Voyages of Discovery (2006): Season 1, Episode 2 - The Making of Captain Cook - full transcript
CRASHING
One night nearly 250 years
ago, a ship ran aground
on a treacherous reef
in the Pacific Ocean.
Water poured in through
her wooden hull, threatening
to sink her and drown
all those on board.
The ship that faced a watery grave
appeared to be nothing more than
an unremarkable coaling vessel
captained by an unknown commander
on an obscure scientific field trip.
But this ship had a secret mission, one
that would redraw the map of the world
and make a hero of her
undistinguished leader.
The ship was called the Endeavour and
her commander was Captain James Cook.
This is the incredible story of one of
the greatest sea adventures in history,
a voyage that would transform James Cook
from a naval nobody into a national hero.
SEA SHANTY BEING SUNG
♪ Hang all politicians
Hurray, boys, hurray
♪ It makes work for morticians
Hurray, boys, hurray... ♪
Two-and-a-half centuries
after his adventures,
Captain Cook is a household name.
But the story is often misunderstood.
People think he discovered New
Zealand and this place - Australia.
But in truth, he didn't.
But his story is no less remarkable.
As an explorer myself, I'm
astonished by his achievements
and I want to tell you
the real story of Captain Cook.
The Endeavour sailed from Plymouth
on the 26th of August 1768.
It was the Age of Enlightenment,
an era of intellectual ferment.
Huge advances were
being made in the fields of
science, literature and
the exploration of the globe.
Officially, the Endeavour was
on a scientific mission
to measure an astronomical
phenomenon - the transit of Venus,
the rare moment when Venus
crosses in front of the sun.
If successfully observed, these
measurements would enable astronomers
to calculate the distance
between the Earth and the sun,
a figure which could
then be used to measure
the dimensions of
the solar system itself.
The ship's orders
were to measure the transit
from the middle of the South
Pacific, the other side of the world.
But this wasn't the only
reason for the mission because,
on board, was a second
set of secret instructions.
These sealed instructions contained
the real mission of the voyage.
No-one, not even the ship's commander,
knew where they would lead them.
The 94-man crew reflected
the spirit of the age.
As well as an astronomer,
the Endeavour included
in her ranks two
scientists and two artists.
They were all under the command
of James Cook.
Of course, today,
James Cook is world famous,
but at the time of the Endeavour
voyage, he was a complete unknown.
In fact, Captain Cook wasn't even
a captain. He was a lieutenant.
In the Royal Navy at
the time - 1768 - there
were 300 captains and
over 900 lieutenants,
which shows you how far down
the naval hierarchy he really was.
Indeed, Lieutenant Cook appeared to
be a surprising choice for the mission.
His career had begun inauspiciously,
as Cook himself wrote.
I am a man who has
not the advantage of
education, nor natural
abilities for writing,
but one who has
constantly been at sea from
his youth as apprentice
boy in the coal trade.
After a decade on board the coaling
ships of northeast England,
Cook enlisted as an
able seaman in the Royal
Navy, rising to the
rank of ship's master.
12 years on, he had never made a
voyage as long as the one now proposed
and had commanded nothing bigger
than a humble schooner.
Cook faced a problem
that held him back - class.
Cook was a farmer's
son from Yorkshire, not the
right candidate for the
class-obsessed Royal Navy.
This is why, by the ripe age of 40,
he hadn't risen up the ranks
and why the Admiralty,
after picking him to
lead the expedition,
kept him at arm's length,
refusing to promote
him to captain. They
gave him the responsibility
but not the rank.
They ultimately chose Cook
because, working class or not,
they knew he possessed the skills that
made him perfectly fitted to this mission.
He proved himself to be
a skilled navigator and surveyor
and, more appropriately, had
developed a fascination with astronomy.
For Cook, this expedition
was his chance to prove himself.
At last, here was the opportunity
to reveal his talents,
to show that class was no barrier
to achievement.
That's good, lads.
But it was a huge challenge.
To carry out his mission,
Cook would have to
navigate his ship to the
other side of the world,
battling treacherous seas
and dangerous currents.
It's a beautiful day
in a flat, calm Sydney Harbour.
What's it like to sail these
boats in rough weather
on big passages? You've
made those passages.
Well, you get all kinds of weather.
You get this sort of weather
round the Tropics
in the southern latitudes.
In the high latitudes, it's cold,
rough, the ship rolls heavily.
You have to be up the mast sometimes
when it's rolling, pitching violently.
And of course, in Cook's day,
they would have had no back-up.
If we recreated this journey, we'd
have modern comms and navigation.
We would always know
we had some back-up.
A long way from home,
no communication. Like
a ship lost in space.
Couldn't call Mum.
To make things worse,
the Endeavour sailed alone.
It was usual for ships
on these journeys to
travel with support
vessels in case of trouble.
What's more, she was
just a basic, workmanlike
coaling vessel.
Certainly not glamorous.
As she plodded south,
she looked like the most
unlikely ship in the world
to be making history.
As if that wasn't enough,
there was the question
of whether Cook could
even sustain a crew fit
enough to sail his lone
ship across the world.
Can you imagine 100 men crammed together
on a small ship like this, 100ft long?
Conditions below must have been
appalling, let alone the smell.
Disease was rife. And even
though Cook was incredibly
strict about keeping his
men and the ship clean,
there was one disease that
cleanliness couldn't prevent - scurvy.
Over the years,
Cook has been acclaimed
as the man who discovered the cure
for the terrible disease of scurvy.
But in fact,
it's not quite so simple.
The true story goes back centuries.
Scurvy was the scourge of the navy.
It was a particularly gruesome way
to die.
Gums bled, teeth fell out,
limbs seized up...
ulcers broke out,
old wounds reopened.
And, most revoltingly, gum tissue
oozed out of the mouth and began to rot,
making the victim's breath stink.
Death must have come
as a blessed release.
Disease decimated crews.
In the 300 years before
Cook's journey on the Endeavour,
over two million sailors
had died from scurvy.
A captain could expect to lose at least 40%
of his men, a figure often rising to 80%.
Cook was faced
with a massive problem.
Very little was known about scurvy
and there was no agreement as to
what caused it or what might prevent it.
Some believed it
was caused by bad air,
thickening of the blood,
lack of oxygen, sadness
or even the fat being skimmed off
the boiling pots on board ship.
The treatments were even more
bizarre -
bloodletting, bathing in
animal's blood or having
the poor victim buried
up to his neck in the sand!
Of course, none of them worked.
Hi, Nigel. Hi, Paul.
Nice to see you. Come on board.
Astonishingly, some people had
stumbled upon the real cure for scurvy
during the previous 200 years.
Who were these people that found
the cure for scurvy?
A Dutch physician in the middle of
the 17th century had noted a cure.
And then, with the East India Company
ships coming across the Indian Ocean,
there had been a fellow called
Woodall, who was a surgeon.
He had noted one of the cures
round about 1636.
This was a long time
before Cook's voyage.
A long, long time. One of the
problems, of course, was that
these people weren't
just noting one cure. It was
one of a number of
things. It wasn't so clear.
What did Cook do on the Endeavour
to try and prevent scurvy?
He was told to take a number of
things which were meant to cure scurvy.
He took wort, which is a kind of an
infusion made from malt.
He took portable soup
which was like a large stock cube.
You mixed it with wheat
and served it as a gruel.
One of the main things he introduced
was this stuff - sauerkraut.
Pickled cabbage. Let's have a go.
Blimey.
Oh!
It's not the best! Particularly, if
you've got to eat it for three years!
Very much an acquired taste.
Cook hoped that his special diet
would work.
But making sure the men stuck to it
was no easy matter.
After two months at sea, some of the
crew had had enough of the ship's rations.
On the 16th of September, two men
rebelled against the rigid diet.
As Cook noted in his daily journal,
punishment was swift and severe.
Punished Henry Stevens, seaman,
and Thomas Dunster, marine,
with 12 lashes each for refusing to
take their allowance of fresh beef.
This punishment might seem harsh
for the crime,
but the lash was a regular part
of navy life
and the refusal to obey orders was
tantamount to mutiny.
This punishment shows how determined
Cook was to keep his men healthy.
He was essentially a
very humane man. Other
captains would have dished
out two dozen lashings.
In fact, Cook preferred
to use a bit of psychology
rather than the lash to get
the men to obey his orders.
The next time there was reluctance to
eat the diet, he came up with a great plan.
The men hated the sauerkraut
that he put in their diet,
so he took it off their menu and just
kept it on the officers' menu instead.
Of course, overnight, sauerkraut
became the most desired dish on board.
For such are the tempers and
dispositions of seamen in general
that the moment they saw their
superiors set a value on it,
it becomes the finest stuff in the world,
and the inventor a damned honest fellow.
Despite Cook's careful
diet, scurvy wasn't
completely banished from
the decks of the Endeavour.
The disease struck many
of the crew, including one
of the expedition's most
vital members, Joseph Banks.
Banks was a young,
fantastically wealthy playboy
who had effectively bought his way
onto the ship.
He had paid £10,000,
over £1 million in today's money,
for his place on board -
more than twice as much as the
official state funding of the expedition.
Approximately ten...
And all to indulge
his personal passion - botany.
Banks brought with him an
entourage of fellow botanists
and artists whose task
was to collect and study
the new plants encountered
on the voyage.
He also brought with him, as any English
gentleman would do, two greyhounds.
But right now, Banks's
whole project, not to
mention his life, was
threatened by scurvy.
At first he tried to treat it by
drinking a pint of wort each night.
But to no effect.
Then he tried another remedy...
"I flew to the lemon juice.
The effect was surprising.
"In less than a week,
my gums became as firm as ever
"and, at this time, I am troubled with
nothing but a few pimples on my face."
Banks has actually
stumbled across the cure for
scurvy - the vitamin C in
fresh fruit and vegetables,
particularly citrus fruits
like these.
But neither Banks nor Cook knew
really if they'd found the remedy.
They still saw the lemon juice
as one possible cure amongst many.
But as the Endeavour sailed on,
it became clear
that Cook's strategy was working.
Despite a few scares, nobody was
actually dying from scurvy.
In 1768, this was unheard of.
Cook might not have known about
vitamin C, present even in the sauerkraut.
But by enforcing his
rigid diet in the first
place, he was making
medical and naval history.
From the voyage of the Endeavour
onwards, the Admiralty recognized
the crucial importance of diet.
Limes became standard
on all British voyages -
hence the nickname limeys -
and deaths fell dramatically.
After five months at sea, the
voyage appeared to be going well.
Cook had scurvy under control
and the ship was making good time,
but they were still 8,000km
from the heart of the South
Pacific where they were
to carry out their mission
and the worst part of the passage
was yet to come.
The voyage was about to enter
its most dangerous part -
the treacherous waters around Cape
Horn at the bottom of South America.
These waters are regarded as amongst
the most dangerous in the world,
with big storms, huge waves,
fog and icebergs.
And Cook had to sail
right through them.
The Endeavour was battered
by fierce storms
and Cook was forced
to make three failed
attempts to enter the
waters around the cape.
Finally, on his fourth attempt, sailing
against strong winds and currents,
the Endeavour made it
through. Cook was beginning
to show the character
that would make him great.
Rod Fleck is Cook's
great-great-great nephew.
What kind of person
do you think he was?
I feel that he was very humane
and... he liked people.
He wouldn't do anything nasty to a
person. He had a gentle disposition.
Very reserved, quiet,
a kind and gentle person.
He had the natural ability, I feel,
to pick up things, to learn.
And, apart from that,
he could carry it forward.
There's a lot of people who learn, but they
can never go through and do the things.
That's what I feel he
had. That would really
help his credibility
as a leader of men.
Isaac Smith said - he went on a few
voyages with him, later Admiral -
he said that he was... feared but
loved by his crew.
Feared because of the lash,
but they loved him. That's it.
What more can you say
about someone like that?
As the Endeavour sailed on across
the Pacific, the seas became calmer
and the weather more tropical.
As the voyage progressed,
the ship made various stops,
which provided Banks and his party
with the opportunity to
collect new plant specimens
and shoot previously
unknown animals and birds.
Cook's cabin rapidly became flooded
with all kinds of strange and
unfamiliar plant and animal life.
Then, on the 13th of April 1769,
after 33 weeks at sea,
land was finally spotted.
Cook had arrived at the South Pacific
island that would hopefully make his name.
It was here in Tahiti
that he was to carry out
his mission and measure
the transit of Venus.
The Endeavour had arrived
in paradise.
This was a land of plenty
and sexual liberation,
where fruit fell from the trees and
beautiful women offered themselves freely.
But Cook had important work to do,
work that could potentially
widen our understanding
of the universe, and
finally prove his abilities.
Cook had successfully sailed halfway
round the world,
now he had to prove himself
as an astronomer.
He knew he had just one chance
of getting his measurements right.
Although he was just 1 of 77 observers
around the world measuring the transit,
he was the most important because he was
the only one in the southern hemisphere.
And that was the only
place in the world where you
could clearly see the
transit from beginning to end.
And as if that wasn't
enough pressure, the
transit of Venus is an
incredibly rare event.
It wouldn't happen again
for another 105 years!
Cook immediately began to prepare
for the transit.
But before work in Tahiti began,
he gave his crew
some highly unusual instructions.
You are to endeavour by every fair means
to cultivate a friendship with the natives
and to treat them
with all imaginable humanity.
Cook's orders
were extraordinarily radical.
In the 18th century, most explorers' idea
of co-operating with indigenous peoples
was to go in with guns blazing.
But Cook preferred negotiation over brute
force, making friends rather than enemies.
In the event, there was no need
for violence. The people of Tahiti
proved to be warm, open and
welcoming. Banks wrote lyrically...
If we quarrel with those Indians,
we should not agree with angels.
But the Tahitians did possess
one annoying trait.
It started as an irritation, but was to
escalate into something much more serious.
They liked to steal!
It was hard to keep them out of the
ship as they climb like monkeys,
but it was still harder to keep them from
stealing whatever came within their reach.
In this,
they are prodigious experts.
Metal was an especially attractive
commodity to Tahitians.
It wasn't long before all
kinds of things were going
missing, including snuff
boxes and opera glasses.
The Endeavour's store of iron nails
were an especially attractive commodity,
particularly once the
crew realized that a handful
of them could be swapped
for sex with local women!
But petty thieving soon turned into
disaster.
One morning, one of the most vital pieces
of equipment for measuring the transit -
the astronomical quadrant -
was discovered missing.
Without it, the measurement of the
transit could not take place.
Banks found out from a
local chieftain the name
of the thief and the
direction that he'd headed
and he set off running after him,
through the blazing heat and the jungle,
across the island, for 11 kilometers.
It wasn't long before great hordes
of Tahitians turned out
to see who would win
and what the outcome would be.
Eventually, Banks found
the quadrant discarded by the
side of the trail. The thief
had just thrown it away.
The stage was set
for measuring the transit.
The day dawned and the omens were
good. The skies were crystal clear.
As the thermometer rose
to 119 degrees,
Cook and his team of observers
trained their telescopes on the sun.
Astronomer Wayne Orchiston has
studied the astronomical mission.
I asked him how Cook measured
the transit of Venus.
Well, let me show you.
You've got the ideal T-shirt there.
We've got the sun there, and this
beautiful little nut will represent Venus.
We want to observe the transit of
Venus as it travels across the sun.
So Venus approaches the edge of the
sun, onto the sun...
and then exits the sun.
That transit from here to here
will take just over six hours.
To determine the transit accurately,
we record precisely
when Venus is just on
the edge of the sun but
outside it, on the edge
of the sun but inside it -
just touching the limb of the sun.
We call that first and second contacts.
The third contact is just as
it approaches and touches
the edge of the sun,
fourth contact as it leaves.
It's those four contact points
and their times that are critical.
We observe those by
looking through the telescope,
observing Venus as
it approaches the sun
and then, with the clock we've got adjacent
to the telescope, recording the times.
But as Venus crept in
front of the sun, Cook
realized he had a major
problem on his hands.
When Venus enters the sun,
once it gets to this point
- second contact - Venus
has an atmosphere round
it, so you see a hazy shadow.
And so it is very hard to know
when Venus gets right on to the sun.
As it moves further and further
onto the sun,
you end up with a little strip of
shadow linking the edge of the sun.
So when do you decide
that second contact has occurred?
Is it here, or here, or here?
When Cook compared the timings
of the transit, it didn't tally.
The measurements varied
by nearly a minute
and he needed them to be exact.
Now it seemed Cook had
traveled halfway round the
world, only for his
mission to end in failure.
But another opportunity
was about to present itself.
One even greater than the
measurement of the transit.
Cook's real mission
was only just beginning.
It was time to open
the secret instructions.
If achieved, these orders
would transform Britain
into the richest and most
powerful nation on Earth
and turn Cook into a national hero.
"You are to proceed to the southward in
order to make discovery of the continent
"until you arrive
in the latitude of 40
degrees, unless you
sooner fall in with it."
The real purpose of Cook's mission
was now revealed -
the discovery of the fabled
Great Southern Continent.
Hey, John. Thanks for letting me on.
Right, give me something to do.
Well, we need to get that out.
In the 18th century, it was widely assumed
that there was a Great Southern Continent,
somewhere in the South Pacific.
They were so confident
it was there, it was
as certain as the sun
and the moon exists.
It was even given a name -
Terra Australis Incognita -
unknown land of the south.
It was somewhere out there.
The notion of the Great Southern
Continent dates from the classical world.
The Ancient Greeks had theorized
about its existence in the 1st century AD.
By the Renaissance,
scientists argued that,
since the Earth was
spherical, there must be
a great land mass in the
Southern Hemisphere to
counterbalance the vast
continents in the north.
This was no ordinary continent.
By the 18th century, it was believed it
covered most of the Southern Hemisphere,
a far greater land mass than
anything we now know to exist.
All somebody needed to do
was find it.
This lost continent was imagined
to be a paradise on Earth.
A land overflowing
with natural riches.
Whichever nation claimed it first
stood to reap massive rewards.
Exploiting the continent's
vast riches and commanding
military and trading
routes in the Pacific.
It had become the Holy Grail
of empire and exploration.
This explains
why Cook's orders were secret.
The British Government
did not want their foreign
rivals to know there
was an expedition afoot.
What better cover for the mission
than a simple coaling ship
on a science expedition
to measure the transit of Venus?
The British Government wanted to get to the
southern continent first, and in secret.
In an era when undiscovered land
represented power and wealth,
there was intense competition
to find this elusive continent.
This globe shows us all that was
known of the world in the 1750s.
It was believed that the
Great Southern Continent
was somewhere round
here in the South Pacific.
It was even given an exact
location - 40 degrees south -
and a length - 8,000km long.
Cook's instructions were
to sail further south in
the Pacific than any man
had ever gone before -
40 degrees latitude - in search
of the Great Southern Continent.
And so the Endeavour's great
adventure into the unknown began.
Overnight, the mission
was transformed from a
scientific field trip into
a voyage of discovery.
Cook had been given a second chance, one
that would stretch his skills to the limit.
He was about to be really tested
for the first time in his life -
sailing into virgin seas.
Cook would need all his skills
as a navigator and leader
to sail his small wooden ship
and her crew into the unknown.
What really fascinates me
is how Cook navigated.
He crossed thousands of kilometers across
the Pacific that had never been charted.
He only had very, very basic
navigational instruments.
He had no accurate charts,
no land masses to get sights from,
no accurate way of measuring distance.
It would have been a huge challenge.
These days on long
passages, I've got a GPS, like
many people, a very
simple satellite receiver.
It takes in satellite signals
and tells me where I am.
I'm reading it now. "Ready to
navigate. Accuracy three meters."
Cook wouldn't have had
anything like this.
But what Cook did have
was his fascination with
astronomy, a hobby that
would now serve him well.
Cook measured the movement of the
sun, the moon and the stars with a sextant
and compared his readings
with tables of lunar predictions.
With some complex
calculations, he came up with
an incredibly accurate
reading for his longitude -
the ship's position east/west.
Cook was one of the first
sailors ever to determine
a ship's location with
such pinpoint accuracy.
Cook kept his course,
sailing ever further
south in search of the
Great Southern Continent.
The crew's eyes remained
fixed on the horizon.
There was an occasional false alarm when
cloud formations were mistaken for land.
After three weeks of sailing south,
the ship reached 40 degrees.
There was no sign
of Terra Australis Incognita.
With Cook's experience
of the sea, he could tell from
the swell of the ocean
and the trend of the currents
that there was no great
land mass anywhere nearby.
Cook's orders told him that if he couldn't
find the continent at 40 degrees south,
he was to sail west instead.
So the Endeavour changed course.
For a month, she sailed west.
Cook offered a gallon of rum to the
first person to sight the coast.
Still the continent stubbornly
refused to appear.
Then, on the 6th of October 1769,
at two o'clock in the afternoon,
an excited voice shouted out the words
that everyone had been longing to hear...
Land ahoy! Land ahoy!
Land had been sighted, and a single
substantial land mass at that.
It seemed that Cook had at last made
one of the greatest discoveries in history.
He'd found
the Great Southern Continent!
He went ashore to explore
this promising new land.
This land is agreeable
beyond description
and, with proper cultivation, might
be rendered a kind of second paradise.
The hills are covered
with beautiful flowering shrubs,
intermingled with a sort of
tall and stately palms
which fill the air
with a most fragrant perfume.
To the continent!
Joseph Banks was swept
by the romance of the discovery.
Much difference
of opinion and many
conjectures about
islands, rivers, inlets, etc,
but all hands seem to agree
that this is certainly
the continent we are in search of.
Cook began to fully investigate
this eastern coastline,
sailing north, painstakingly
charting the unknown land as he went.
As Cook sailed the northern tip of
the land and down its west coast,
he realized he was following
a stretch of coastline
that had been explored and charted
before - 130 years earlier.
You can see it - this little
squiggle in the South Pacific.
It was speculated that could have
been part of the Great Southern Continent.
Seemed that Cook had done it.
He'd found the Holy Grail.
At last,
success was in Cook's grasp.
But as the Endeavour
charted more of the
coastline, Cook was to
be sorely disappointed.
The Endeavour eventually
reached a stretch of
water which Cook christened
Queen Charlotte Sound.
He anchored and began to explore
the surrounding countryside.
When Cook was a boy in Yorkshire,
he grew up in the shadow
of Roseberry Topping,
a large hill that he
climbed all the time -
an entirely natural
thing for kids and
explorers to do - and
the habit never left him.
Sure enough, when he
arrived at Queen Charlotte
Sound, he went up
a hill to have a look.
And what he saw...
was just extraordinary.
There was a large stretch of water
between the land
he'd just sailed around and him.
Which meant it wasn't a continent
at all. It was just an island.
In fact, Cook had become
the first European to sail around
the land we now know as
the North Island of New Zealand.
He was about to discover
its South Island. But these
two small islands weren't
the great rich continent
that he'd been in search of.
This country, which
before now was thought to
be part of the imaginary
southern continent,
consists of two large
islands. As to a southern
continent, I do not believe
any such thing exists.
Cook had sailed across
the part of the Pacific where
the Great Southern
Continent was supposed to be,
and it wasn't there. The dream of
the great continent was in tatters.
Cook knew it would have been a lot
better if he HAD found the continent
rather than proved it
wasn't there. After all,
his masters desperately
wanted it to exist.
Yet again, the promise of success
had been snatched from Cook's grasp.
The discovery of the Great
Southern Continent would
have made Cook's name,
but he was not to be defeated.
He may not have found the continent,
but Cook was determined to seize
victory and discover other unknown lands.
He made a remarkable decision.
Cook knew that to the
north-west of New Zealand
was a vast land that had
yet to be fully explored.
Even though the Dutch had surveyed
the north, west and south coasts,
the vast Eastern coast had never
even been seen by Europeans.
It was called New Holland
and Cook proposed
that they survey the
whole length of it to
its northernmost point
and only then would they sail home
via the East Indies.
It was an extraordinary proposal,
over and above the call of duty.
Something in Cook had been awoken,
a hunger that would drive him
into the history books.
He was now gripped by a desire
to explore and discover.
And that's exactly how it happens,
it can't be denied, it's so powerful.
It happened to me
when I was 17, diving at
30m for the very first
time on a small wreck.
I just knew that this was all I
wanted to do for the rest of my life.
I was just so happy I'd left school,
so happy I hadn't gone to college
and I just wanted to get out
and explore.
I reckon something like that
happened to Cook at this time.
Cook sailed the Endeavour west,
again venturing into the unknown.
Then, 20 days after leaving
New Zealand,
the east coast of New Holland was
seen by European eyes for the first time.
On the 29th of April 1770, nearly
two years after leaving Britain,
Endeavour sailed into this bay.
Cook and his crew came ashore
and stepped onto these very rocks
and became the first
Europeans ever to land
on the east coast of
New Holland - Australia!
Cook might not have
discovered Australia, but
he was the first to
chart its huge east coast,
completing the map of the country.
And he was the first to claim
this vast, rich land for Britain.
What must it have been
like for the indigenous
people here to have seen
Cook and his men arrive?
It would have been like seeing
a UFO for the first time -
Unidentified FLOATING Object!
It came through the heads
and from its inside, these
strange ghost-colored people
would have came out with
colored clothes on, skins,
and sand-colored faces,
carrying these strange implements
like a funny shaped spear. It would
have been awe-inspiring to them.
What did Cook think of the local
people when he first got...?
I think Cook had some
very enlightened views.
He started asking questions. He
noticed all these strange animals
and was asking the Guugu Yimithirr,
"What's that?"
He saw this animal...
and the Guugu Yimithirr
said... looked at the kangaroo
and the Guugu Yimithirr
turned around and said,
"I don't know. Be
more specific. Be more
specific." So they called
this animal a kangaroo,
but in the language of the Guugu
Yimithirr, kangaroo meant "I don't know"!
Classic misunderstanding!
But it wasn't only new people that
Cook and his crew found in Australia.
Banks and his team soon found huge numbers
of important specimens of flora and fauna
totally unknown in Europe.
The great quantity of new plants
Mr Banks collected in this place
occasioned my giving it
the name of...
Botanist Harbour? Botanist Bay?
Botany Bay!
Doug Benson, a local botanist, has studied
Banks's work on board the Endeavour.
What did he collect here at Botany
Bay? He collected at least 130 species,
including this Banksia Serrata,
this Old Man Banksia,
which, unfortunately because it's
winter hasn't got its pale yellow flowers.
But it's a lovely plant. It's a
beautiful looking tree.
How much collecting did
he do on the whole voyage?
He collected something
like 30,000 specimens.
But that includes plants, birds,
insects, fish and so on.
What would you say
was his contribution to science?
I think he gets botany going.
He really provides this drive.
He is the most influential
botanical figure,
probably in Australia's
early history.
As a botanist myself,
it's rather exciting
to see that botany, er... features so
strongly in the early history of Australia.
It was this land that
Cook claimed for Britain,
an act that was
to change the course of history.
Though Cook's actions
were to make his name,
their legacy may not have been
in tune with his liberal thinking.
Of course, Cook is seen as being
the father of modern Australia.
But he played no part
in the colonizing of this land.
It was Joseph Banks' idea,
nine years after Cook's death,
that Botany Bay should be
the home of a penal colony.
The British became the first
European nation to settle this land.
And they sent cargo after cargo
of convicts.
Australia would never be
the same again.
The indigenous people round here,
those people had a structure.
They already had a political system,
a social system already set up.
They had education
for their children.
They had a 40,000-year structure
of living here.
They knew what to do with the land.
But in our perspective, not yours.
If that structure was so successful
for 40,000 years,
how is it it couldn't resist the
structure of the incoming Europeans?
You were the most powerful group of people
on Earth at that particular point in time.
You had better ships, you knew
the currents and navigation.
You had the weapon, the
gun - that funny shaped spear
that made a great noise
and killed birds and animals.
My people would have said,
"What the hell's that?!"
But you also came with your invisible
luggage - the attitudes and values.
You also brought racism
to this country.
On the 6th of May 1770, the Endeavour
sailed further north up the coast.
She'd been away from
home for nearly two years
and had traveled to the
other side of the world.
Surely Cook had now proved
his worth.
He might not have found
the Great Southern Continent,
but his ship was loaded
with discoveries that would
change our understanding
of the world for ever.
Maps of new lands,
astronomical readings
and thousands
of botanical specimens.
But, unknown to Cook,
ruin was lurking beneath the waves.
He had no way of knowing it,
but he was sailing towards some of the
most treacherous shallows on the planet.
Ahead of him lay the vastness
of the Great Barrier Reef.
This reef stretches
for a massive 1,900
kilometers along the
east coast of Australia.
It's so big,
you can see it from space.
And for a wooden,
18th-century sailing ship,
it was a disaster waiting to happen.
It's beautiful down here,
one of the most spectacular dives
anywhere on the planet.
But this beauty belies great danger.
The coral is made up of limestone.
It's hard as rock and razor sharp.
And if you look here...
..you can see how close the reef
lies to the surface.
In fact, at low tide,
it's virtually at the surface.
These days, modern ships have sonar
to warn them of shallow water.
But all Cook had was his eyesight
and a weighted rope.
You could imagine what it would be
like to try to see this from above.
Especially at night.
It would have been
virtually impossible.
At 11 o'clock in the evening
of 10th of June 1770,
Cook was asleep in bed as the
Endeavour made her way slowly northwards.
Success appeared finally to be
within his grasp.
CRASHING
The Endeavour had
crashed into the Great
Barrier Reef, bringing
her to a sudden halt.
Scarce were we warm in our beds when
we were called up with alarming news
of the ship being fast
ashore upon a rock, which she
convinced us of by beating
violently against the rocks.
Our situation now
became greatly alarming.
The reef had punctured a hole...
right in the hull of the ship.
Water was pouring in.
But the worst problem was that the ship was
pinned onto the reef and wouldn't budge.
Unless Cook could get the ship off,
it would be wrecked
and the men would be drowned
because none of them could swim.
The only way Cook could get enough
water to float Endeavour
was to wait for high tide.
In order to stand any chance of
saving his ship and her crew,
Cook needed to make her as light as
possible before the tide rose again.
As day dawned, Cook ordered 50 tons
of heavy material to be thrown overboard.
Everything from cannons
to ballast and barrels.
As the day drew on, Cook knew he'd done
all he feasibly could to save the ship.
All he could do now was sit and wait
for high tide,
hoping and praying
that the ship was now
light enough to be
lifted free from the reef.
As the tide rose slowly,
the men waited with bated breath.
The Endeavour gradually, inch by
inch, was lifted from the coral.
She was afloat,
but her troubles were far from over.
At 9 o'clock, the ship was righted
and the leak gained considerably.
This was an alarming, and I may say,
terrible circumstance
and threatened immediate destruction
as soon as the ship was afloat.
By now, the water in the hold was
over a meter deep.
Even frantically manning three pumps
couldn't hold the water back.
Cook just had to find a way
of plugging that hole.
Cook ordered his men to take
an old sail and sew straw to it
before covering the straw with dung
to make the sail sticky.
This was then tied to a rope,
thrown overboard
and carefully maneuvered into place
over the leak.
The water pressure then forced
it onto the hole like a giant plug.
It would do the job... for now.
The water was kept back long enough for the
Endeavour to limp into a bay for repair.
But now Cook was trapped
by the perils of the Barrier Reef.
Cook was really up against
it. He had a jury-rigged
repair. What's it like to
navigate round there?
Even today, with all our
sophisticated electronic equipment,
we still have to navigate through the
Great Barrier Reef with extreme caution.
There's a saying, there's
two types of skipper -
those who have hit the
reef and those who will.
If you drop your guard,
you could be in serious trouble.
It's unforgiving out there. What
about you, have you hit it?
A long time ago, yes.
I was against the tides
and, fortunately enough, we had a
winch on the afterdeck of the vessel,
we were close to shore
so we managed to wind
this wire round a
coconut tree to pull us off.
But poor Jimmy - I don't think
he had those facilities.
All Cook did have at his disposal
were his formidable skills as a navigator.
He knew that to return home,
he had to find a way
through the treacherous
reef that hemmed him
in and stretched as far
as the eye could see.
To get through would take
all of Cook's ingenuity,
and here's what he came up with.
These waves over here mean that
the reef comes very close to the surface,
making the water really
shallow. Cook needed to
find a place where there
were no breaking waves
because that would mean
deeper water and maybe
a gap that he could
get Endeavour through.
Cook eventually spotted a gap in the
reef and decided to sail through.
He had no choice. It was that or be
trapped within the reef for ever.
This was an incredibly risky
maneuver.
We're picking our way
through now on this big
modern boat with two
whopping great engines.
The Endeavour was a huge wooden ship
with sail power only, no engines.
She was at the mercy of
the winds, the tide and the
current. Cook would have
to pick his time and go for it.
With great skill and daring,
Cook made it through the reef.
The Endeavour could now continue
her journey home.
For 11 months, she sailed onward
heading from New South Wales
to the East Indies, round the southern tip
of Africa and then north towards Europe.
Finally, on the 12th of July 1771,
she anchored at Deal in Kent
after three years at sea.
It had been
a truly historic expedition.
Cook had become the first
man ever to circumnavigate
the world in a lone ship, a
phenomenal achievement.
If that wasn't enough, he hadn't
lost a single man to scurvy -
an unheard-of record.
He had joined the ranks of the few
who had discovered new lands
and he had claimed a new country,
Australia, for Britain.
At last, Cook's name was made. The
Admiralty recognized his huge talents
and, finally, promoted him
to the rank of captain.
Cook was now a hero.
Even the original scientific mission
proved to be a resounding success.
Despite Cook's misgivings, his
results would turn out to be vital.
In 1771, the astronomer Thomas
Hornsby took five measurements
from various locations around the world,
including Tahiti, and averaged them out.
Cook's measurements were
essential to allow Hornsby
to calculate the distance
of the Earth from the sun.
The result
was astonishingly accurate.
It came up with a figure
of 151 million kilometers.
Incredibly close to
today's accepted figure of
150 million kilometers
from the Earth to the sun.
This became the yardstick for
measuring distance in the solar system.
And, as a voyage of discovery, the
expedition had been incredibly successful.
Cook had found 40 new islands.
He'd discovered that New Zealand
was in fact two islands
and he'd mapped the east coast of
Australia, claiming it for Britain.
Cook's voyage of
discovery pretty much proved
that the Great Southern
Continent was a fantasy
and, crucially,
he rewrote the map of the world.
These achievements
were only possible because
of Cook's particular
style of leadership.
As one of his colleagues wrote, "He
was cool and deliberate in judging,
"active in executing, unsubdued
by difficulties and disappointments,
"mild, just and exact in discipline.
"He was a father to his people."
Cook would go on to make
two more extraordinary voyages.
But it was this first journey aboard
Endeavour that would make his name.
By the time of his death in 1779,
Cook had become a legend.
He'd explored more of the planet
than anyone else in history
and, for me, this naval nobody became
one of the greatest explorers of all time.
♪ Captain Cook had a
sailing ship ♪ Packet ship
♪ Sailing on a cruising trip
In the South Pacific
♪ Cook found Venus through his glass
Packet ship
♪ The men found Venus in the grass
In the South Pacific
♪ Then they hits a coral reef
Packet ship
♪ Caused a spot of grief
In the South Pacific
♪ Sailed back to the old country
Packet ship... ♪
What do you think of that?!
One night nearly 250 years
ago, a ship ran aground
on a treacherous reef
in the Pacific Ocean.
Water poured in through
her wooden hull, threatening
to sink her and drown
all those on board.
The ship that faced a watery grave
appeared to be nothing more than
an unremarkable coaling vessel
captained by an unknown commander
on an obscure scientific field trip.
But this ship had a secret mission, one
that would redraw the map of the world
and make a hero of her
undistinguished leader.
The ship was called the Endeavour and
her commander was Captain James Cook.
This is the incredible story of one of
the greatest sea adventures in history,
a voyage that would transform James Cook
from a naval nobody into a national hero.
SEA SHANTY BEING SUNG
♪ Hang all politicians
Hurray, boys, hurray
♪ It makes work for morticians
Hurray, boys, hurray... ♪
Two-and-a-half centuries
after his adventures,
Captain Cook is a household name.
But the story is often misunderstood.
People think he discovered New
Zealand and this place - Australia.
But in truth, he didn't.
But his story is no less remarkable.
As an explorer myself, I'm
astonished by his achievements
and I want to tell you
the real story of Captain Cook.
The Endeavour sailed from Plymouth
on the 26th of August 1768.
It was the Age of Enlightenment,
an era of intellectual ferment.
Huge advances were
being made in the fields of
science, literature and
the exploration of the globe.
Officially, the Endeavour was
on a scientific mission
to measure an astronomical
phenomenon - the transit of Venus,
the rare moment when Venus
crosses in front of the sun.
If successfully observed, these
measurements would enable astronomers
to calculate the distance
between the Earth and the sun,
a figure which could
then be used to measure
the dimensions of
the solar system itself.
The ship's orders
were to measure the transit
from the middle of the South
Pacific, the other side of the world.
But this wasn't the only
reason for the mission because,
on board, was a second
set of secret instructions.
These sealed instructions contained
the real mission of the voyage.
No-one, not even the ship's commander,
knew where they would lead them.
The 94-man crew reflected
the spirit of the age.
As well as an astronomer,
the Endeavour included
in her ranks two
scientists and two artists.
They were all under the command
of James Cook.
Of course, today,
James Cook is world famous,
but at the time of the Endeavour
voyage, he was a complete unknown.
In fact, Captain Cook wasn't even
a captain. He was a lieutenant.
In the Royal Navy at
the time - 1768 - there
were 300 captains and
over 900 lieutenants,
which shows you how far down
the naval hierarchy he really was.
Indeed, Lieutenant Cook appeared to
be a surprising choice for the mission.
His career had begun inauspiciously,
as Cook himself wrote.
I am a man who has
not the advantage of
education, nor natural
abilities for writing,
but one who has
constantly been at sea from
his youth as apprentice
boy in the coal trade.
After a decade on board the coaling
ships of northeast England,
Cook enlisted as an
able seaman in the Royal
Navy, rising to the
rank of ship's master.
12 years on, he had never made a
voyage as long as the one now proposed
and had commanded nothing bigger
than a humble schooner.
Cook faced a problem
that held him back - class.
Cook was a farmer's
son from Yorkshire, not the
right candidate for the
class-obsessed Royal Navy.
This is why, by the ripe age of 40,
he hadn't risen up the ranks
and why the Admiralty,
after picking him to
lead the expedition,
kept him at arm's length,
refusing to promote
him to captain. They
gave him the responsibility
but not the rank.
They ultimately chose Cook
because, working class or not,
they knew he possessed the skills that
made him perfectly fitted to this mission.
He proved himself to be
a skilled navigator and surveyor
and, more appropriately, had
developed a fascination with astronomy.
For Cook, this expedition
was his chance to prove himself.
At last, here was the opportunity
to reveal his talents,
to show that class was no barrier
to achievement.
That's good, lads.
But it was a huge challenge.
To carry out his mission,
Cook would have to
navigate his ship to the
other side of the world,
battling treacherous seas
and dangerous currents.
It's a beautiful day
in a flat, calm Sydney Harbour.
What's it like to sail these
boats in rough weather
on big passages? You've
made those passages.
Well, you get all kinds of weather.
You get this sort of weather
round the Tropics
in the southern latitudes.
In the high latitudes, it's cold,
rough, the ship rolls heavily.
You have to be up the mast sometimes
when it's rolling, pitching violently.
And of course, in Cook's day,
they would have had no back-up.
If we recreated this journey, we'd
have modern comms and navigation.
We would always know
we had some back-up.
A long way from home,
no communication. Like
a ship lost in space.
Couldn't call Mum.
To make things worse,
the Endeavour sailed alone.
It was usual for ships
on these journeys to
travel with support
vessels in case of trouble.
What's more, she was
just a basic, workmanlike
coaling vessel.
Certainly not glamorous.
As she plodded south,
she looked like the most
unlikely ship in the world
to be making history.
As if that wasn't enough,
there was the question
of whether Cook could
even sustain a crew fit
enough to sail his lone
ship across the world.
Can you imagine 100 men crammed together
on a small ship like this, 100ft long?
Conditions below must have been
appalling, let alone the smell.
Disease was rife. And even
though Cook was incredibly
strict about keeping his
men and the ship clean,
there was one disease that
cleanliness couldn't prevent - scurvy.
Over the years,
Cook has been acclaimed
as the man who discovered the cure
for the terrible disease of scurvy.
But in fact,
it's not quite so simple.
The true story goes back centuries.
Scurvy was the scourge of the navy.
It was a particularly gruesome way
to die.
Gums bled, teeth fell out,
limbs seized up...
ulcers broke out,
old wounds reopened.
And, most revoltingly, gum tissue
oozed out of the mouth and began to rot,
making the victim's breath stink.
Death must have come
as a blessed release.
Disease decimated crews.
In the 300 years before
Cook's journey on the Endeavour,
over two million sailors
had died from scurvy.
A captain could expect to lose at least 40%
of his men, a figure often rising to 80%.
Cook was faced
with a massive problem.
Very little was known about scurvy
and there was no agreement as to
what caused it or what might prevent it.
Some believed it
was caused by bad air,
thickening of the blood,
lack of oxygen, sadness
or even the fat being skimmed off
the boiling pots on board ship.
The treatments were even more
bizarre -
bloodletting, bathing in
animal's blood or having
the poor victim buried
up to his neck in the sand!
Of course, none of them worked.
Hi, Nigel. Hi, Paul.
Nice to see you. Come on board.
Astonishingly, some people had
stumbled upon the real cure for scurvy
during the previous 200 years.
Who were these people that found
the cure for scurvy?
A Dutch physician in the middle of
the 17th century had noted a cure.
And then, with the East India Company
ships coming across the Indian Ocean,
there had been a fellow called
Woodall, who was a surgeon.
He had noted one of the cures
round about 1636.
This was a long time
before Cook's voyage.
A long, long time. One of the
problems, of course, was that
these people weren't
just noting one cure. It was
one of a number of
things. It wasn't so clear.
What did Cook do on the Endeavour
to try and prevent scurvy?
He was told to take a number of
things which were meant to cure scurvy.
He took wort, which is a kind of an
infusion made from malt.
He took portable soup
which was like a large stock cube.
You mixed it with wheat
and served it as a gruel.
One of the main things he introduced
was this stuff - sauerkraut.
Pickled cabbage. Let's have a go.
Blimey.
Oh!
It's not the best! Particularly, if
you've got to eat it for three years!
Very much an acquired taste.
Cook hoped that his special diet
would work.
But making sure the men stuck to it
was no easy matter.
After two months at sea, some of the
crew had had enough of the ship's rations.
On the 16th of September, two men
rebelled against the rigid diet.
As Cook noted in his daily journal,
punishment was swift and severe.
Punished Henry Stevens, seaman,
and Thomas Dunster, marine,
with 12 lashes each for refusing to
take their allowance of fresh beef.
This punishment might seem harsh
for the crime,
but the lash was a regular part
of navy life
and the refusal to obey orders was
tantamount to mutiny.
This punishment shows how determined
Cook was to keep his men healthy.
He was essentially a
very humane man. Other
captains would have dished
out two dozen lashings.
In fact, Cook preferred
to use a bit of psychology
rather than the lash to get
the men to obey his orders.
The next time there was reluctance to
eat the diet, he came up with a great plan.
The men hated the sauerkraut
that he put in their diet,
so he took it off their menu and just
kept it on the officers' menu instead.
Of course, overnight, sauerkraut
became the most desired dish on board.
For such are the tempers and
dispositions of seamen in general
that the moment they saw their
superiors set a value on it,
it becomes the finest stuff in the world,
and the inventor a damned honest fellow.
Despite Cook's careful
diet, scurvy wasn't
completely banished from
the decks of the Endeavour.
The disease struck many
of the crew, including one
of the expedition's most
vital members, Joseph Banks.
Banks was a young,
fantastically wealthy playboy
who had effectively bought his way
onto the ship.
He had paid £10,000,
over £1 million in today's money,
for his place on board -
more than twice as much as the
official state funding of the expedition.
Approximately ten...
And all to indulge
his personal passion - botany.
Banks brought with him an
entourage of fellow botanists
and artists whose task
was to collect and study
the new plants encountered
on the voyage.
He also brought with him, as any English
gentleman would do, two greyhounds.
But right now, Banks's
whole project, not to
mention his life, was
threatened by scurvy.
At first he tried to treat it by
drinking a pint of wort each night.
But to no effect.
Then he tried another remedy...
"I flew to the lemon juice.
The effect was surprising.
"In less than a week,
my gums became as firm as ever
"and, at this time, I am troubled with
nothing but a few pimples on my face."
Banks has actually
stumbled across the cure for
scurvy - the vitamin C in
fresh fruit and vegetables,
particularly citrus fruits
like these.
But neither Banks nor Cook knew
really if they'd found the remedy.
They still saw the lemon juice
as one possible cure amongst many.
But as the Endeavour sailed on,
it became clear
that Cook's strategy was working.
Despite a few scares, nobody was
actually dying from scurvy.
In 1768, this was unheard of.
Cook might not have known about
vitamin C, present even in the sauerkraut.
But by enforcing his
rigid diet in the first
place, he was making
medical and naval history.
From the voyage of the Endeavour
onwards, the Admiralty recognized
the crucial importance of diet.
Limes became standard
on all British voyages -
hence the nickname limeys -
and deaths fell dramatically.
After five months at sea, the
voyage appeared to be going well.
Cook had scurvy under control
and the ship was making good time,
but they were still 8,000km
from the heart of the South
Pacific where they were
to carry out their mission
and the worst part of the passage
was yet to come.
The voyage was about to enter
its most dangerous part -
the treacherous waters around Cape
Horn at the bottom of South America.
These waters are regarded as amongst
the most dangerous in the world,
with big storms, huge waves,
fog and icebergs.
And Cook had to sail
right through them.
The Endeavour was battered
by fierce storms
and Cook was forced
to make three failed
attempts to enter the
waters around the cape.
Finally, on his fourth attempt, sailing
against strong winds and currents,
the Endeavour made it
through. Cook was beginning
to show the character
that would make him great.
Rod Fleck is Cook's
great-great-great nephew.
What kind of person
do you think he was?
I feel that he was very humane
and... he liked people.
He wouldn't do anything nasty to a
person. He had a gentle disposition.
Very reserved, quiet,
a kind and gentle person.
He had the natural ability, I feel,
to pick up things, to learn.
And, apart from that,
he could carry it forward.
There's a lot of people who learn, but they
can never go through and do the things.
That's what I feel he
had. That would really
help his credibility
as a leader of men.
Isaac Smith said - he went on a few
voyages with him, later Admiral -
he said that he was... feared but
loved by his crew.
Feared because of the lash,
but they loved him. That's it.
What more can you say
about someone like that?
As the Endeavour sailed on across
the Pacific, the seas became calmer
and the weather more tropical.
As the voyage progressed,
the ship made various stops,
which provided Banks and his party
with the opportunity to
collect new plant specimens
and shoot previously
unknown animals and birds.
Cook's cabin rapidly became flooded
with all kinds of strange and
unfamiliar plant and animal life.
Then, on the 13th of April 1769,
after 33 weeks at sea,
land was finally spotted.
Cook had arrived at the South Pacific
island that would hopefully make his name.
It was here in Tahiti
that he was to carry out
his mission and measure
the transit of Venus.
The Endeavour had arrived
in paradise.
This was a land of plenty
and sexual liberation,
where fruit fell from the trees and
beautiful women offered themselves freely.
But Cook had important work to do,
work that could potentially
widen our understanding
of the universe, and
finally prove his abilities.
Cook had successfully sailed halfway
round the world,
now he had to prove himself
as an astronomer.
He knew he had just one chance
of getting his measurements right.
Although he was just 1 of 77 observers
around the world measuring the transit,
he was the most important because he was
the only one in the southern hemisphere.
And that was the only
place in the world where you
could clearly see the
transit from beginning to end.
And as if that wasn't
enough pressure, the
transit of Venus is an
incredibly rare event.
It wouldn't happen again
for another 105 years!
Cook immediately began to prepare
for the transit.
But before work in Tahiti began,
he gave his crew
some highly unusual instructions.
You are to endeavour by every fair means
to cultivate a friendship with the natives
and to treat them
with all imaginable humanity.
Cook's orders
were extraordinarily radical.
In the 18th century, most explorers' idea
of co-operating with indigenous peoples
was to go in with guns blazing.
But Cook preferred negotiation over brute
force, making friends rather than enemies.
In the event, there was no need
for violence. The people of Tahiti
proved to be warm, open and
welcoming. Banks wrote lyrically...
If we quarrel with those Indians,
we should not agree with angels.
But the Tahitians did possess
one annoying trait.
It started as an irritation, but was to
escalate into something much more serious.
They liked to steal!
It was hard to keep them out of the
ship as they climb like monkeys,
but it was still harder to keep them from
stealing whatever came within their reach.
In this,
they are prodigious experts.
Metal was an especially attractive
commodity to Tahitians.
It wasn't long before all
kinds of things were going
missing, including snuff
boxes and opera glasses.
The Endeavour's store of iron nails
were an especially attractive commodity,
particularly once the
crew realized that a handful
of them could be swapped
for sex with local women!
But petty thieving soon turned into
disaster.
One morning, one of the most vital pieces
of equipment for measuring the transit -
the astronomical quadrant -
was discovered missing.
Without it, the measurement of the
transit could not take place.
Banks found out from a
local chieftain the name
of the thief and the
direction that he'd headed
and he set off running after him,
through the blazing heat and the jungle,
across the island, for 11 kilometers.
It wasn't long before great hordes
of Tahitians turned out
to see who would win
and what the outcome would be.
Eventually, Banks found
the quadrant discarded by the
side of the trail. The thief
had just thrown it away.
The stage was set
for measuring the transit.
The day dawned and the omens were
good. The skies were crystal clear.
As the thermometer rose
to 119 degrees,
Cook and his team of observers
trained their telescopes on the sun.
Astronomer Wayne Orchiston has
studied the astronomical mission.
I asked him how Cook measured
the transit of Venus.
Well, let me show you.
You've got the ideal T-shirt there.
We've got the sun there, and this
beautiful little nut will represent Venus.
We want to observe the transit of
Venus as it travels across the sun.
So Venus approaches the edge of the
sun, onto the sun...
and then exits the sun.
That transit from here to here
will take just over six hours.
To determine the transit accurately,
we record precisely
when Venus is just on
the edge of the sun but
outside it, on the edge
of the sun but inside it -
just touching the limb of the sun.
We call that first and second contacts.
The third contact is just as
it approaches and touches
the edge of the sun,
fourth contact as it leaves.
It's those four contact points
and their times that are critical.
We observe those by
looking through the telescope,
observing Venus as
it approaches the sun
and then, with the clock we've got adjacent
to the telescope, recording the times.
But as Venus crept in
front of the sun, Cook
realized he had a major
problem on his hands.
When Venus enters the sun,
once it gets to this point
- second contact - Venus
has an atmosphere round
it, so you see a hazy shadow.
And so it is very hard to know
when Venus gets right on to the sun.
As it moves further and further
onto the sun,
you end up with a little strip of
shadow linking the edge of the sun.
So when do you decide
that second contact has occurred?
Is it here, or here, or here?
When Cook compared the timings
of the transit, it didn't tally.
The measurements varied
by nearly a minute
and he needed them to be exact.
Now it seemed Cook had
traveled halfway round the
world, only for his
mission to end in failure.
But another opportunity
was about to present itself.
One even greater than the
measurement of the transit.
Cook's real mission
was only just beginning.
It was time to open
the secret instructions.
If achieved, these orders
would transform Britain
into the richest and most
powerful nation on Earth
and turn Cook into a national hero.
"You are to proceed to the southward in
order to make discovery of the continent
"until you arrive
in the latitude of 40
degrees, unless you
sooner fall in with it."
The real purpose of Cook's mission
was now revealed -
the discovery of the fabled
Great Southern Continent.
Hey, John. Thanks for letting me on.
Right, give me something to do.
Well, we need to get that out.
In the 18th century, it was widely assumed
that there was a Great Southern Continent,
somewhere in the South Pacific.
They were so confident
it was there, it was
as certain as the sun
and the moon exists.
It was even given a name -
Terra Australis Incognita -
unknown land of the south.
It was somewhere out there.
The notion of the Great Southern
Continent dates from the classical world.
The Ancient Greeks had theorized
about its existence in the 1st century AD.
By the Renaissance,
scientists argued that,
since the Earth was
spherical, there must be
a great land mass in the
Southern Hemisphere to
counterbalance the vast
continents in the north.
This was no ordinary continent.
By the 18th century, it was believed it
covered most of the Southern Hemisphere,
a far greater land mass than
anything we now know to exist.
All somebody needed to do
was find it.
This lost continent was imagined
to be a paradise on Earth.
A land overflowing
with natural riches.
Whichever nation claimed it first
stood to reap massive rewards.
Exploiting the continent's
vast riches and commanding
military and trading
routes in the Pacific.
It had become the Holy Grail
of empire and exploration.
This explains
why Cook's orders were secret.
The British Government
did not want their foreign
rivals to know there
was an expedition afoot.
What better cover for the mission
than a simple coaling ship
on a science expedition
to measure the transit of Venus?
The British Government wanted to get to the
southern continent first, and in secret.
In an era when undiscovered land
represented power and wealth,
there was intense competition
to find this elusive continent.
This globe shows us all that was
known of the world in the 1750s.
It was believed that the
Great Southern Continent
was somewhere round
here in the South Pacific.
It was even given an exact
location - 40 degrees south -
and a length - 8,000km long.
Cook's instructions were
to sail further south in
the Pacific than any man
had ever gone before -
40 degrees latitude - in search
of the Great Southern Continent.
And so the Endeavour's great
adventure into the unknown began.
Overnight, the mission
was transformed from a
scientific field trip into
a voyage of discovery.
Cook had been given a second chance, one
that would stretch his skills to the limit.
He was about to be really tested
for the first time in his life -
sailing into virgin seas.
Cook would need all his skills
as a navigator and leader
to sail his small wooden ship
and her crew into the unknown.
What really fascinates me
is how Cook navigated.
He crossed thousands of kilometers across
the Pacific that had never been charted.
He only had very, very basic
navigational instruments.
He had no accurate charts,
no land masses to get sights from,
no accurate way of measuring distance.
It would have been a huge challenge.
These days on long
passages, I've got a GPS, like
many people, a very
simple satellite receiver.
It takes in satellite signals
and tells me where I am.
I'm reading it now. "Ready to
navigate. Accuracy three meters."
Cook wouldn't have had
anything like this.
But what Cook did have
was his fascination with
astronomy, a hobby that
would now serve him well.
Cook measured the movement of the
sun, the moon and the stars with a sextant
and compared his readings
with tables of lunar predictions.
With some complex
calculations, he came up with
an incredibly accurate
reading for his longitude -
the ship's position east/west.
Cook was one of the first
sailors ever to determine
a ship's location with
such pinpoint accuracy.
Cook kept his course,
sailing ever further
south in search of the
Great Southern Continent.
The crew's eyes remained
fixed on the horizon.
There was an occasional false alarm when
cloud formations were mistaken for land.
After three weeks of sailing south,
the ship reached 40 degrees.
There was no sign
of Terra Australis Incognita.
With Cook's experience
of the sea, he could tell from
the swell of the ocean
and the trend of the currents
that there was no great
land mass anywhere nearby.
Cook's orders told him that if he couldn't
find the continent at 40 degrees south,
he was to sail west instead.
So the Endeavour changed course.
For a month, she sailed west.
Cook offered a gallon of rum to the
first person to sight the coast.
Still the continent stubbornly
refused to appear.
Then, on the 6th of October 1769,
at two o'clock in the afternoon,
an excited voice shouted out the words
that everyone had been longing to hear...
Land ahoy! Land ahoy!
Land had been sighted, and a single
substantial land mass at that.
It seemed that Cook had at last made
one of the greatest discoveries in history.
He'd found
the Great Southern Continent!
He went ashore to explore
this promising new land.
This land is agreeable
beyond description
and, with proper cultivation, might
be rendered a kind of second paradise.
The hills are covered
with beautiful flowering shrubs,
intermingled with a sort of
tall and stately palms
which fill the air
with a most fragrant perfume.
To the continent!
Joseph Banks was swept
by the romance of the discovery.
Much difference
of opinion and many
conjectures about
islands, rivers, inlets, etc,
but all hands seem to agree
that this is certainly
the continent we are in search of.
Cook began to fully investigate
this eastern coastline,
sailing north, painstakingly
charting the unknown land as he went.
As Cook sailed the northern tip of
the land and down its west coast,
he realized he was following
a stretch of coastline
that had been explored and charted
before - 130 years earlier.
You can see it - this little
squiggle in the South Pacific.
It was speculated that could have
been part of the Great Southern Continent.
Seemed that Cook had done it.
He'd found the Holy Grail.
At last,
success was in Cook's grasp.
But as the Endeavour
charted more of the
coastline, Cook was to
be sorely disappointed.
The Endeavour eventually
reached a stretch of
water which Cook christened
Queen Charlotte Sound.
He anchored and began to explore
the surrounding countryside.
When Cook was a boy in Yorkshire,
he grew up in the shadow
of Roseberry Topping,
a large hill that he
climbed all the time -
an entirely natural
thing for kids and
explorers to do - and
the habit never left him.
Sure enough, when he
arrived at Queen Charlotte
Sound, he went up
a hill to have a look.
And what he saw...
was just extraordinary.
There was a large stretch of water
between the land
he'd just sailed around and him.
Which meant it wasn't a continent
at all. It was just an island.
In fact, Cook had become
the first European to sail around
the land we now know as
the North Island of New Zealand.
He was about to discover
its South Island. But these
two small islands weren't
the great rich continent
that he'd been in search of.
This country, which
before now was thought to
be part of the imaginary
southern continent,
consists of two large
islands. As to a southern
continent, I do not believe
any such thing exists.
Cook had sailed across
the part of the Pacific where
the Great Southern
Continent was supposed to be,
and it wasn't there. The dream of
the great continent was in tatters.
Cook knew it would have been a lot
better if he HAD found the continent
rather than proved it
wasn't there. After all,
his masters desperately
wanted it to exist.
Yet again, the promise of success
had been snatched from Cook's grasp.
The discovery of the Great
Southern Continent would
have made Cook's name,
but he was not to be defeated.
He may not have found the continent,
but Cook was determined to seize
victory and discover other unknown lands.
He made a remarkable decision.
Cook knew that to the
north-west of New Zealand
was a vast land that had
yet to be fully explored.
Even though the Dutch had surveyed
the north, west and south coasts,
the vast Eastern coast had never
even been seen by Europeans.
It was called New Holland
and Cook proposed
that they survey the
whole length of it to
its northernmost point
and only then would they sail home
via the East Indies.
It was an extraordinary proposal,
over and above the call of duty.
Something in Cook had been awoken,
a hunger that would drive him
into the history books.
He was now gripped by a desire
to explore and discover.
And that's exactly how it happens,
it can't be denied, it's so powerful.
It happened to me
when I was 17, diving at
30m for the very first
time on a small wreck.
I just knew that this was all I
wanted to do for the rest of my life.
I was just so happy I'd left school,
so happy I hadn't gone to college
and I just wanted to get out
and explore.
I reckon something like that
happened to Cook at this time.
Cook sailed the Endeavour west,
again venturing into the unknown.
Then, 20 days after leaving
New Zealand,
the east coast of New Holland was
seen by European eyes for the first time.
On the 29th of April 1770, nearly
two years after leaving Britain,
Endeavour sailed into this bay.
Cook and his crew came ashore
and stepped onto these very rocks
and became the first
Europeans ever to land
on the east coast of
New Holland - Australia!
Cook might not have
discovered Australia, but
he was the first to
chart its huge east coast,
completing the map of the country.
And he was the first to claim
this vast, rich land for Britain.
What must it have been
like for the indigenous
people here to have seen
Cook and his men arrive?
It would have been like seeing
a UFO for the first time -
Unidentified FLOATING Object!
It came through the heads
and from its inside, these
strange ghost-colored people
would have came out with
colored clothes on, skins,
and sand-colored faces,
carrying these strange implements
like a funny shaped spear. It would
have been awe-inspiring to them.
What did Cook think of the local
people when he first got...?
I think Cook had some
very enlightened views.
He started asking questions. He
noticed all these strange animals
and was asking the Guugu Yimithirr,
"What's that?"
He saw this animal...
and the Guugu Yimithirr
said... looked at the kangaroo
and the Guugu Yimithirr
turned around and said,
"I don't know. Be
more specific. Be more
specific." So they called
this animal a kangaroo,
but in the language of the Guugu
Yimithirr, kangaroo meant "I don't know"!
Classic misunderstanding!
But it wasn't only new people that
Cook and his crew found in Australia.
Banks and his team soon found huge numbers
of important specimens of flora and fauna
totally unknown in Europe.
The great quantity of new plants
Mr Banks collected in this place
occasioned my giving it
the name of...
Botanist Harbour? Botanist Bay?
Botany Bay!
Doug Benson, a local botanist, has studied
Banks's work on board the Endeavour.
What did he collect here at Botany
Bay? He collected at least 130 species,
including this Banksia Serrata,
this Old Man Banksia,
which, unfortunately because it's
winter hasn't got its pale yellow flowers.
But it's a lovely plant. It's a
beautiful looking tree.
How much collecting did
he do on the whole voyage?
He collected something
like 30,000 specimens.
But that includes plants, birds,
insects, fish and so on.
What would you say
was his contribution to science?
I think he gets botany going.
He really provides this drive.
He is the most influential
botanical figure,
probably in Australia's
early history.
As a botanist myself,
it's rather exciting
to see that botany, er... features so
strongly in the early history of Australia.
It was this land that
Cook claimed for Britain,
an act that was
to change the course of history.
Though Cook's actions
were to make his name,
their legacy may not have been
in tune with his liberal thinking.
Of course, Cook is seen as being
the father of modern Australia.
But he played no part
in the colonizing of this land.
It was Joseph Banks' idea,
nine years after Cook's death,
that Botany Bay should be
the home of a penal colony.
The British became the first
European nation to settle this land.
And they sent cargo after cargo
of convicts.
Australia would never be
the same again.
The indigenous people round here,
those people had a structure.
They already had a political system,
a social system already set up.
They had education
for their children.
They had a 40,000-year structure
of living here.
They knew what to do with the land.
But in our perspective, not yours.
If that structure was so successful
for 40,000 years,
how is it it couldn't resist the
structure of the incoming Europeans?
You were the most powerful group of people
on Earth at that particular point in time.
You had better ships, you knew
the currents and navigation.
You had the weapon, the
gun - that funny shaped spear
that made a great noise
and killed birds and animals.
My people would have said,
"What the hell's that?!"
But you also came with your invisible
luggage - the attitudes and values.
You also brought racism
to this country.
On the 6th of May 1770, the Endeavour
sailed further north up the coast.
She'd been away from
home for nearly two years
and had traveled to the
other side of the world.
Surely Cook had now proved
his worth.
He might not have found
the Great Southern Continent,
but his ship was loaded
with discoveries that would
change our understanding
of the world for ever.
Maps of new lands,
astronomical readings
and thousands
of botanical specimens.
But, unknown to Cook,
ruin was lurking beneath the waves.
He had no way of knowing it,
but he was sailing towards some of the
most treacherous shallows on the planet.
Ahead of him lay the vastness
of the Great Barrier Reef.
This reef stretches
for a massive 1,900
kilometers along the
east coast of Australia.
It's so big,
you can see it from space.
And for a wooden,
18th-century sailing ship,
it was a disaster waiting to happen.
It's beautiful down here,
one of the most spectacular dives
anywhere on the planet.
But this beauty belies great danger.
The coral is made up of limestone.
It's hard as rock and razor sharp.
And if you look here...
..you can see how close the reef
lies to the surface.
In fact, at low tide,
it's virtually at the surface.
These days, modern ships have sonar
to warn them of shallow water.
But all Cook had was his eyesight
and a weighted rope.
You could imagine what it would be
like to try to see this from above.
Especially at night.
It would have been
virtually impossible.
At 11 o'clock in the evening
of 10th of June 1770,
Cook was asleep in bed as the
Endeavour made her way slowly northwards.
Success appeared finally to be
within his grasp.
CRASHING
The Endeavour had
crashed into the Great
Barrier Reef, bringing
her to a sudden halt.
Scarce were we warm in our beds when
we were called up with alarming news
of the ship being fast
ashore upon a rock, which she
convinced us of by beating
violently against the rocks.
Our situation now
became greatly alarming.
The reef had punctured a hole...
right in the hull of the ship.
Water was pouring in.
But the worst problem was that the ship was
pinned onto the reef and wouldn't budge.
Unless Cook could get the ship off,
it would be wrecked
and the men would be drowned
because none of them could swim.
The only way Cook could get enough
water to float Endeavour
was to wait for high tide.
In order to stand any chance of
saving his ship and her crew,
Cook needed to make her as light as
possible before the tide rose again.
As day dawned, Cook ordered 50 tons
of heavy material to be thrown overboard.
Everything from cannons
to ballast and barrels.
As the day drew on, Cook knew he'd done
all he feasibly could to save the ship.
All he could do now was sit and wait
for high tide,
hoping and praying
that the ship was now
light enough to be
lifted free from the reef.
As the tide rose slowly,
the men waited with bated breath.
The Endeavour gradually, inch by
inch, was lifted from the coral.
She was afloat,
but her troubles were far from over.
At 9 o'clock, the ship was righted
and the leak gained considerably.
This was an alarming, and I may say,
terrible circumstance
and threatened immediate destruction
as soon as the ship was afloat.
By now, the water in the hold was
over a meter deep.
Even frantically manning three pumps
couldn't hold the water back.
Cook just had to find a way
of plugging that hole.
Cook ordered his men to take
an old sail and sew straw to it
before covering the straw with dung
to make the sail sticky.
This was then tied to a rope,
thrown overboard
and carefully maneuvered into place
over the leak.
The water pressure then forced
it onto the hole like a giant plug.
It would do the job... for now.
The water was kept back long enough for the
Endeavour to limp into a bay for repair.
But now Cook was trapped
by the perils of the Barrier Reef.
Cook was really up against
it. He had a jury-rigged
repair. What's it like to
navigate round there?
Even today, with all our
sophisticated electronic equipment,
we still have to navigate through the
Great Barrier Reef with extreme caution.
There's a saying, there's
two types of skipper -
those who have hit the
reef and those who will.
If you drop your guard,
you could be in serious trouble.
It's unforgiving out there. What
about you, have you hit it?
A long time ago, yes.
I was against the tides
and, fortunately enough, we had a
winch on the afterdeck of the vessel,
we were close to shore
so we managed to wind
this wire round a
coconut tree to pull us off.
But poor Jimmy - I don't think
he had those facilities.
All Cook did have at his disposal
were his formidable skills as a navigator.
He knew that to return home,
he had to find a way
through the treacherous
reef that hemmed him
in and stretched as far
as the eye could see.
To get through would take
all of Cook's ingenuity,
and here's what he came up with.
These waves over here mean that
the reef comes very close to the surface,
making the water really
shallow. Cook needed to
find a place where there
were no breaking waves
because that would mean
deeper water and maybe
a gap that he could
get Endeavour through.
Cook eventually spotted a gap in the
reef and decided to sail through.
He had no choice. It was that or be
trapped within the reef for ever.
This was an incredibly risky
maneuver.
We're picking our way
through now on this big
modern boat with two
whopping great engines.
The Endeavour was a huge wooden ship
with sail power only, no engines.
She was at the mercy of
the winds, the tide and the
current. Cook would have
to pick his time and go for it.
With great skill and daring,
Cook made it through the reef.
The Endeavour could now continue
her journey home.
For 11 months, she sailed onward
heading from New South Wales
to the East Indies, round the southern tip
of Africa and then north towards Europe.
Finally, on the 12th of July 1771,
she anchored at Deal in Kent
after three years at sea.
It had been
a truly historic expedition.
Cook had become the first
man ever to circumnavigate
the world in a lone ship, a
phenomenal achievement.
If that wasn't enough, he hadn't
lost a single man to scurvy -
an unheard-of record.
He had joined the ranks of the few
who had discovered new lands
and he had claimed a new country,
Australia, for Britain.
At last, Cook's name was made. The
Admiralty recognized his huge talents
and, finally, promoted him
to the rank of captain.
Cook was now a hero.
Even the original scientific mission
proved to be a resounding success.
Despite Cook's misgivings, his
results would turn out to be vital.
In 1771, the astronomer Thomas
Hornsby took five measurements
from various locations around the world,
including Tahiti, and averaged them out.
Cook's measurements were
essential to allow Hornsby
to calculate the distance
of the Earth from the sun.
The result
was astonishingly accurate.
It came up with a figure
of 151 million kilometers.
Incredibly close to
today's accepted figure of
150 million kilometers
from the Earth to the sun.
This became the yardstick for
measuring distance in the solar system.
And, as a voyage of discovery, the
expedition had been incredibly successful.
Cook had found 40 new islands.
He'd discovered that New Zealand
was in fact two islands
and he'd mapped the east coast of
Australia, claiming it for Britain.
Cook's voyage of
discovery pretty much proved
that the Great Southern
Continent was a fantasy
and, crucially,
he rewrote the map of the world.
These achievements
were only possible because
of Cook's particular
style of leadership.
As one of his colleagues wrote, "He
was cool and deliberate in judging,
"active in executing, unsubdued
by difficulties and disappointments,
"mild, just and exact in discipline.
"He was a father to his people."
Cook would go on to make
two more extraordinary voyages.
But it was this first journey aboard
Endeavour that would make his name.
By the time of his death in 1779,
Cook had become a legend.
He'd explored more of the planet
than anyone else in history
and, for me, this naval nobody became
one of the greatest explorers of all time.
♪ Captain Cook had a
sailing ship ♪ Packet ship
♪ Sailing on a cruising trip
In the South Pacific
♪ Cook found Venus through his glass
Packet ship
♪ The men found Venus in the grass
In the South Pacific
♪ Then they hits a coral reef
Packet ship
♪ Caused a spot of grief
In the South Pacific
♪ Sailed back to the old country
Packet ship... ♪
What do you think of that?!