and like resealing the windows is that you're just going in with caulk and like going in with waterproof caulk and like just going around the windows and I have to install curtains and all this shit

so yeah this is the most restrained i've ever been not making a cock joke right there um everybody mark it on their calendars it won't happen a second time um anybody who's been paying attention knows that uh tom was uh just just here in the netherlands and we were actually supposed to record while he was here uh but there's a reason why of the times that we've met it's been for two days at a time um because anything beyond that two days we were no longer functional because all we do is live off of guinness and doner kebab oh and by day three we're both handicapped like we can't move i had the worst heartburn on sunday because like pretty much all i'd eaten for about three days at that stage was capsulon and like like on sunday i realized i haven't drank any water in 24 hours similarly when we were in, we lived off of street food in Guinness. And by the end of it, I went

from Ireland to Georgia, Tbilisi, not Atlanta. And I was laying in bed dying from... I like Guinness. I like street food. However, I am in my mid-30s and my body's like, nope, you're going to die now. Everything hurts and I'm dying. I have recovered from the weekend. I am shocked, though, that that pub that we went to had better Guinness than I've ever had in London. That's because the bartenders are all Irish. Yeah, true. You know, can't go anywhere and not like. Why do you think they're like, where can we watch the rugby match?

I'm like, I know the place because everyone sitting behind the bar has an irish accent and it was like when i was in prague a couple of weeks ago and similarly had to find somewhere to watch the ireland south africa match and i was like googling like oh sports bars in prague and like most of them were just showing the soccer but i i figured out that there was two irish bars that were showing the rugby the first one we went into was just like so busy and then the second one was like full of english stags but managed to find like a table where i could sit down and watch the match and like they were so pissed off with the english stags that they just said the bar is cash only now our card machines aren't working wait do irish people call football soccer or have you just been recording for too long with me no no it's

it's referred because uh gaelic football is just referred to as football uh back home um but was at that bar and like got talking to one of the bartenders and because like she was serving me and i was trying to be nice to people because like honestly there was so many people being just extremely rude so i was like i'll be nice um and i asked her like oh where are you from back home she was telling me and she was like oh you're from wexford there's another guy from wexford behind the bar and i was like all right turns out the guy is from the same town as me once again this just goes back to me when i went to ireland i ran into the one irish armenian customs office there like well we we are empire baby this is you know our own

irish people and armenians are the same people just just switch out like uh cognac for guinness and we're the same now speaking of something that has nothing to do with any of that um we have a podcast to record and we're we're gonna jump on our little podcast airplane and travel back to hawaii which is a place that we don't talk about very much on the show which is interesting because about two and a half years of this show's history was recorded on Oahu. If there's one thing we love on this show more than just about anything else, it's idiot colonists fucking around and finding out in the most violent way possible. Which brings us to an episode of history that is probably more famous in Hawaii than anywhere else. And that is the death of a man named James Cook. Have you ever heard of this guy before?

We wrote this a long time ago, so I'm not sure. Have you ever heard about James Cook and the Hawaiian way to celebrate Valentine's Day? This is actually like the perfect crossover between both our shows like obviously my show beneath the skins about the history of tattooing and james cook is kind of an integral part in the history of tattooing because of his you know adventures in the pacific um but i'll

get into it a lot more later on when we talk i will because i want to talk i want to go nate mode i know everyone's missing nate right now so i have like an eight minute diatribe about uh captain james cook and the history of tattooing but uh i'm very familiar with how they celebrate valentine's day in hawaii outstanding now before we get to how james cook got connected to god's Wi-Fi in the funniest way possible. We have to talk about the islands of Hawaii in the 1700s. And for Americans who don't know, my mom, there's a lot of different islands that make up Hawaii.

There isn't just one. There's the big island. There's the medium island. And there's the small island there's the medium island and there's the small island yeah yeah um that's it that's the that's the whole island shade now at this point the islands were not unified by king kamehameha the great you might know him as an attack from dragon ball z yes the inspiration for goku's ultimate attack do you reckon there's some hawaiian king who inspired the spirit bomb yeah he he's a guy who likes standing in one place for a really long time while the animators try to figure out what to do next captain james cook got killed by tn's

try try beam yeah chief filler episode um now this that's another subject we will talk about at some point. That is the unification of Hawaii, not Dragon Ball Z. Generally, at this point, each island had its own chief with different sub-chiefs under him, ruling districts and villages. Generally speaking, though, each island was a little bit different.

These chiefs ruled as dynasties, and most of the different island dynasties were interrelated, owing to the fact that many people believed these rulers were descendants of the legendary parents, Wykaia symbolizing the air and Papa symbolizing the earth. One chief's holding could be small, like a village, while others could be a district, and others could be an entire island. Over time, each island developed an important set of skills and specialization that they would trade with one another because the islands aren't exactly close together, but even before unification, inter-island travel was very, very common, so it makes sense to diversify your economies against your neighbors and specialize in something. This created a pretty complex form

of an ununified but interwoven economy. For instance, Oahu specialized in making cloth, Maui in canoe building, and the big island purveyors of dried fish. You know, the thing that we all love to eat. We're about to go get some sick-ass 17th century pokeballs. Yeah, it's crunchy, and also

I don't think they had rice yet, so just a bowl of dried fish. You could replace the rice with some desiccated coconut, I don't know, that might be a bit sweet, might fuck with the texture, but if you haven't had pokeballs before, get one.

They're really good, and they're good for you. It's the best kind of food, a pile of food, which is my personal favorite. I have seen you eat so much Capsulon the last week. That's fucking right, baby. Give me that food pile. Up until this point, they had not made any proven contact with the non-Polynesian world, though that is heavily debated and I err on the side of they almost certainly

had. Outside of written records, we have plenty of evidence to suggest that the Hawaiian Islands had frequent contact with various kinds of outsiders before the British showed up. For starters, there was so much syphilis. Yeah, you know, like the Spaniards brought like what was it measles and smallpox to south and central america the brits brought syphilis

hold that thought about the spaniards oh fuck off evidence of syphilis has found the bones of hawaiians going back to about the 1600s And the disease has something of a convoluted origin story. Syphilis is largely thought as a hallmark of Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries, as well as literally every nightclub across the continent today. But for a long time, Columbus was blamed for bringing it into Europe for doing crimes in the Americas, which I will not go into. Fill in the blanks yourself. Though there's evidence to suggest it existed in Europe before then

and just got worse with time, leading to the epidemic of 1495, which is why everybody thinks this is a European disease, which it very well could be. It was a slow simmer before then, or before boiling over in the 1495 era. James Cook is generally thought of as being the first European to, quote, discover Hawaii, but that wouldn't be until late 1700s, which we'll talk about. So obviously, that doesn't explain all of the syphilis which certainly came from the outside what might answer is the series of shipwrecks off the coast of the island which according to hawaiian stories

where drum roll please spaniards um they they crashed you know what the spaniards get off pretty light when it comes to colonialism, there is a movement to get people to stop celebrating Christopher Columbus. America was discovered by Amerigo Vespucci, or alternatively the Vikings, if you are going to argue that. You can't fucking discover something that has an indigenous population. It's already been

discovered. I know, I know, I know. People live there. That's like saying I discovered this apartment. Hey, listen, depending on if you're really into like Voltaire and stuff like that, like saying i discovered this apartment hey listen depend depending on if you're really into like voltaire and stuff like that like does something exist before you see it what are you a goldfish but anyway so yeah quote unquote discovered but you know the spaniards really really really get off lightly when we talk about colonial history. I mean, yeah.

I mean, the Spaniards do, especially when you look at Western history, as do the Portuguese and even the Belgians, all of which is completely unfair because they're all bloodthirsty genocidal ghouls. We've talked about Equatorial Guinea on this show. Yeah, we sure have. Yeah, we sure have. Now, the Spanish shipwrecks off the coast of Hawaii, what is generally thought of, at least within Hawaiian storytelling and within history now, is that they crashed their ships, they washed up on shore, and assimilated into Hawaiian life, doing what they do best, which is spreading STDs.

So it could have been with them. But there was also the Japanese who had shown up at some point during the Kamikura period and then later again in the 1500s. At that time, it's not as many as 30% of Japanese men suffered from syphilis.

So it could have also been them. I guess what I'm saying is welcome to the history of STDs podcast. Yeah, like really interesting interesting and i'm gonna come back to this later on when we start talking about captain cook again is that a lot of the migration among the polynesian islands is kind of super understood understudied because tattooing um which i'll talk a lot more about later on like it is kind of an almost ubiquitous thing across the polynesian islands and comes up in like differing forms and particularly

like the artistry how the tattoos are applied and like the individual kind of artistic identity of what the tattoos actually look like but like hawaiian tattooing tahitian maori tattooing although damoko is like a little bit different um all kind of originated from kind of one nucleus it's supposed it's alleged so these people one were incredible sailors as well like the polynesian people were like put any age of sail captain to shame and it's like 12 people on a boat take that james cook you dead bitch yes but the reason why i go into that is often said that james cook is the first european to stumble across the Hawaiian islands.

It's probably not true. And even if it was, the Japanese had been there for possibly hundreds of years. For instance, the Hawaiians had metal. Where did that come from, Mr. Cook? Probably the Japanese. So, yeah. Now, James Cook was born in November 1728 in the North Riding area of Yorkshire. Fucking British.

Is it North Riding or is it Riding or something stupid like that? It's North Riding. Got it right the first time and the first time in podcast history. And I have to say, I discover a great new British town name every time I look an Englishman up.

Yeah, just don't get Joe to try and say Agincourt. Fuck you. That was years ago. Let it go. He was the second of eight kids born to a Scottish laborer and a British mother. They lived on a land that they worked, and his father's boss eventually paid for a cook to

go to school for five years, at which time he was supposed to return to the farm as slightly more educated into a managerial role. It wasn't like a formal school. This is pretty much just to teach him how to read and write. He had no science or mathematics education to speak of. But for all of the flaws that Cook had, being a good student was not one of them.

He just enjoyed learning. So he taught himself science and mathematics, which is kind of impressive for someone in the 1700s. Yeah. He didn't want to be like his father. And when he was 16, he accepted an apprenticeship to work as a grocer 20 miles away in a fishing village. Because it was the 1700s, things were different.

And being the counter guy at a grocery shop and a bag boy required an unpaid apprenticeship, which would have lasted years. It also turned out that despite being a good student, and I assume actually a pretty decent farm hand to be sent to school by the guy who owned the farm, he was shit at being a grocer and he was fired. Though his boss did have some mercy on him. being a grocer, and he was fired. Though his boss did have some mercy on him. He introduced him to his friends John and Henry Walker, who owned several coal hauling ships, who then offered him a job aboard those ships.

Though this could have actually been a punishment because it's a job aboard a coal ship in the 1700s. So it could have been like, yeah, you suck as a grocer, go die in a coal ship. It turned out he was actually pretty good at this, which was very interesting for the time. Back then, as we've talked about before, most crewmen aboard ships, whether it be commercial, private, military, whatever, they came from coastal towns, which had a sea going tradition, not only in their family, but in local culture. They're not normally some random farm kid, but he did very well. He learned advanced navigational skills, like the kind of things that a seaman needs to know to advance through the ranks and complete his three-year

long apprenticeship going up and down the English coast. From there, he moved on to ships in the Baltics and officially entered the ranks of the Merchant Navy after passing an exam in 1752. And once again there, he excelled, being promoted constantly and was offered the command of his first ship three years later. However, times had changed. Britain was gearing up for the Seven Years' War, and Cook realized, my career would be doing a lot better if i was in the navy

rather than you know hauling coal and whale guts or whatever he quickly volunteered for service and was stationed aboard the hms eagle he took part in several battles was promoted to boson passed some more exams and the war eventually took him to north america aboard the hms pembroke yeah and it's it's super interesting this part of his career because like a lot of the myth making that's been made about captain cook is from his own autobiography and his own writings so he is his own best hype man at this stage he is like landing in newfoundland having you know contact with first nations people the kind of inuit people that are around at the time and it's kind of this kind of first contact for him will set out how he writes about you know first nations indigenous people polynesian people

that he will contact over the subsequent journeys and later on there is a thing that i want to bring up that is gonna make video game nerds really mad and like people who are like there was no black people in england uh before like the the windrush people i'm like you're dumb you're stupid and you're factually wrong i mean those people were never people who think that way are never actually grasping for facts they're just grasping for like white ethno-nationalist history it's the same people who will like argue with me that like oh the vikings had tattoos no the No the Vikings didn't have tattoos. There is little to no

evidence that Vikings actually ever had tattoos or any tattooing practice. It was probably war paint. Matt literally did, my co-host literally did an episode the other day about how even Caesar himself, Mr. Julius Caesar lied about seeing tattooed

people. Nice. I think julius caesar had a lower back tattoo of butterflies does it just take some of the wind out of his sails you know it makes him seem like a like a a club uh like teenager from uh like 2005 he just had like a jersey shore-esque lower back tattoo that said Et Tu, Brutus? Fuck yeah. Now, like Tom said, this is where a lot of the mythos of Captain Cook comes in, was surveying and cartography around the Canadian coast, mapping the dangerous rocks and cliffs. And these maps were used for a very long time afterwards,

so he did do a pretty good job at that. But this brought him the attention of the Royal Society, the kind of people who are normally credited as explorers, with a small asterisk next to that, meaning roving band of murderers, slavers, and criminals to whoever had the misfortune of them finding them along the way. Yeah, it's non-sazat-si. Yeah, British tradition.

So in 1769, Cook was commissioned by the British Admiralty to conduct an expedition into the Pacific. He was promoted to lieutenant and given command of the HMS Endeavour. During this period, he passed through New Zealand, making contact with locals and murdered about eight of them. Afterwards, he went to Australia, did about the same thing, opening fire with a cannon on locals after one of them threw a rock at him. So he's actually the first documented American police officer. And like, so this is where like the chartering of the south, west and east coast of Australia comes about. Obviously, encountering the Aborigines. But this is where Tom's Fact Corner comes in.

So when Cook landed in New Zealand, now called Aotearoa, and encountered the Maori people for the first time, a lot of people think about this is where tattooing was quote-unquote discovered. And in reality, there like tattooing going on all around the world at the same time because it's not that hard to put ink and skin you just need something sharp and like some sort of carbon suspended in a liquid so you could have like sauce that's like mixed with a suspension liquid and just prick it into the skin but a lot of people think that once uh captain cook encountered the merry people that changed tattooing around the world forever where in reality there's like very little evidence that

like cooks encounter encounters with the merry people and like that moco even like changed anything like there's no representation of like people and like people will talk about oh you know there was sailors that got like moco tattoos and like came back and like started spreading it was like no they didn't because one moco is like very sacred to the maori people they actually they see it as something more than just tattooing it has a spiritual connection um another factual inaccuracy is people think this is where the term tattoo comes from because the maori and more so tahitian term which we'll talk about in a second is for tattooing is called tatao because the way the tattoos are

applied it's kind of like an all so it's a straight piece of wood with needles pointed down and you like use a small hammer to like tap the ink into the skin and it's like makes a ta-ta ta-ta-ta sound but anyone who has either been in the army or knows anything about the military history Joe what is the sound

for what is the term for the sound of a marching drum being played it's called a tattoo yeah so we had that term for the sound of a marching drum being played? It's called a tattoo. Yeah. So we had that term for a long time before Cook encountered the Maori or Aboriginal people. are are desperate to attack like discoveries and whatnot into like european age of explorers because of like romantic adventurism when in reality pretty much all they were is a sailing circus of atrocities um i like the thing with like the mary people is that like similar to you know like in other polynesian nations there was kind of like

internecine wars going on in between groups so once merchants and stuff started like making regular journeys to these parts they would you know trade for weapons this sort of thing one and like one practice was you know the the keeping of the head of your defeated enemies this is where like shrunken heads come from and like these are like kind of sacred kind of spiritual objects and you had people like trading them for weapons and that's how you like end up with like stuff like shrunken heads in the national museum in the uk yeah yeah, yeah, of course. They wanted to, like, it's just like, I believe it was that the Germans like to collect skulls and bones

even before, like, eugenics was involved. It just happened as, like, they discovered fake science to go along with their, like, gross collections, and they would trade them for things they thought they were, like, cool things to bring home. Or, like, letter openers fashioned out of indigenous bones and shit like that this is depressingly common uh in history though i do have some good news is there ever any good news on this

show just this one sentence um on his way home um captain cook's ship stopped in what is today Jakarta, and a quarter of his crew died of malaria. We do have that bright spot. And they returned home in 1771. He was greeted as a hero in the scientific community, I assume for bombing indigenous people with cannons cannons and was promoted to the rank of commander a year later he went on another expedition around australia fired cans at more locals and returned home to another hero's welcome and a promotion and the royal navy then retired him sending him to a desk job at the greenwich hospital against his will and it's it's also like during this trip that like he so a lot of people think like the first person to land was cook in reality like a lot of credit for this stuff goes to a guy called

samuel wallace who was also a navigator and at this time in 1767 um cook and wallace meet this man called oh my who is you know a tahitian kind of oh we're gonna talk about oh my oh god okay yeah so uh make a long story short they make contact with oh my and kind of kidnap him and bring him back to the uk yeah now to be fair oh my was treated like a diplomat when he arrived there's a very famous like portrait of him that i think they did this frequently they they treated them kind of like a diplomat but also as a circus attraction yeah so like you had like there's this very famous portrait of oh my that was done in i think it's 75 that used to be hanging in the national gallery um they also had people first nations people from uh the americas that came over around the same time as

well so like the these people were like in the uk and like in europe being treated like dignitaries and being treated with respect and obviously like this is kind of before modern conceptions of racism were invented by the italians well i mean they they stick to what they're good at um yeah we're like oh my was originally from uh ralatayan island which is like today french polynesia and he was treated as a dignitary. He had his portrait painted. But at the same time, he was treated as an aristocratic party favor. And what is more surprising is that he didn't die from some horrific European turbo disease he wasn't previously accustomed to. But we're going to revisit him in a second because he plays a role into what happens to Cook. because he plays a role into what happens to Cook. Now, at this point, Cook has been forced to retire at the Greenwich Hospital. He was kind of lauded as not only being a great explorer, but a good ship captain, because he was famous for not losing a single man to scurvy,

which was dropping sailors left and right back in the day, despite the fact it was very well known and forgotten and then relearned the diet with citrus and acids would defeat scurvy this being you know lemons lime and sauerkraut like you need acids in your body somehow i'm just like shocked that i didn't get scurvy in college like how do college students not get scurvy i don't think i ate a vegetable for like three years see the the factories that pump out like instant noodles make sure to put like a drop of lemon juice in them so college students don't lose all their teeth and die honestly nutrient fortified ramen noodles is a

million dollar idea perfect for uh for college students and sailors um what if we like rebrand mres and sell them to college students i feel like that just huel a bit of a tangent i drank huel once and i felt like i was trying to swallow vomit i mean does it taste like something you would imagine called huel tastes like because like it like the original just like it's essentially just a smoothie well now they have done like you know meal replacements that's kind of meant to be like a soup and it just like looks disgusting like huel a portmanteau of human fuel i cannot imagine something more disgusting to put in your body i'm going to remark it like the loaf that they give to inmates as punishment as some grind set meal like i i used to work in a pharmacy

years ago and for anyone who has or has had a family member or someone they know who has like a long-term illness or is going through something like cancer treatment you'll be familiar with these drinks ensure plus they're kind of like four fortified little small milkshakes that like are designed for people who have trouble eating or like holding down food or need like nutrient dense stuff and they don't taste bad generally yeah but they like they're meant to taste like, you know, they're flavored like chocolate or strawberries. They're meant to be kind of this sweet thing.

And some tech bros have just rebranded, you know, nutrient drinks for cancer patients, for dudes who don't want to get up out of their coding chair every 12 hours. I've never had Huel or what was the other one? Soylent or whatever. But, like like i can just imagine they taste awful and if you say that they'll be like well that's the point bro like you just you just need fuel for your for your posting brain or whatever like just eat a eat fucking food like a normal person eat a banana eat it's more like it's more this this shit is more expensive than an actual meal eat eat a yogurt like i did before we started recording but like huel

it's up there on my hate list with crossfit you know we're building a ranking i forgot to eat and now i'm curious of the caloric intake of vape juice now um speaking of things that you shouldn't put in your body actually the opposite that you should put this in your body um cook was famous like i said for having none of the sailors lost his scurvy and one of the ways he did that was by like sitting down and eating sauerkraut in front of his men to be like look i eat it too but that wasn't enough uh for a lot of people like this shit's disgusting get it away from me um so he would just beat the fucking shit out of them until they agreed to eat the sauerkraut and therefore lost nobody to scurvy it's like look i tried this the gentleman's way

now i'm gonna do it the navy way which is whipping you to shreds until you do what i'd tell you to do like everyone goes on about imagine showing death grips to a victorian child imagine getting one of these guys to eat kimchi dude it would blow their minds in the best way possible uh it would be great then came cook's third and final voyage cook used his connections to get out of retirement and back out to sea in order to find the northwest passage between the atlantic ocean and the pacific by way of the arctic ocean though publicly that was not the mission instead it was to return our friend oh my back to his home island in french polynesia which is today french polynesia the guy had been kind of sort of kidnapped back in 1767 and spent the last couple years doing what we said not dying of some weird

european disease he was not previously accustomed to and was now ready to go back home on february 2nd 1778 cook found hawaii for the first time according to him landing near waimea on the island of kawaii where there was a peaceful meeting between the two people, and he was able to trade for food and water. As it was normal, we've talked about in other expedition episodes, like it was most of the time they used these island stops because like they needed food and water. They couldn't possibly carry everything that they needed.

They'd also need like wood because ships sucked and constantly fell apart. Yeah, you're applying the ship of theseus theory in real life he then left went around alaska to find the passage he originally set out for and returned nine months later in january of 1779 now he was doing a deadliest catch in in you know in the fucking 18th century god that'd be funny i mean i can't like so many people die fishing for crabs in the bering strait bering sea now imagine how many people would die back then in like shitty wooden boats yeah i mean like a whole crew catching a different set of crabs but now this ended up being a very important time to show back up on the hawaiian islands it was the

makahiki or the hawaiian new year season that both Lono, the high god of the Hawaiian native religion, and to celebrate and honor the yearly harvest. This is where some weird shit comes up. Now, according to historians, not the majority anymore, but for a long time, the Hawaiian saw Cook to be a reincarnation or representation of the god Lono himself. Depending on which reason you read, this is because he returned during the festival twice in a row. And according to belief, allegedly, Lono would circumnavigate the islands every year and return during this period. Cook ships had white sails and Lona was oftentimes depicted as carrying white banners. Furthermore, the place where he landed the second time, the Kealakekua, was the center of political power within the Hawaiian world at the time where virtually every Hawaiian

leader would show up during this festival to take part in games and rituals. Or so the common story goes. However, this ignores a lot of facts. For one, Cook wasn't Hawaiian, nor did he speak any kind of Polynesian language, which probably would have been a red flag for any true believers in this religion. Like, why can't our gods speak to us? Furthermore, none of the evidence of this comes from actual hawaiian sources rather it comes from specifically european sources more specifically than that cook's crew themselves namely one man william bly the future captain of the hms fucking bounty who we have talked about before who uh you are coming on my show to talk about this week

the guy who started Incest Island like you know Pitcairn Islands we're still coming for you baby I think it behooves a 18th century age of sail

crew to view themselves as you know the white god of the Hawaiian islands yeah and like I consulted with someone who teaches Hawaiian history at the University of Hawaii about this and she kind of said this almost certainly didn't happen

maybe when they saw the ships out at sea they're like holy fucking shit it's lono like he's come but then like these british dudes who speak zero polynesian dialects at all come ashore they're like nah it's just fucking cook again like they knew him it definitely comes from like one of the shipmates like being in a tavern when they got back to england and be like yeah you know i sailed around the world and we got to we came back to hawaii they thought i was god you know like so uh where's your chamber and like remember they've met europeans before

they've met british people before other hawaiians have met cook crew. Spaniards have shown up, assimilated in the islands, and spread syphilis like wildfire. So it's not like this is some weird, never heard of, never seen of thing. Now, like I said, it is possible that people at least at first did see Cook's approach as some manifestation of Lano in human form

or some kind of sign for some short period of time. I don't want to discount that possibility entirely, but whatever happened, it's pretty clear that Cook and his crew immediately proved they were in fact not Polynesian gods, but rather fucking assholes on a ship and immediately wore out any kind of welcome or perceived godhood yeah there's just some like dude called miguel who's been there for 50 years and he's like i know these fucking people they come to my they come to my village every fucking summer. He's like, buenos dias. You know, welcome to Hawaii. Please, you know, get off the ship.

Enjoy some coconuts. Respect the island. Cook looks at him. He's like, wait, aren't you the guy that fucked my wife in Malaga? Hey, didn't I see you last time in Andalusia? Now, at first, since there's already some familiarity between the two, they got on doing what they normally did, trading. However, things quickly got dumb. Ships constantly need repair while at sea, and these ships had obviously gone quite a distance.

They need things break. They need to be repaired with wood, Cook insisted that only a certain kind of wood would do, and specifically, the kind of wooden fence that surrounded the local burial ground called a morai, which was, of course, considered a sacred place where they put their dead, and this is the only wood that they could use. Now, Cook offered hatchets in exchange for the wood and according to John Ledyard an American on board cook ship the Hawaiians relented like being good hosts but it was very fucking clear that they were very angry

like they're like we're gonna accept this fucking Howley's gift but I swear to God swear to fucking God bro now they further shit on the religion uh by refusing to acknowledge the rank of the local chief known as the ali nui now remember these chiefs were considered a certain level of divine and by not acknowledging their rank like this is like yeah

fuck your religion fuck your burial ground what what else can I do around here to make you hate me? Now, for the next 19 days, the men of the HMS Resolution and the HMS Discovery did everything they possibly could to infuriate the people of the Big Island of Hawaii. They took food and water, barely offered anything in return. A new unknown disease swept through the local population who the hawaiians rightfully said this had to have come from the europeans and then they started giving nails to women to try to convince them to have sex with them which is something they did on tahiti and figured it would work here this infuriated the local hawaiian population even more yeah no really good gambit you know like when you're in the gate when you are a guest in someone else's house you know take off your shoes

be polite you know don't don't offer roofing nails in exchange for a handjob yeah you know like be respectful if you want a handjob at least you know talk to them first you know, like, be respectful. If you want a handjob, at least, you know, talk to them first, you know, try and maybe form some sort of connection with them. Don't lead with, here, do you want some nails? Do you want to rub my penis? Hey, baby girl, I had to stop by Home Depot before I came over here. Like, because they had done that in Tahiti and other islands, and they figured all the Polynesians are exactly the same. This will work. This did not go over great.

Then when the ocean current took away a small boat from the resolution, hilariously called a Jolly Boat, Captain Charles Clerk, captain of the HMS Discovery, accused the local chief of stealing it and then refused to apologize him when it drifted back to shore. Finally, on February 6th, the ships picked up their anchors and fucked

off, having pissed off every single person they had come across. Then the two ships got caught in a hell of a storm, breaking the foremast of the resolution and causing them to retreat back into the bay for repairs. Ooh, this is not going to go well. Nobody was happy about the return.

Ledyard wrote in his diary, remember Ledyard's The American Aboard Cook Ship, quote, Our return to this bay was disagreeable to us as it was to the inhabitants. We were equally tired of one another. They had been oppressed and were weary of our prostituted alliance. It was also equally evident from the looks on the faces of the natives, as well as every other appearance that our friendship was now at an end, and that we had nothing

to do but hasten our departure to some different island where our vices were not known. Fuck's sake. Yeah, they know they're fucking assholes, too, is the incredible part. Oh, fuck's sake. Yeah, they know they're fucking assholes too is the incredible part. Oh, fuck's sake. As soon as they tried to get off the ships, the Hawaiians came out to the bay and began chucking rocks at them, making it clear that they absolutely did not want them there.

Like, hey, that's the fucking guy who tried to fuck my wife in exchange for some roofing nails. Get out of here. Oh, I hate these guys so much. Don't worry. Justice is coming soon. However, for some reason, the men aboard the boats didn't take the hint and they stayed. Not able to get the things they needed to repair their ship,

Cook orders the bay, the main trading hub, for the entire big island, and remember the big island at this point is the hub of Hawaiian power. And it would remain that way until King Kamehameha moved the capital to Oahu. So, quite some time from now. Yeah, you know, like, you got a big island,

you control a big island, that's more important than smaller islands. Well, well said said island big aka which means power big so they blockaded the entire bay to force the local uh chief into compliance ala nuia obviously the hawaiians got even madder and soon they are sneaking out into the bay to steal things from the sides of the ship as a middle finger to the crew. Because remember, they can navigate this bay

like the back of their hand on small boats and just rip shit from the sides. Eventually they snagged a boat from the resolution, actually stealing it this time, and carried it ashore, hiding it somewhere inland on the island. This is when Cook did just about the dumbest thing he possibly could have done.

He decided he was going to kidnap the local chief in exchange to get his boat back. Oh, this is not going to go well. Like one of the best seafaring populations, and you think that being what, a couple of hundred meters out of the bay is gonna save you spoiler alert it does not on february 14th valentine's day 1779 cook took a group of a dozen or so armed marines ashore and marched directly into the nearby village barged into the chief's house and they demanded that he come with them and force them out of the house at gunpoint. At that point, he began to march him again with a musket to his back

toward the beach with the goal of bringing him aboard their ship and forcing the Hawaiians to give him back what they wanted and what they stole under threat of execution. As they were doing this in the morning, in broad daylight in the middle of the village at the chief's house, it did not take long for other people to see what was going on, including the chief's wife, who ran off after her husband, demanding to know where he was going and telling him to come back. A large group of people then began following Cook and his marines with their hostage towards the beach. This include the chief's kids who, because you know,

they're kids and didn't understand what was going on. Then sat down inside of Cook's boat that he had took to shore thinking Cook was going to take them all to his ship in the bay because they had previously done so like, Oh, we want to go see the big boat. You know, they're kids.

Yeah. The chief's wife and these children's mother then demand they get the fuck out of the boats but being kids they didn't listen when that didn't work the chief's wife told her husband to stop before cook took the kids too at that seemed to be what the chief needed to hear so he's literally just plopped out on the sand refusing to get up and cooperate further like you know like if the the encouragement of having a musket at your back when there are literally probably what like 100 200 people crowding around you ready to you know save you is not a great motivator because like what you have

six muskets or flintlock pistols you shoot shoot them. What? It's going to take you two minutes to reload them? Look, you got them in the first volley, but that's all you're going to get. Yeah. Then a coconut-wielding priest appeared, chanting and singing. Yeah! This stopped Cook in his tracks, probably having no idea what the fuck was going on. But when he turned to see the priest doing his best i don't know monty python horse galloping sound that is when he

realized that there's not just the angry family of the chief confronting him thousands of armed hawaiians were now surrounding the beach fuck yeah at this point cook is like this has spiraled out of control i can't win this and he abandoned the chief on the beach who i assume was still sitting crisscross applesauce refusing to budge ordered the marines to hold the hawaiians at gunpoint and attempted to slowly back away onto their boat that is when kana aina chief, ran forward and shoved Cook to the ground just in time for Na'ua, one of the chief's attendants, to jump on top of him

and stab him with a dagger. Now, funny story, this dagger, he had previously traded from one of Cook's own men. Then thousands of Hawaiians surged forward, many of them armed with sick-ass weapons known as liomano, or a club that was lined with shark's teeth so you'd get club-stabbed at the same time.

The marines closer to the boat said, fuck this, jumped on them, and left everybody else behind as a few others' mansions fire before being smash stabbed to death with club shark tooth weapons of doom. Kana Aina was killed in the shooting as were a few other Hawaiians while four marines died before they could get on the boat. And, you know, no one sure how long it took Cook to die

but it's thought of as being pretty immediate. That's too quick. It's too quick for me. He got stabbed with one of his own daggers and had his skull caved in by a club lined with shark's teeth. I hope it was worth the boat, bro. Yeah, getting beaten to death with clubs and coconuts. Fuck yes.

This is what he deserves. This is where things get kind of strange. William Bly, noted asshole, which we've talked about, said in their intense hatred and savagery, the Hawaiians carried Cook's body ashore, where they then cut it to pieces. Well, okay, this did actually happen, but not for the reason that Bly or most Europeans thought.

Despite how much of an asshole Cook was and how much the Hawaiians fucking hated him at this point, the Hawaiians still respected Cook as a leader and gave him the fuel rights and rituals they would have given to one of their own of a similar rank. The bones were thought to contain their energy or mana, which would then be turned into a religious icon, not unlike the saints bones

were treated during the middle ages in europe though eventually the hawaiians did give the bones back to the british they could chuck them into sea for traditional naval burial which is considered more respectful for some reason yeah you know the polynesian war culture in terms of like when you defeat your opponent is generally like you treat the remains of your opponent with the same respect that you would want your body treated so like

it's not surprising that you know they at least like alright you can have the bones back we don't care anymore fuck off. Yeah they would have done the exact same thing to their own Alianui like this is what we do for people in a position of leadership. I'm sorry you fucking Puritan

just want to huck his body into the sea for some reason. Who's the real savages? That's the question. The British. The answer to that question is always the British. For then and forevermore. Of course, the British would not take any of this lying down

or accept that, yeah, Cook earned his death. Ships returned to Hawaii and shelled the islands in revenge, killing dozens of islanders. Nobody's entirely sure how many. Now, Cook's memory lives on in ways that most other monsters from history would be jealous of. He has five islands named after him, four mountains, several glaciers,

a minor planet, and a crater on the moon. But of course, the cherry on top of all of this is the town of Captain Cook Hawaii on the big island named after him. And there's also the Captain Cook Sugar Company

who opened a company post office there in the early 1900s. Yeah, like, honestly, I think there's very few people who have contributed more to bad history and bad historical research than Captain Cook. Now, you're probably wondering there must be some kind of movement to rename the town of Captain Cook or something in Hawaii. movement to rename the town of Captain Cook or something in Hawaii. And there is, there is a movement to change the name of the town with people rightfully pointing out. This was a town with its own name and history before it was renamed after

cook. Well, of course, others are claiming this is another example of cancel culture. The man claiming that is a Republican representing a, the town of Hawaii, Kai, Jean Ward,

who is a white man born in Ohio. So why is it always Ohio? Why is it always the Midwest? It's always Ohio. And that is the death of Captain James Cook. How do you feel? Joe, I've had this drop sitting on the deck for months, and all I got to say is...

R.I.P. Captain Cook, you fucking bitch! Rod in peace, you're fish food now, motherfucker! Woo! Woo! R.I.P. Captain Cook. Rest in piss. Rest in pieces. Rest in pieces and piss um there's there's also like a monument to him uh in the general vicinity of where he was killed which i have seen i haven't

spent a lot of time on the big island where i live in hawaii um it's it's it's an interesting episode of history because like it can be seen as a way for hawaiians to reject uh what almost certainly would have turned into a more colonial enterprise and the islands experience till sometime later when the americans showed up and then it's also treated as like look at this brave adventurer uh you know who got his ass smashed in with a fucking shark tooth club for me it's a great example of colonial hubris blowing up in some asshole's face which is why got his ass smashed in with a fucking shark tooth club. For me, it's a great example of colonial hubris blowing up in some asshole's face, which is why,

how we find it so funny. Now, Tom, we do a thing on this show called questions from the Legion. If you'd like to ask this question, Legion donate to the show, ask us on Patreon through DMS, through discord,

loaded into a large wooden ship and float it up to Tom's house where he will then smash your skull in with the Irish version of the Shark Tooth Club. I assume that's just a hurling club. Or alternatively, like, you know, put it inside a coconut and

beat Joe across the skull with it. I agree to your terms. Today's question is actually kind of simple. How are you guys doing? I'll give it a 5 out of 10. Had a good holiday, but

you know, the weather's shit. It's cold. If you listened to last week's episode, mental health isn't great, but we're getting through it i'm not not saying doing the like dudes it is what it is but you know doing everything i can to feel a little bit better uh yeah same um i am you know i'm having fun working um on a book series that should be out soon-ish.

I'm almost done with that. And I know it probably sounds kind of counterintuitive to say that I'm having fun at work and that is good for me. But when you write for a living, whether it be for this podcast or books, after a while, I love doing the show. I don't want anybody to think like, oh, Joe hates showing up to work every day or whatever. I don't. I love doing the show. I don't want anybody to think like, oh, Joe hates showing up to work every day or whatever.

I don't. I love doing the show. I actually never have a problem writing a script for the show because I get to write about things that are interesting to me. But on the author side of my life, what can start as an idea that you really want to do eventually tapers out very quickly when you're writing several hundred thousand words i mean it grinds to a halt sometimes this kind of sounds like a a problem of your own making joe for agreeing to write three books in a year for the second year in a row um and that is 100 true I look forward to finishing the series and not doing that again in 2024. My goal is to finish the series on a high note and then try to just do something for myself, not work on a contract, just write for fun again. again um because i love writing it's like one of the best stress relievers in the world outside the gym for me and that has kind of slowly eroded away over the last couple years i've just been

grinding out constantly so i have to like finding fun again um in in writing is is very important to me which i never have writing scripts for the show like i it's always a good time because i always look what i get to write about um but you know writing several hundred thousand words of the series that you originally didn't necessarily want to do um it's a great vote of confidence for new books i mean don't get me wrong i think i've done a lot of good work in them but i pitched the idea as a single book however i already had under contract that i would do a series that i had forgotten about the only person who enjoys writing at that pace is stephen king in the 80s and you want to know why he enjoyed that cocaine yeah the same reason anybody enjoys dance music um but you know i it's

not that i don't enjoy writing these books it It's that at a certain point, you kind of feel like you're slamming your head against the wall. Yeah. And you could be writing some of the greatest things that you've ever written, but that stops being fun. It stops being a stress reliever. And between the gym and writing, those are my two main outlets for stress relief and I guess you could call it self-care. And over the years, I've kind of let one of those turn into work. And it's not a good way to do something. So I'm doing better, even if I did forget to eat before recording today.

But that does happen. So yeah, that's how I'm doing. I don't know if i answered the question correctly you're doing you're doing i am existing so tom thank you for joining me today that is a podcast plug your show listen to beneath skin the show about the history of everything told through the history of tattooing if you enjoyed this episode we actually did i think it's in our first five episodes we ever did last year um about captain cook and specifically his relation to the history of tattooing um we have loads of episodes about the kind of strange and like kind of dark history that tattooing has with colonialism like we did an episode about um

native greenlandic tattooing by the inuit people we've talked about you know a little bit about you know tattooing in uh toroa with the maori people and we actually have an episode coming out at some stage in the near future with a maori tattoo artist talking about the history of Talmoco yeah if you like hearing about Captain Cook getting his ass beat maybe check out Beneath the Skin and if you wanted maybe you're a newer listener and you didn't know that we've kind of talked about

Bly before go listen to our episode on the Bounty Mutiny and the history of the Pitcairn Islands it'll let you kind of better understand why we are discounting most of what that man says and if you like what we do here consider supporting us

on Patreon we make everything we do here possible $5 a month gets you several bonus episodes a month gets you every episode early it gets you 5 plus years of bonus content, Discord access, and all sorts of other goodies. And until next time,

put teeth in a wooden club and attack Captain Cook.