Captain Cook

24:17Though seeking intimacy with local women is tolerated by the captain, when one of his crew insults a local's wife, Cook has the offender lashed. He pursues cultural exchange, for instance watching a local funeral ceremony, and inviting the Tahitians to witness a Christian religious service performed by the ship's surgeon. Cook and his crew are assimilating crucial knowledge about an unfamiliar people, conducting an anthropological investigation, but one in which the visitors habitually assume an air of inherent superiority.

24:59Before long, Cook and the Voyager's scientific team construct a temporary observatory and prepare for the transit. At about quarter past seven in the evening of the 3rd of June 1769, Venus begins its journey across the face of the sun. A process that takes several hours. But when the team comes together in the early hours to compare their data, they realize they have different results from each other. The reason for this is because of the optical distortions that happen around the edges of the sun, which made it really difficult for them to isolate the specific moment when the transit began and when the transit ended.

25:44In fact, teams around the world are reporting similar discrepancies. But though their collected data will turn out to be sufficient to calculate the distance between the Sun and the Earth with a remarkable degree of accuracy, Cook does not yet know that. As far as he is concerned, he's failed at the task he has come here to do.

26:06Alone in his cabin, he sits at his desk, a sealed document in front of him. It's from his Navy bosses, delivered with instructions that it should not be opened until now. He breaks the seal, spreads out the document, and begins to read. It turns out that he won't be heading home just yet, and that he has a chance of redemption. For centuries, scientists have speculated that the land-heavy Northern Hemisphere must be counterbalanced by a vast continent in the south, a landmass known as Terra Australis, the southern land. A recent British mariner has tried and failed to find it, and the document in front of Cook explains that he must now lead the hunt.

26:58The Admiralty is very clear in its orders to Cook that these are missions that are designed to serve Britain's military and commercial interests. The British are still worried about the French because the French have also been sending voyages to the Pacific, particularly as the French have, in the Seven Years' War, lost territory to the British in North America. They're looking for alternative territories elsewhere. So in this arms race of colonial expansion, the British want to make sure that they are still keeping ahead of the French.

27:32Endeavour leaves Tahiti in mid-July. with two new crew, a local servant boy and a man named Tupaya, a local priest and leader who is also a skillful navigator. Cook visits some nearby islands, which he claims for George II, and names the Society Islands, possibly after his sponsors, the Royal Society. Then the voyage plows onwards. Weeks pass without sight of land. Then one day, An excited cry from a young lad in the crew. There ahead, land. But it's quickly apparent that this is not the vast, undiscovered continent he is questing after. Instead, Cook has arrived at the North Island of what will come to be known as New Zealand.

28:23Over the coming months, he leads a circumnavigation of both this island and its southern counterpart. Though the Dutch mariner Abel Tasman sailed here back in 1642, Cook is the first European to lead a thorough exploration, mapping the land as he goes. He makes contact with the native Polynesian people, the Maori, who settled here back in the 13th century. But it's a violent introduction. 130 years since last seeing a European in these parts, the Maori tribespeople, with their distinctive tattoos, are naturally trepidatious of visitors. And as the sight of the new arrivals draws them to shore, confusion reigns.

29:12A few make a ceremonial challenge, asserting their primacy here, when a musket shot rings out from somewhere amid Cook's nervy party. One of the Maori collapses to the ground, mortally wounded. In the coming days, there are further skirmishes, and in all, eight Maori are killed. An ignominious start to the European presence in the region.

29:42There are, though, more peaceable moments too, aided by Cook's Tahitian right-hand man. Tupaya kind of acts as an interpreter. and it's actually a drawing that's done by Tupaya of an exchange between a Maori man and a European. It's thought possibly Joseph Banks where the Maori man is offering a crayfish in exchange for the object the European is offering and it's thought that what the European is offering is tapper cloth, so sort of bark cloth from Tahiti. And it's really interesting thinking about this exchange from Tupaya's perspective. It's thought that one of the reasons Tupaya travels with Cook is to sort of retrace some of the voyages that he might have made himself at an earlier point in his life, and also to honor a sort of really long tradition of voyaging and connecting across the Pacific.

30:29And so what Tupaya is seeing in this moment from Cook's voyage is Maori man receiving cloth from Tahiti. And so this kind of meeting of Pacific cultures, you know, is being recorded by Tupaya. In that context, Cook and European voyagers are just kind of facilitators for this connection within a much longer Pacific history. In March, Cook leaves New Zealand to head westwards until, on the 19th of April, the east coast of Australia, or New Holland as it is known for now, appears on the horizon. Although Dutch explorers have already made it to its north, south, and western coasts, Cook is the first European to record its east coast.

31:11And while it's certainly large, it's already been deemed too small to be the fabled southern continent they've been looking for.

31:21A few days later, he notes in his journal his first sighting of Aboriginal Australians, and on the 29th of April, he docks his fleet in a beautiful natural harbor that he names Botany Bay. Their arrival, however, is not well received by the local community, and in a standoff one of the native people is shot and killed. Shrugging off the hostility, Cook and his men spend a week investigating the area, collecting samples of flora and fauna for scientific examination, as well as fresh water and timber for the next stage of their voyage. Joseph Banks, meanwhile, notes the location as a suitable place for potential future British settlement.

32:07But as they head back on board, they go northwards up the coast, mapping the coastline and naming its landmarks.

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33:41An obstacle to be avoided at all costs. The waters are perilous around here, with the depth fluctuating dramatically. Sometimes comfortingly deep, the next moment worryingly shallow. He knows Endeavor is designed to cope with such water, but still, shallow seas often harbor the biggest threats. He orders all hands on deck, his crew working the sails to ensure the vessel stays on a safe course After a while, the worst of the danger seems past So he sends some of the men off to rest up, so they're ready for the challenges of tomorrow

34:25It's just before 11, with a calm atmosphere on deck, when suddenly Endeavour comes to a juddering halt Cook cringes at the unmistakable crack of splintering wood. Those islands he saw are part of a much bigger structure, a vast reef of coral that will come to be called the Great Barrier Reef. But for now, all that concerns Cook is that his ship is stuck fast on it.

34:57Any man not already joining the effort is urgently summoned, but with every attempt to move the ship, she seems only to become wedged more firmly, the gash in the hull getting bigger and swallowing more water. There is a serious danger that she might go down. The only option left is to lighten the load. On Cook's orders, the crew heave the ship's guns into the water, along with great wooden casks, jars of oil, anything that is heavy and not immediately vital to life. The sea spits up great plumes of water as each new item comes crashing down. Cook does not permit his men to stop until they are perhaps 40 tons lighter.

35:41All the while, down in the hold, more crew operate the bilge pumps, handles winding and pistons spluttering as they work to drain the ship quicker than it can fill. But finally, with the hold still swimming with three and a half feet of water, Endeavor at last rises above the reef and is set free.

36:09Cook eases his limping vessel away from immediate danger before beaching her near what will come to be known as Cook's Town on the Queensland coast. It takes seven weeks to complete the repairs. In that time, the crew explore the area, making contact with the local Aboriginal people. For the most part, it's affable, until a dispute over some turtles Cook's men have captured turns violent. Another local suffers a gunshot wound. This pattern of sporadic violence persists as Cook continues his tour of the East Coast. Towards the end of August, he reaches the northern extent of the coastline, before turning westwards through the treacherous Torres Strait.

36:55From a high vantage point on what he names Possession Island, he surveys the expansive ocean before him and claims the entirety of Australia's eastern coastline for Great Britain. Cook was advised by the President of the Royal Society that no European nation has the right to occupy a territory without the voluntary consent of the indigenous people who live there. But given the difficulties in communication without a shared language and the evident tensions that exist, it seems Cook has interpreted the advice liberally, to say the least. Now he heads for home Crossing the Indian Ocean Rounding the Cape of Good Hope And then heading northwards up the Atlantic He arrives back in England in July 1771 After three years away

37:49When Cook's journals from the voyage are published They cause a sensation It's the talk of London There are exhibitions of artifacts that they've brought back at the British Museum and at lots of other sites. There are mentions of the voyages in plays on the London stage, in popular songs. Even fashion colonists in newspapers write about the headdresses being in fashion because they're kind of inspired by some of the sort of Tahitian things that are described in Cook's narrative. Cook becomes an instant star, as does the young naturalist who accompanied him, Joseph Banks. But it's not just the scientific advancements and territorial gains that mark the voyage out as exceptional.

38:31In an age where scurvy kills so many sailors, Cook has somehow managed not to lose a single man. Though he doesn't understand precisely why, it seems their diet, rich in fruit and vegetables, has helped stave off the condition. And it would be another 20 years or so before the Admiralty started sending instead lime juice and lemon juice, things that are higher in vitamin C, onto their ships. Cook's voyages aren't the thing that crack the scurvy puzzle, but they are seen as an important breakthrough. But the fact remains that Cook has returned without fulfilling the government's chief aim to find the southern land.

39:12In July 1772, less than a week after his wife Elizabeth gives birth to their fifth child, he leaves Plymouth to go in search of it again. This time, Endeavour is replaced by a new bigger ship resolution. and accompanied by a second vessel, Adventure. Cook says of Resolution that it is a ship fitter for service than any he has seen. His task is to make a circumnavigation at a very southerly latitude to confirm whether the purported landmass exists once and for all. In January 1773, Resolution becomes the first ship to cross into the Antarctic Circle, something it does twice more, going increasingly deep into the region.

40:00But in doing so, he proves conclusively that the southern land is but a myth. However, he does survey a number of other very real locations along the way, among them Easter Island, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, and Norfolk Island. All the while, he is continuing his research into solving the vexed problem of how to measure longitude. So, of course, if we think of the world or the surface of the world as a grid, as is the case in sort of European navigation, you need two coordinates to pinpoint your position on that grid. One is your latitude, which is how far north or south you are. One is your longitude, which is how far you are east or west of a particular point.

40:43Measuring latitude was mastered long ago, but longitude has proven much trickier, which is why, back in 1714, Parliament passed the Longitude Act, essentially a competition to come up with a solution.

41:01Though the problem appears to be about distance, it's time that's also crucial to solving it. It's known that the Earth rotates 15 degrees of longitude every hour. That means that a sailor can, in theory, compare their local time, found by observing the Sun, to that of a fixed reference place, such as Greenwich, in order to determine location. But with almost 70 miles between one degree of longitude at the equator, the timekeeping needs to be incredibly precise. Indeed, the Navy has in the past lost entire fleets to miscalculations.

41:45By the time of Cook's second expedition, a super-accurate chronometer has been developed, though not yet adequately tested in the field. But Cook has found it so reliable, he's been happy to use it to plot his path home, instead of using other, more traditional methods, confirming that the conundrum has been solved.

42:09A third voyage beckons in 1776, with Cook setting sail once again in resolution from Plymouth in July. This time, it is about two months since Elizabeth gave birth to their sixth child, and the couple hope desperately that he will fare better than their previous two babies who died in infancy. As far as the public are concerned, Cook's main task is to repatriate a man named Omai, the first Pacific Islander to visit England after he joined the return leg of Cook's second voyage. But the real reason is to track down the Northwest Passage, a mythologized sea route linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through the North American Arctic.

42:54If it exists, so the thinking goes, it will transform trade between Europe and Asia. The search has been on for well over 200 years already.

43:07After returning Oh My Home, Cook sails west across the Central Pacific. There, he becomes the first recorded European to reach the Hawaiian Islands, which he names the Sandwich Islands, after the Earl of Sandwich, a British aristocrat. On first contact with the indigenous population, he discovers they speak a Polynesian dialect similar to those he has previously encountered. But as before, conflict arises between the locals and these unexpected visitors, and one of Cook's senior officers shoots a man dead. Cook leads his fleet off early the next month, tracking north along the mainland coast of America.

43:50Despite bad weather, he eventually makes it all the way through the Bering Strait and heads northeast up the Alaskan coast until sea ice forces him back. Though he fails in his search for the Northwest Passage, in a single trip he has overseen the mapping of much of the Pacific coast of North America, a magnificent achievement in its own right. By September, he is heading back to the Sandwich Islands to regroup before another attempt at finding the passage. But he is suffering with a serious stomach complaint. And just as worryingly, his behavior is becoming erratic, especially when it comes to his dealings with local communities.

44:33Cook's interactions with indigenous peoples across the Pacific are really varied. It's quite difficult to generalize. lies. It certainly does seem to be the case that on all three voyages, particularly the third voyage though, that if he thinks his crew or his mission are in jeopardy or if he isn't getting what he wants, he will resort to threats, intimidation and violence in his dealings with indigenous peoples. But equally, there are many more amicable meetings that he enjoys where trade happens successfully and even where he's treated to great hospitality as well. Docking at one point in the middle of a religious festival, he is made the focal point of a ceremony, leading some to think that the locals believe him to be a god.

45:18He and his men stay for a month, time enough to repair the ship and get ready for another northwest passage search. But his ships have hardly set sail when resolution breaks a mast and has to return to harbor.

45:38Now at Lowe's. Faster quotes. Start at the Lowe's Pro Desk. Got a material list handwritten on a sticky note or saved as a photo? Perfect. Bring it to us and get a quote in minutes. And if you don't see what you need on the shelf, we'll help you get it. You can access thousands of products beyond what's available in-store or on Lowe's.com. Right from the Lowe's Pro Desk. Build quotes faster and source the materials you need to keep your jobs moving. Just like that at Lowe's. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Listening to this podcast instead of doom scrolling? Smart move. Another smart move?

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46:39It is the 14th of February, 1779, in Keale Kakua Bay, Hawaii. A local boy, perhaps eight years old, stands on the warm, white sand of the beach. The turquoise sea laps close by, calmly rhythmic. But the child's shoulders are hunched. He has his arms wrapped around his mother's waist, cowering behind her. In front of him, out on the water, the white men's big ships bob about. The boy has met their leader before, the tall man with the powdery grey hair. He is confused as to exactly where he has come from and what he wants, although everything had seemed alright when the boats left a few days ago.

47:26But since they have come back, something is different, and the man with the grey hair is very angry. The boy gathers that someone from the island has taken one of the small boats that belongs to the big ships. Other things have gone missing too. So now, the grey-haired man and some of his sailors are frog-marching the local ruler, Kalaniopuu, down the beach to put him on their ship.

47:57Hurtling down the beach, the chief's wife screams at her husband not to go with them. She has drawn a big crowd, and everyone is shouting. The white men are giving as good as they get. The boy puts his hands over his ears to try to drown out the din, then watches on in tears as Kalani Opu 'u sits down on the sand and refuses to move. Now the boy spots an old man approach the white men, brandishing a coconut and chanting. All the while, the beach fills with more locals, the tension ratcheting up. The white men begin to edge away, their guns raised. But then a scuffle breaks out. The boy cannot tell what is accidental and what is on purpose.

48:47Somehow, the grey-haired man is struck with a shark-toothed club. He raises his hand to his head, checking for blood, as his legs give way beneath him and he falls onto the sand, the sea lapping around him. Another man lunges at him, a dagger glinting in his hand. All is now pandemonium. The boy flinches as a gunshot cuts through the cacophony. The crowd of locals surges towards the visitors, who start trying to row back to their ships. The boy is scooped up by his mother, who hurries from the beach for the safety of home. But he watches over her shoulder nonetheless, unable to take his eyes from the horror, the blasts of the musket, the flashing of blades, the swinging of clubs.

49:43By the time it's over, Cook lies dead alongside four of his men. There are fatalities on the indigenous side too. The locals initially prepare Cook's body for ritual burial, a sign that he is still held in esteem even after the tragedy that has played out. Eventually, though, some of his remains are returned to his crew for burial at sea. It takes nearly a year and a half for word to reach England of Cook's death. George III is said to cry when he hears the news. But other than that, the response is strangely muted. There is no official commemoration or monument erected in his honor. The pension his widow receives, 200 pounds a year, is not especially generous.

50:33Despite her husband being at home for only about four of the 17 years of their marriage, her grief is nonetheless heartfelt. When she gets news of Cook's death, she's been working on an embroidered waistcoat for him, something he could wear at court, but it's not linen or the kind of familiar fabric that she's using. It's tapper cloth that he's bought back from Tahiti. She's embroidering that to make this waistcoat for him. So it's, you know, kind of his voyages and sort of the things that come from his voyages are quite literally being stitched into their family life in that sense. But others show little sympathy.

51:14Britain's colonial aspirations are up for debate. Certainly some newspapers, the Morning Chronicle being one, prints reports of Cook's death that say, if we were people in the Pacific and people turned up on our shores in strange boats with strange weapons, we might well see them as, and the phrase that the Morning Chronicle used, invaders or pirates.

51:41It's only in the months and years that follow, driven by publishers seeking publicity, the journals of his last voyage, that there is a reappraisal of Cook's contribution. As the British begin to settle Australia in the years after his death, so begins his rehabilitation, in the eyes of his homeland at least, as something akin to a founding father in the Pacific. His was a life forged in the crucible of exploration and fueled by the European dream of expansion. But in death, Cook becomes many things to many people. To some, he is remembered as a sailor and navigator, a seeker of knowledge, a medical pioneer.

52:25But with the impact of colonialism still being appraised and debated by historians, social theorists, and ordinary people, he is also associated with the imperial land grab that saw British interests prioritized over indigenous communities. Not just a student of untouched cultures, but an appropriator of them. Worse still, a murderer and harbinger of doom for countless millions. Where truth lies is in the end a matter of interpretation and personal conviction. I think it's just a really powerful example that there have always been different readings of his legacy, and as there is for any historical figure, Their reputation is always multifaceted and can be seen from many different perspectives and is constantly changing through time and is being kind of rewritten and reinterpreted over and over again.

53:17When we think about Cook's legacy, it comes back to the complexities that are inherent within his voyages themselves. They are, on one level, voyages with a scientific imperative behind them. They are voyages that are born out of a desire to learn, a desire to sort of push the boundaries of knowledge and understanding to test out new theories, but then they are equally sort of bound up with a particular British imperial project. But 200 years down the line, when we know that legacy, it becomes much more complicated to sort of assess the sort of achievements that we can admire. But then we also kind of have to acknowledge, on the other hand, the implications of a lot of what he was doing and the impacts that it's had on many different parts of the world.

54:07Next time on Short History of, we'll bring you a short history of the Stone Age. The Stone Age and prehistory in general is an incredibly distant time period, and we are missing so much. I try to use the analogy of a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle, but we are missing most of those pieces as you open the box. As you remove that picture, you go through that 10 ,000 years of degradation in the ground. So you're only left with maybe five pieces. And those five pieces might be a scattering of stone tools, maybe some broken fragments of bone or pottery. Maybe, if we're very lucky, some preserved pieces of wood and maybe one or two other things.

54:55But that's about it. That's next time.

55:03If you can't wait a week until the next episode, you can listen to it right away by subscribing to Noiser Plus. Head to www.noiser.com forward slash subscriptions for more information. Now at Lowe's. Faster quotes. Start at the Lowe's Pro Desk. Got a material list handwritten on a sticky note or saved as a photo? Perfect. Bring it to us and get a quote in minutes. And if you don't see what you need on the shelf, we'll help you get it. You can access thousands of products beyond what's available in-store or on Lowe's.com, right from the Lowe's Pro Desk. Build quotes faster and source the materials you need to keep your jobs moving.

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