The Rest Is History - 381. Captain Cook: To the Ends of the Earth

Episode Date: October 25, 2023

Cook has been sent by the Royal Navy to the Pacific to track the transit of Venus from Tahiti, but also with a second, secret mission: once he’s reached Tahiti, he will go on to search for the great southern continent, Terra Australis. Encountering Tahitians, Maori and Aboriginal Australians, Cook and his crew develop relations with them which will often turn sour. Join Tom and Dominic in the second part of our series on Captain Cook, as they delve into his exploring of the Pacific, his relationships with indigenous peoples, the behaviour of Joseph Banks and the Endeavour’s crew, stories of goats and kangaroos, and much more. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. I can't spell it right. So you just give a fake name, your cafe name, Julia. But the more you use it, the more it feels like you're in witness protection. Wait a minute. What kind of espresso drinks does Julia like anyway? Is it too late to change your latte order? But with an espresso machine by KitchenAid, you wouldn't be thinking any of this because you could have just made your espresso at home.

Shop now at KitchenAid.ca. Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission, to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before. Ah. Oh, Jesus.

Ah. Anyway, so that is, Dominic, the introduction to Star Trek. I know you're not a fan. Definitely not a fan now. But why have we begun an episode on Captain James Cook by introducing Captain James Kirk? And the answer is because Gene Roddenberry, who obviously came up with the idea of Star Trek, was a massive, massive fan of Captain Cook. And Captain Kirk is modeled on Captain Cook. And Captain Kirk is modelled on Captain Cook.

And the Enterprise is the Endeavour. And Mr. Spock is Joseph Banks, the science officer. I should apologise to the listeners for what they've heard. William Shatner, of course, is himself a man with very dubious audio background, isn't he, Tom? Because he did those terrible cover versions. So did Leonard Nimoy the ballad of Bilbo Baggins yeah Bilbo yeah

no we don't need to hear it thank you save that for the club members Tom so yes I'm just so sorry about all that however let's

pick up from where we were last time we're talking about the life and times of Captain Cook and specifically his first voyage to Australia

and New Zealand but could I just add on the Star Trek thing it's not just the great thing and times of Captain Cook and specifically his first voyage to Australia and New Zealand. But could I just add on the Star Trek thing? It's not just, I mean, the great thing in Star Trek is that Captain Kirk and his crew on the Enterprise, when they're going across space, have to bear in mind the prime directive, which is a charge not to interfere with alien civilizations, not to give them their technology and things like that. And that again is a concept that derives from the challenges that face Captain Cook. And just as Captain Kirk throughout Star Trek cheerfully ignores this, so he'll kind of go down and get out his laser gun and blow things up and get off with aliens and all kinds of things. This is an issue

as well for the crew of the Endeavour, is it not, throughout this voyage? It is indeed, and we're going to get into this almost immediately. So if you remember from the last episode, Captain Cook has been given the mission of going off to Tahiti to establish an astronomical post to observe the transit of Venus. And if you want to know the astronomical details of this, the rationale for it, you obviously would listen to our previous podcast. Yes. Well, you spelt that out in immense detail. Yeah.

Very clear. Very clear. Good. But also, of course, he has these secret sealed instructions, which is that if he discovers the fabled great southern continent, Terra Australis, then he is to claim it for Great Britain. Because of course, hanging over this the whole time is the fear that some other European rival, not least the French or perhaps the Spanish, will get there first. And so that sort of sense of urgency, I think, there is a sort of low-level urgency there the whole time. So we ended last time with Tierra del Fuego. They leave Tierra del Fuego and the people covered with seal oil, and they sail out into

the unknown, into the Pacific, and they pass all these sort of little islands and atolls. They got into the Pacific on the 21st of January, 1769. And they're at sea for months, huge stretches of time pass where effectively nothing happens. To understand Cook's mentality and the challenges of life on the Endeavour, you have to take into account the fact that everything takes so long. There are long periods at sea. It's very, very cramped. It's incredibly cramped.

Very difficult conditions sometimes, storms. However, they do have milk because they have their goat. They have their goat. So the goat is now halfway around its second circumnavigation of the world. So the goat is more experienced than any of them, actually. Yeah. But on the 11th of April, Tom, they reach Tahiti. Some of them think this could be part of, this could be the sort of northern part of

the great southern continent, which of course it isn't. And Tahiti, of course, is famously beautiful. And Joseph Banks says, the scene we saw was the truest picture of an Arcadia of which we were going to be kings that the imagination can form. So, I mean, that's immediately, it's an Arcadia and we're going to be the kings in it. But actually, Tahiti is not Arcadia. It's not an Eden because it has its own history. It has its own dynamics. And part of those dynamics are the fact that actually Europeans have been visiting it quite a lot. So Endeavour is the third European ship to arrive in Tahiti within the previous 18 months. And so part of what the fantasy is that this is virgin land, that the Tahitians are unspoiled by contact with the outside world. They're not at all.

What's more, that guy who had sailed before, Samuel Wallace, he had told Cook, hadn't he, before Cook left, he had said, you have to be careful of a couple of things first of all as is always the case when you stop at an island the locals will want to trade with you and your men will want to trade with them and in particular the locals will want iron yeah so they want nails they want nails again this is the kind of the prime directive thing of don't give your technology to the people that you meet with so that always has to be very strictly regulated because it can soon tip over into thieving into arguing into quarrels all this kind of stuff so that's one thing you also don't want to be have your men stealing from the ship stores to sell things to the locals or giving them weapons for example yeah and secondly an issue that

runs right throughout this you'd mentioned captain kirk getting off with aliens there is always a sort of sexual dimension to this isn't there so there is throughout all of these voyages there is the issue of all these men who've been cooped up um on the ship absolutely desperate to get out and interfere with the local women and there is money to be made there are nails to be gained there is money to be made. There are nails to be gained. There is iron to be gained from either the local women effectively selling themselves to the sailors or their husbands, fathers, whoever, effectively. I mean, I hate to say it, Tom the course of his various voyages, he returns to various places and discovers that the sexual economy is becoming more and more sophisticated and is horrified by this. And the other thing that horrifies him, and again, this is a kind of running theme throughout all three of the voyages that he does, is he's terrified that Europeans will introduce venereal disease. And this again

is a kind of running anxiety. So I think it's telling that when the endeavor arrives at Tahiti, basically everyone takes a Tahitian lover except for Cook himself. And we don't know why. He never says. So it could be that he is committed to his marital vows. He seems to have been very devoted to his wife. But it could also be that it's expressive of his horror at the idea of the risk of contaminating Tahitans or all the other native peoples that in due course they'll meet with with venereal diseases or it could be that it's just you know he's making a statement of the fact that he is above yeah the rest of the crew that he's holding on to his discipline that he is the captain and he has to uphold kind of points of difference i mean it could be all three of course tom but i think that last point offers the most sort of acute insights Cook. Cook is a man throughout whose self-control, his self-discipline, his status as the captain, all those things matter enormously to him. He never really lets himself go, does he? Until his very final voyage, which we won't

be doing this week, we'll be doing perhaps next year, where he does start to unravel a bit under the pressure. But in this point, he regulates himself just as he wants to regulate his crew and the world, actually. So in that sense, he's not Captain Kirk. He does do his best to uphold the prime directive. And weirdly, there is a kind of quality of the prime directive to his instructions from the Royal Society, who are absolutely clear that he is not to cause trouble, that he's not to interfere. He is supposed to simply observe. And of course, basically, that's impossible because you can't just turn up and be neutral. And this, of course, is one of the great discoveries of anthropology, the European science of anthropology, is that you

can't just observe. The very process of observing changes societies. And right from the beginning, these interactions are always pregnant with danger, aren't they? There's always the possibility of misunderstandings, of arguments. You know, when they go ashore for the first time, Joseph Banks' kind of crony, Dr. Salander, sort of Swedish scientist, and the ship's surgeon, a guy called Monkhouse, they discover on that first trip ashore that their pockets have been picked and they've lost some opera glasses and a snuff box and that issue of things being taken which to the sailors seems so outrageous and cook seems so outrageous that runs right through all the voyages and the different attitudes to kind of private property and arguments about theft in particular i mean these massive spoiler alerts. Yeah. These are going to dog Cook to the very last day of his life. And Cook is, on the one hand, he's very cognizant of his instructions from the Royal Society

that he should not interfere in any way. At the same time, he's aware of his dignity and status as a captain of a British ship and never doubts at any point that he has to make clear to the people that he's visiting the awesome power that he commands as an officer, that the people that he is visiting have to be left in no doubt what the firepower of Britain is. And there's an inevitable tension there. It's difficult for Cook to negotiate, clearly. Well, there's an altercation quite early on. Somebody steals a musket, or a Tahitian tries to steal a musket, and the Marines are ordered to open fire, which they do, and the culprit is

shot dead. And even at that point, Banks actually says, that was very foolish to fire on them. He says, if we quarrel with these Indians, we wouldn't agree with angels. Sidney Parkinson, who is the artist, he says, what a pity that such brutality now, of course, these are his words, what a pity that such brutality should be exercised by civilized people upon unarmed, ignorant Indians. So there you have the condescension, obviously, the towering condescension of the Europeans, but also a sense of regret that their monopoly, their far superior technology and their powers of violence, they're never far from being used. And that quite often Cook and other officers will resort to

violence because they feel that they need to lay down a marker and to draw a line. And of course, that comes at a cost. But this is the pressure on Cook as the captain. I mean, he has to negotiate these shoals, whereas Banks, for instance, doesn't. And so Banks is actually having, he's having a lovely time on Tahiti. I mean, he has one problem is that the artist that he's brought, a man called Alexander Buchan, shortly after they arrive in Tahiti, has an epileptic fit, goes into a coma and dies. And Banks is distraught at this, not because Buchan has died, but basically because it's like losing his iPhone shortly after going on holiday. He doesn't have anyone to take the equivalent to

photographs. So he's very upset about that. So he says, his loss to me is irretrievable. My airy dreams of entertaining my friends in England with the scenes that I am to see have vanished, which makes very clear what the cause of his grief is. But he's having a wonderful time. So for instance, he sees something sensational that no European has seen before. If they have, they haven't described it. And he says of this extraordinary Tahitian custom, we stood admiring this wonderful scene for full half an hour. Do you know what that was? I do because I've seen the notes. Go on, tell the listeners. We stood admiring this wonderful scene for full half an hour. Do you know what that was? I do, because I've seen the notes.

Go on, tell the listeners. So this is when the double canoe arrives, is it? No. Oh, I'm looking at a different part of the notes. It's surfing. Oh yes, of course, the surfing. Joseph Banks is the first to observe surfing. Yeah.

So I think this is the second time we've mentioned surfing in the rest of history. The first time, of course, being Agatha Christie, who was a keen surfer. that's right but banks watches it you know he sees surfing and he's transfixed by it and i'm sure that if he'd stayed there longer he would have taken it up he'd been an excellent surfer so tom what i thought you were talking about was the um moment when banks is approached by a double canoe with a men and um yes well this is also a great moment men and some women the man gives Banks some plantains and some branches, and then they spread these sheets on the ground. One of the women comes forward, and then as Banks puts it, what does he say?

She unveiled all her charms. She gave him a most convenient opportunity for admiring them by turning herself gradually around. She takes all her clothes off, and she sort of bears her buttocks to him and does this three times doesn't she yes three times and uh and then the cloth on which she did this is presented formally presented to banks and uh he says that he then took her and another woman to his tent and to both of them i made presents but i could not prevail upon them to stay more than an hour so very captain kirk so what happened in that intervening hour yeah and so this is um them I made presents, but I could not prevail upon them to stay more than an hour. So very Captain Kirk.

So what happened in that intervening hour? And so this is, you know, Banks obviously assumes that this is kind of sexual exhibitionism. And it's reports like these that when they get back to Europe will convey a sense that Tahiti is a home of free love and it will be interpreted in all kinds of ways. Nicholas Thomas, in his wonderful book, Discoveries, offers a different interpretation of it that I think sounds more plausible to me. His argument is that what the woman is revealing is not her private parts, but the decorations on her skin, which are kind of markings, patterns, all over her buttocks and over her private parts. And she is demonstrating by the fact that she has these,

that she is of sufficient age to embark on negotiations over the selling and the buying of cloth and other things. So essentially what she's doing is she's presenting her kind of business qualifications. Her credentials. Yes. It's like a kind of MBA. And of course, these markings on her body are also something that will have a huge impact on Cook's crew in due course on the Royal Navy and ultimately on society back home in England, because the Tahitian word for these markings is tataau, and Banks transcribes this as tattoo, thereby introducing the word tattoo into the English language and in due course into lots of other European languages as well. So this is why, Tom, Royal Navy sailors are associated with tattoos, thanks to Cook and his... Yeah, because over the course of the voyage, again and again, the kind of Polynesian peoples that Cook and his crew are seeing have these tattoos.

And they become more and more impressed by them. And they end up thinking, well, you know, we quite like a bit of this. And so they go back and this then generates the fashion. So by the end of the 18th century, you know, a tattoo has become the marker of a sailor. Tom, you don't have any tattoos, do you? I don't. I mean, it's not generally a historian. The historian Dan Jones has tattoos. He has loads of tattoos. Actually, Dan Jones is probably the only historian in Britain who doesn't have any tattoos, do you? I don't. I mean, it's not generally a historian. The historian Dan Jones has tattoos.

He has loads of tattoos. Actually, Dan Jones is probably the only historian in Britain who doesn't have his own podcast. But he does have tattoos. But he does have lots of tattoos. So maybe you should do a podcast about them. So surfing and tattoos. Yeah. Banks is all over that.

And of course, he's being a cad with the ladies. He's being a cad. I mean, whether he's playing his guitar for them, I don't know. Cook assumes, doesn't he, that his men will have got venereal disease from the natives, actually, from the Tahitians, because he says after a few weeks, 24 seamen and nine out of the 11 Marines have all got disease. And he thinks it's venereal disease.

But actually, it's not. It's something called yaws. Do you know what yaws is? No. It's a very infectious disease, which apparently was endemic all over the Pacific. So you get sores on your body and stuff. Okay, but it's not venereal? No. It's a very infectious disease, which apparently was endemic all over the Pacific. So you get sores on your body and stuff. Okay, but it's not venereal.

No. However, talking of venereal things, Tom, what a lovely link. Yes, wonderful. Very well done. Back to science. On the 3rd of June, the much-anticipated

transit of Venus happens. And they're able to take all their measurements. That all goes very well. They now know how far apart things in the solar system are, which is wonderful. A job well done. And Cook is ready to celebrate.

And then he discovers that his own men, so this is the theft thing, his own men have broken into the ship's stores and stolen 120 pounds of nails to sell to the natives, to the Tahitians. And I'm assuming they've done this in return for sexual favours, Tom, because you would guess that's what they want in return, wouldn't you? Yeah, I guess so.

There's a lot of thefts. There are muskets, pistols that are stolen. But Cook is really trying to patrol that. So there's a butcher who kind of threatens a Tahitian woman and he has him very publicly flogged. Yes, he does. It's a challenge, I think, to keep all these balls in the air, as it were. His reaction to this shocks some of his men. So for example, when he finds that all this stuff

has been stolen, like a rake and a water cask, he rounds up a whole load of canoes and he threatens to burn them. And his hard line with the people of Tahiti worries some of his men, whereas Banks doesn't approve of it, for example. Now, you said Banks, it's easy for him to say that because he's not facing these kind of dilemmas. But the danger is always that a European overreaction will then provoke a reaction from the locals. And of course, that's the issue that Cook contends with in the very final days of his life in his third voyage. It is.

But in Tahiti, I mean, he does establish good relations with lots of people on Tahiti. You know, it's carrot and stick, I guess. Yeah. You know, we always perceive these encounters now. We see them as damaging, traumatic, all of these kinds of things. But there is an element, isn't there? These encounters were tremendously invigorating to people on both sides. If you're somebody who likes novelty, who is curious about the world, there is always a degree of ambiguity and uncertainty about them.

But clearly Cook himself, he finds these encounters exciting. And Banks absolutely does. So Banks is, he's out there all the time. He's kind of watching, you know, looking at tattoos and inviting ladies into his tent to negotiate over cloth

and studying the rituals and, you know, inquiring about the traditions and trying to work, you know, compile dictionaries of Tahitian and English. He is really fascinated by it and can kind of plunge into that in a way that Cook can't because Cook has so much else on his mind. I guess that the tension in what you were talking about,

the fascination that Tahitians have with Europeans and that Banks has with, and the other Europeans have with Tahitians, is notoriously exemplified by something that happens on the 12th of July. So that's the day after the transit of Venus, where Banks records that one of the islanders, a man called Tupia, wants to come with them, that he wants to see the world on the endeavor. And Banks says that he might keep him as a curiosity, as well as some of my neighbors do lions and tigers at a larger expense than he will probably ever put me to. It's a statement that seems emblematic of everything that people today would disapprove

of the Enlightenment project, that it's acquisitive and it reduces other people's to the status of objects. And I think there is a kind of aspect of that. But equally, when you read Banks's journals, the delight that he is taking in people who likewise are taking delight in him, I think is evident as well. So the complexities of it, it's not good or bad. Yeah, I agree with you. There are all kinds of shades of complexity there. I agree with you. It's an ambiguous relationship. And actually, the words I just scribbled down were

condescension and curiosity. And those two things are always coexisting so of course the europeans cook and his men regard themselves as civilized and they regard the people of tahiti as backward i mean there's no doubt about that yet at the same time it's not pure it's not just a condescending, patronizing relationship. They also are absolutely fascinated by all the rituals, by all that stuff. They are seeing things that nobody in North Yorkshire has seen all this stuff that Cook is seeing. And also, the Rousseauian idea that all the clutter and the impertinences and the inquisitiveness of European proto-capitalist civilization is something to be cast aside. There's a kind of innocence that the Tahitans embody, which again is a fantasy. It's kind of ignoring the complexity

of the dynamics in Tahiti. But as you say, it's a very, very complicated relationship, kind of matrix of paradoxes. But you see that in both with Cook and Banks, don't you? That there's part of them that is drawn. Yes, and will become increasingly drawn over the course of the voyage. Yeah. So we should probably take a break, Tom, because we haven't got to our destination. We're not really remotely near our destination, which is New Zealand and Australia. But we will get there after the break and discover what Captain Cook

made of those two splendid places. So we will see there after the break and discover what Captain Cook made of those two splendid places. So we will see you after the break. Chiara, it means smart in Italian. Too bad your barista can't spell it right. So you just give a fake name, your cafe name, Giulia. But the more you use it, the more it feels like you're in witness protection. Wait a minute.

What kind of espresso drinks does Julia like anyway? Is it too late to change your latte order? But with an espresso machine by KitchenAid, you wouldn't be thinking any of this because you could have just made your espresso at home. Shop now at KitchenAid.ca. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman.

And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Hello, welcome back to The Rest Is History. We are boldly going with Captain Cook and he has been on Tahiti. He's witnessed the transit of Venus and it's all been a bit of a mess, but he's seen all kinds of wonderful and extraordinary things on Tahiti, but that stretch of his mission is done.

And now he opens his sealed envelope that he's been given by the Admiralty. And in it, he is given the specific order that he has to go and discover Terra Australis Incognita. that if you shall fail of discovering the continent before mentioned, you will, upon falling in with New Zealand, carefully observe the latitude and longitude in which that land is situated and explore as much of the coast as the condition of the bark, the health of her crew, and the state of your provisions will admit of. So off they head to New Zealand for that reason. So Tom, they know that New Zealand exists because Abel Tasman had sailed around New Zealand or around parts of New Zealand in 1642, but he had been discouraged from landing because he'd been worried about the locals, the Maori, hadn't he? um work out how to handle when he arrives on the shores of new zealand but before they get there dominic on the 25th of august um attentive listeners may remember that in the previous episode i mentioned that uh banks had packed some cheshire cheese oh yes ask of porter

and the reason he'd taken that was to mark the anniversary of their departure from england so on the 25th of august he takes the Cheshire cheese from his larder. He taps the cask of Porter. And as Banks himself says in his journal, it proved excellently good so that we lived like Englishmen and drank the healths of our friends in England. Oh, that's nice. That's nice, isn't it? That's a lovely note. So anyway, replenished with Porter and cheese, they glimpsed the shores of New Zealand on the 7th of October, 1769.

So this is from Parkinson's Journal. He says, about two o'clock in the afternoon, one of our people, Nicholas Young, surgeon's boy, described a point of land from the starboard bow at about nine leagues distance,

varying west and by north. We bore up to it, and at sunset, we had a good view of it. We regaled ourselves. In the evening upon the occasion, the land was called Young Nick's Head, and the boy received his reward. So this is the North Island of New Zealand,

and they end up landing at a place that they call Poverty Bay. And actually, right from the start, they see people, don't they? They see Maori who run away from them at first. And at that very first landing there is a confrontation so their party kind of splits up there's some of them by the boats there's some of them that have gone to look at the huts on the way back to the ship cook and the hut people the hut team they hear shooting and they get back and they discover that the men by the boats have fired shots at a group of ma Maori who are advancing with spears at them

and they have killed the first Maori so it's the first Maori to die at the hands of Europeans who is a chap called Te Mauro um and that that kind of you know the interactions with the Maori are much more difficult should we say than those with the people of tahiti right from the outset aren't they tom yes but in a way kind of the counterintuitive aspect of cook's attitude to the maori is that he he seems to have admired them hugely so he's very upset about what happens about the killings, and is very, very anxious to establish relations with them to try and repair the damage. But he also recognizes, I think in the Maori, a quality of independence, a kind of quality

of heroism that he really admires. And in due course, there'll be brushes with cannibalism and all kinds of things. And Cook will consistently attempt to explain how and why the Maori do what might to European eyes seem shocking actions. And you can see over the course of his writings about this particular stretch of voyage and his interactions with the Maori, how his understanding of, I suppose, a kind of form of cultural relativism, a kind of a recognition that his understanding as a European is only one way of seeing the world, that does often seem very modern. Yeah. Remarkably, he's curious. I think Cook wouldn't have been Cook if he wasn't curious in the first place. He would never have left North Yorkshire. He would never

have gone away to sea. He'd never joined the Royal Navy, all of those things. But he doesn't stop, as it were, educating himself. He's interested in the world. The day after that first violence, he and his men land again. They find a big party of Maori now,

about 100 people, who dance at them. They brandish their weapons, distort their mouths, lolling up their tongues and turning up the whites of their eyes. So this will be familiar to anyone who's watched the All Blacks. The All Blacks, exactly.

The whole are accompanied with a strong horse song, calculated, in my opinion, to cheer each other and intimidate their enemies and may with propriety be called a dancing war song. It lasted three or four minutes.

So this, as Tom says, if you watch the All Blacks rugby team, the New Zealand rugby team, perform the Haka before a match, this sounds remarkably like it. Now they have this guy from Tahiti, Tupia. Who is the guy that Banks had said, you know, I'll keep him as a curiosity. And an extraordinary thing that they can use Tupia. This is denying Tupia's agency, isn't it? I mean, that's the thing that Banks may think that he's bringing him as a curiosity, but actually to Tupia. Tupia's being incredibly intrepid and yes it's the endeavor that's the curiosity yeah that's true but they

can use him as a translator this is an extraordinary boon for them but also a stunning revelation to cook of the fact that tahiti is a long way from new zealand i mean it's a very very long way and yet clearly the same people who who in New Zealand linguistically are related to the people in Tahiti, which can only mean that they've sailed there. And so again, that is something that is eye-opening for Cook, the realization that his voyage of discovery, traversing these vast expanse of the ocean, Europeans are not the first to do it. Polynesians have done it.

And that again, I think is enhancing his sense of respect and admiration for the peoples that he's meeting. Yes. He gets Tupia to tell them, we are their friends. We've only come to get water and trade with them. And that if they offered to insult us, we could with ease kill them all. So there you have the combination, you see. He wants to be friendly, but we could kill you. But Tupia told us plainly that they were not our friends and told us several times to take care of ourselves and that that

confrontation too ends in violence so cook and banks have brought along some beads and some nails um which they offer to the maori one of the maori steals a sword the british fire at them to try to disperse them banks is using a birdshot, which won't kill you. But the Marines eventually end up firing their weapons, and again, one of the Maori is killed. Later on, a mad thing to do, Cook's men try to capture a Maori canoe so that they can assure the canoeists that they mean them no harm. And as a way of capturing the canoe, they start shooting at it and kill four people.

Yeah, this is very Captain Kirk. Yeah, and as Cook's biographer Richard Hoff says, to kill more than half a canoe load of intended detainees in order to cultivate a friendship with the natives appears to be an unbalanced calculation. Yeah. Which I think is fair enough. But actually, interestingly, they feel great remorse

about this. I mean, I'm not excusing their behavior by any means, but they do feel remorse. Banks says, the most disagreeable day my life has yet seen. But again, it's not just that they're feeling remorseful at the casualties that they've inflicted. It's that they, or certainly Cook, is feeling hugely impressed by everything that he's seen. So I mentioned about the cannibalism. So they start to go up the New Zealand coastline, don't they? Starting to chart it. And Hoff calls this one of the great achievements in the history of hydrography. So I'll take his word for that. But in the course of this voyage, they keep coming across evidence of cannibalism one of the

sailors says saw one of the indians with the arm bone of a man eating the flesh from it uh several canoes alongside with indians one of which had four men's heads with the hair on and flesh very green they had dried them in the sun about three or four days one of which mr banks bought inevitably that's very banks behavior very banks Banks behaviour. But Cook, he says, notwithstanding they are cannibals, they are naturally of a good disposition and have not a little share of humanity. It's this sense that Europeans don't eat people, Maori do, whatever. Those are the customs of the world. I think it's important to say with the violence, his instinct is never to use violence initially. I mean, that's not why

he's come, is it? Actually, the Royal Society have specifically told him. They absolutely have. Do not land and start shooting the natives. I mean, don't forget, we'll be talking about, as we said last time, we'll be talking about Cortez and the conquest of Mexico. Those stories, which are only, what, 250 years previously, are very much in the minds of Europeans in the 18th century. And they're what Cook wants to avoid. And they're what they want to avoid, the black legend of Spanish sadism and corruption and all this kind of thing. And people like Cook think of themselves as better than that. They think, well, we're not the 16th century Spaniards. We are civilized, kindly people, enlightened people.

Now, of course, they don't always live up to their own ideals, but they have a sense of themselves as not wanting to... They do, as you said, Banks used that word Arcadia about Tahiti. They do have a sense of this as a kind of lost Eden and one in which they don't want to willy-nilly interfere with the locals. Do you think that's fair, Tom? Well, so I think Cook is caught between two senses of responsibility. So as we said, he has these instructions from the Royal Society, don't fire, don't inflict violence. But at the same time, Cook, as an officer, is responsible for his men and is kind of determined to use force to demonstrate to people who might otherwise attack and kill his men that this is foolish. And I think he clearly feels, I mean, we know he does because he kind of hints at it in his journals. He's very anxious returning to England, that he will be judged badly by the Royal Society for this,

that they will feel that he's failed because of the casualties that he's inflicted. But equally, he feels responsibility to his men. And that's the kind of the tension that he's wrestling with the whole way through. Anyway, that's New Zealand. So he has taken possession of it in the name of the crown. So above Queen Charlotte Sound, which is the very top of the South Island, kind of facing the harbour of Wellington, facing the North Island, Cook has built a cairn and he has hoisted the Union flag and he's taken formal possession of it.

I mean, not that any of the locals are listening. In the name of Queen Charlotte and of the King and for the use of his majesty, they've all drunk Queen Charlotte. That's George III's wife's health. A local Maori, an old man has come with them and is the only person to watch the ceremony. And they present him with the empty bottle. That's nice. And he apparently is delighted with this gift, delighted with it, and goes back home with his trophy. They circumnavigate both the islands, the North Island and the South Island. But they don't, I mean, whenever they land,

there's always complications, aren't there? They haven't had the kind of relationship at all that they had on Tahiti. By the time they've circumnavigated it, which is March 1770, they're all keen to get on. Banks says the men began to sigh for roast beef, which is very 18th century conduct. And so now they're going to set off and set their course westwards towards what they regard as New Holland. Of course, they don't call it Australia then,

because they think Australia is probably going to be something else, don't they? They still think there might be another continent. So they leave- It's a shame it wasn't called New Holland, really. Oh, no, I think it's better as Australia. New Holland would be ghastly placed on. We'd never hear the end of it from you. I'd love it. Yeah, you and the real Tom Holland.

So they leave New Zealand, 31st of March, 1770. Two years now they've been away. And for two weeks they sail. Then they see the first signs of hints of land from the birds that are flying above them so birds that stop in the in that sort of perch in the rigging that they know must be land birds and then on the 19th of april 1770 a chap called zachary hicks climbs up in the the rigging he's always been very keen to be the first to see land and at six o'clock he shouts out land ahoy and this is the moment that uh it was that lovely reading wasn't that song their very first episode yeah cook

recording in his journal that they have finally spotted the eastern coastline of new holland and cook's intention he will call it new south w. I think it's still unknown why South Wales. Do you know why it was called South Wales? No, I don't. I mean, no offense to South Wales, but it's not the first part of the British Isles that I'd name Newland after. Interestingly, and this will please our Kiwi listeners

and offend our Australian listeners, Cook says of Australia, visibly worse than the last place we were at which was of course new zealand that's great news for new zealanders isn't it it's not long before they start seeing signs of human habitation so they see uh smoke rising from fires and then in due course they that you know they go ashore because they need wood they need water and so on. And then they meet the Aboriginal inhabitants of Australia. And what's amazing about them is, say, unlike the Maori, certainly unlike the Tahitians, they show no interest whatsoever.

So Cook writes, No one was once observed to stop and look towards the ship. They pursued their way in all appearances, entirely unmoved by the neighbourhood of so remarkable an object as a ship must necessarily be to people who have never seen one. And it's kind of expressive, clearly, of a determination on the part of the Aboriginal inhabitants of Australia to have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with these peculiar people who have turned up and started raising flags everywhere. So to use your Star Trek trek parallel it's as though an alien spaceship descends on you know chipping camden and the people just don't even carry on they just

carry on and say nothing had happened so when they finally arrive at what ends up being called botany bay so that's the 28th of april 1770 they sail along the shore they see people stark naked spearfishing doing their thing on the coast those people don't look up at them cook anchors the ship he goes inland and banks describes how then they're quite close to some huts and he says soon after this an old woman followed by three children came out of the wood she carried several pieces of stick and the children also had their little burdens she often looked at the ship but expressed neither surprise nor concern she lit a fire and four canoes came in from fishing they landed hauled up their canoes and began to dress their fish for dinner to all appearance

totally unmoved at us yeah and banks and cook who are so curious themselves about other people and other places are completely bewildered by this attitude from the Aboriginal Australians. But of course, Banks does have other things to keep himself busy, namely all the flowers that he finds in what comes to be called Botany Bay. And it has to be said that in general, the naming of places by Cook and his expedition, I mean, they're terrible. Poverty Bay. Poverty Bay. Yes. West Bay. Ship Bay. Cape Farewell. I mean, terrible names.

But Botany Bay is an excellent name, isn't it? Yeah, I think it's only an excellent name because we're used to it. Don't you think? No. I mean, if what if banks had been a historian, you'd call it History Bay. Yeah, but there's no history. But there's loads of flowers. So Botany Bay is great.

Anyway. There's no history. Tom, that is the cancellation remark. Finally. No, no. I mean, there's no kind of evidence of history. It's not like there's a history museum or anything, but there's loads and loads of plants. So it's a botany bay. It's not a history bay. Well, anyway, they go ashore. The first man ashore is called Isaac Smith. So Cook lets his

wife's nephew be the first person to go ashore, which is nice. They go ashore and they do try to communicate with the Aboriginal Australians, butians but pretty unsuccessfully so they're throwing gifts of beads and nails and the aboriginal men throw rocks at them yeah so it's not going well or indeed in one case some of the fellows throw a couple of spears and as all as so often the way cook resorts to shooting muskets or small shot at them they They collect some spears. They collect some artifacts. Banks starts to get very interested in the local fauna, doesn't he? Because he finds the tracks of what is probably a dingo.

Is that right, Tom? Are you familiar with dingoes? Yeah, we'll be coming to this. He does in due course see a dingo, but first they have to sail on their way. And so they head from Botany Bay northwards and they run into the Great Barrier Reef, don't they? Oh, they get stuck. They get stuck.

That's a very Star Trek episode. Kind of like the Enterprise getting stuck in some. That's a filler episode. You've run out of cash. You haven't got the budget for more actors. Yeah. They end up kind of ripping a hole in the ship and they have to go in and amend it.

And I mean, very, very, I mean, they come very close to complete disaster. But while they are repairing their ship, they do, they kind of establish better relations with the Aboriginal peoples. So apparently the first time when a European learns the name of an Aboriginal person is on this occasion. And the Aboriginal person was called Yaparico, if the introductions were properly understood. You know, for the first time, they are kind of communicating. And famously, you talked about animals. There is a conversation about a peculiar beast, which Cook describes as the full size of a greyhound and shaped in every respect like one with a long tail, which it carries like a greyhound and shaped in every respect like one with a long tail which it carries like a greyhound in short i should have taken it for a wild dog but for its walking or running in which it jumped like a hare or deer that's cook on this strange animal banks describes

it to compare it to any european animal would be impossible as it has not the least resemblance of any i have seen and Cook and Banks asked the local Aboriginal people, well, what was this animal? And the Aboriginal person replies, and this is the anglicisation of his reply, kangaroo. And so they, Cook and Banks, would call it as a kangaroo. Now, it's often said that Cook had misunderstood what was being said and that the Aboriginal person perhaps was saying, I don't know, what? Can't you speak in my language? Or something like that. But apparently, so I'm quoting Nicholas Thomas here, not only is kangaroo in fact a close transcription of the Googie Yimmy-deer word, but the Endeavour voyage word list of

some 60 terms is regarded by the most expert contemporary scholar as generally accurate." Oh. So that's good. So apparently a kangaroo really is a kangaroo. That's good. And it's at this point that Banks sees a dingo and he also sees a flying fox. These first interactions with the local inhabitants actually, the remarkable thing is that when you read Cook and Banks' recollections, that spirit of curiosity i would say is i mean the condescension

is always there but it's much less pronounced than one might expect so this is about the first um that first dinner that they have with aboriginal people they invite them for dinner and the aboriginal people actually refuse but cook says their features were far from disagreeable their eyes were lively their teeth even and white their voices were soft and tunable and they repeated many words after us with great facility and actually he goes on to say doesn't he he thinks they have a tremendous life yeah so cook says from what i've said of the natives of new holland they may appear to some to be the most wretched people upon earth but in reality they are far more happy than we europeans being wholly unacquainted not only with the superfluous but the necessary conveniences so much sought after in Europe. They're happy in not knowing the use of them. They live in a

tranquility, which is not disturbed by the inequality of condition. So again, that's the kind of the Rousseau idea that this is the natural condition of happiness that humans have. And it's expressive, I think, of a sense that Cook is groping towards, that this is why they're not paying any attention to the ships and the trinkets and the things that they're giving, that they don't need them. And that therefore, this is the basis of their happiness. Yeah. They covet not magnificent houses, household stuff, et cetera. They live in a warm and fine climate and they enjoy a very wholesome air. So they have very little need of clothing. And then they say, when we gave them cloth,

they weren't bothered. They have no use for cloth. And actually, Cook doesn't say this in a contemptuous way. He's fascinated by them. No, he's admiring of it. Yeah, fascinated by it. So Tom, they leave Australia on the, they leave the north tip of Australia

about the 20th, 22nd of August. And then where are they heading next? They head off to Atavia, which I think is Jakarta. It's very, very rife with malaria. They all fall terribly ill. And then they head off to Cape Town and they all get dysentery. So this is very unfortunate because Cook has looked after his men so well the whole journey. And then I think kind of 30 or 40 men die of disease on that stage of the trip.

But they ran Cape Town, head up to England, and they spot Land's End on the 10th of July, 1771. And they anchor off deal on the 13th of July. And that's it, they're home. They're back. Yeah. Hurrah. So they are greeted with considerable approbation when they return. Cook dines with Benjamin Franklin, dines with James Boswell, who is, of course, the biographer of Samuel Johnson, who is very impressed by the news of the kangaroo. And Boswell records an extraordinary evening with Johnson where he impersonates a kangaroo. Nothing could be more ludicrous than the appearance of a tall, heavy, grave-looking man

like Dr. Johnson standing up to mimic the shape and motions of a tall heavy grave looking man like dr johnson standing up to mimic the shape and motions of a kangaroo he stood erect put out his hands like feelers and gathering up the tails of his huge brun coot so as to resemble the poach of the animal made two or three vigorous boons across the room so i love that i love that image of dr johnson bounding across the room um he is uh cook is presented to the king by the first lord of the admiralty so that's um lord sandwich i think it is yeah lord sandwich considering cook's background this is amazing but dominic do you know the crew member that is garlanded with the greatest honour. Is it by any chance, Tom, Joseph Banks? It's not Joseph Banks.

It's not? Wow. Who is it? It's the goat. Oh, thank you. Of course it is. So the goat has now gone around the world twice. Yeah.

It's the first goat ever to do that. And it's lauded as the most famous goat in history and is garlanded with honours. So the British government votes the goat a pension. The lords of the Admiralty give her the privileges of an in-pensioner of Greenwich Hospital. And this is the only time that such an honour has ever been given, not just to any goat, but to any animal full stop. The Royal Society gives her a silver collar and she is put out into a lovely field where she can sit there with her lovely collar nibbling away and is very happy. Dr. Johnson, when in due course the goat dies, writes a eulogy to her in Latin, but this is the translation.

In fame scarce second to the nurse of jove this goat who twice the world hath traversed around deserving both her master's care and love ease and perpetual pasture now has found that's so moving but tom theo our producer is asking the key question that will have occurred to many of our listeners is the goat referred to just as the goat or does it have a name? It does have a name, but we don't know what it is. No one ever says. Oh no. So it just has to be referred to as the goat. The goat, like David or George. Very good. I think that cheapens the memory of this heroic. It does. It's a very unfair comparison. Wayfaring goat. So Tom,

Cook obviously has two more voyages to go and we will come to those won't we we will come to those and we'll probably do them at some point next year and there are perhaps i think it's fair to say more ill-starred certainly the third one is much more ill-starred than the first yes the first is the one that is legendary because it is the first moment where it's the first moment that an englishman has glimpsed the coasts of Australia and New Zealand and set foot on Australia and New Zealand. And of course, that will have incalculable long-term demographic and geopolitical consequences. And this is the reason why Captain Cook is seen as an embodiment of the evils of colonialism.

Yes. Why his statue- Captain Crook, he's called. Why his statue is controversial. His statue in Hyde Park in Sydney, for example, is controversial to this day. And yet the picture that emerges from these two episodes, I would say, he's not Hernán Cortés.

He's not Cortés at all. He is not a greedy man, a rapacious man. And of course, he does raise the British flag over both those places, Australia and New Zealand, and claim them for the crown, which some of our listeners may say, oh, that's disgraceful behavior. But his prime motivation is the thrill of curiosity and of discovery, isn't it? Do you not think? I suppose the thing is that he knows, and the Admiralty know,

that someone is going to claim it. Some European power is going to claim it. And so I guess his attitude would be, we might as well be Britain as anyone else. He's an Englishman. I mean, of course he's going to think that. That's the 18th century cast of mind. He sails up and then he moves on. I mean, he's not planting colonies. He's not leading armed expeditions into the interior. And of course, it's not Cook who proposes that Botany Bay be used as a convict settlement. That is actually Joseph Banks who does that. Basically, Joseph Banks, even though he never goes back to Australia

and spends all his time in England, he's advised the British government on colonisation policy in Australia. So it's probably Banks rather than Cook that should be more in the firing line. I think Cook comes out of these voyages very well. Yeah, you've become a real convert, Cook, haven't you? You texted me about two weeks ago and said you found Captain Cook terribly boring and you were feeling very miserable. I think he is quite boring. I mean, as an individual, I think he is quite boring because he's so kind of close. But I think the scale of his achievement, I mean, you just have

to think yourself back into a world where you don't know where you're going. You have no real sense what's out there. You are responsible for a ship full of men. You have to negotiate with people that you have no real idea who they are, what they are, what language they're speaking or anything. I think in that context, the scale of his achievement is incredible. Yeah. He's a man of science above all, Cook, isn't he? He's a man of the Enlightenment. I think that's the thing that is often missing. But I think that he out-thinks the Enlightenment, and I think that's what's moving. He comes to think outside the box of the Enlightenment sense of superiority, that a philosopher can accurately frame all the variety and multiplicity of the world within a

single system. I think he starts to recognise that the European sense of a system must be inadequate to embrace the complexities of what he's seeing. And I think that that is what is moving about it. His sense of how rich humanity is evolves over the course of his voyage. So for our Australian and New Zealand listeners, we will be with you in person. The Cook and Banks of contemporary podcasting. Of podcasting. We'll be with you in person in November.

Frankly, Tom, I cannot wait. No, I can't wait either. I absolutely cannot wait. This very morning, Tom and I were discussing our trip, our forthcoming trip to Hobbiton in New Zealand, a place of which Captain Cook and Tracer Banks could never have dreamed. But I'm sure they would have loved it. So we will be with you listeners next week, but we will be seeing some of you in New Zealand and Australia very, very soon. Actually in the flesh.

So we're looking forward to that hugely. So thanks so much for listening to this. And in all kinds of ways, we will be seeing you very soon. Bye bye. Bye bye. be seeing you very soon. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman, and together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews,

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