In the late 18th Century, three great voyages of discovery were made, which
would push the borders of the British Empire to the ends of the Earth.
They were led by Captain James Cook.
In just over a decade, his genius as a navigator
and chart maker would add a third to the map of the known world.
For many, he was the greatest explorer in history.
For others, a ruthless conqueror.
While Cook is famous for what he did,
we know much less about who he really was.
I'm off on my own voyage of discovery to search for Cook the man.
Travelling in his footsteps, I want to uncover
the forces that drove him to success and ultimately to his death.
Between 1768 and 1775, James Cook, the obsessive, discovering genius,
had crossed oceans, charted new lands and discovered new peoples.
He had secured his place in history.
Like many people,
I'd learnt about James Cook at school.
At first, I really didn't think he was for me.
It was just more propaganda for an outmoded empire -
the noble hero who discovered Australia and New Zealand
and put a lot of the Pacific on the map.
But while researching for my book, I learn more about the woman behind
the imperial icon - his wife Elizabeth.
In 16 years of marriage, Elizabeth and James spent
a total of just four years together.
They had six children and Elizabeth buried all six alone.
She survived James by 56 years.
But, just before she died aged 93, she did something curious.
She burnt every single letter he'd ever written her.
The inner world of James Cook went up in smoke.
A hidden world I wanted to explore.
My search for James Cook starts here at Whitby, on the Yorkshire coast.
Here, the 18-year-old former farm boy began his naval career, as an
apprentice to a Quaker ship owner called John Walker.
Captain Cook Society's Cliff Thornton is bringing me to John
Walker's house, now the Cook Museum.
Here, 18-year-old James undertook "not to play dice,
"cards, or bowls or commit fornication nor contract matrimony."
In return, John Walker agreed to "find and provide meat and drink,
"washing and lodging" and to teach his apprentice
"the trade, mystery and occupation of a mariner."
Now, tell me about the Walker family. Who were they?
Well, first and foremost they were a Quaker family.
There was quite a large congregation within Whitby at that time. So that
meant that their approach to life was very sober, very industrious.
They believed in moderation.
So, these traits, then, were Quaker traits.
But, these surely were also the traits that were imbued in James Cook
during his time here, do you think?
When many captains were sailing into foreign lands, blasting
away with the cannons to say "we are master", Cook was going very
peaceably and trying to establish friends and trade with the peoples.
And I think you can trace some of those origins back to his time here.
James Cook learnt to sail in the North Sea,
some of the most treacherous waters in the world.
The ships he learned on were Whitby Cats, the coal tankers of their day.
He'll eventually take these strong, versatile ships
to the ends of the Earth.
In June 1755, after nine years learning his trade,
Cook joined the Royal Navy.
Within two years, he was promoted to Ships Master,
responsible for navigation.
So, as Ships Master in the mid-18th Century,
what does Cook have to work with?
Well, maps or charts, for a start.
But the thing we have to understand is that the maps back then were not
the more scientific documents we have today. Take a look at this.
It's a Newfoundland map that was drawn in 1698.
It looks like an OK map, doesn't it?
Compare it with a satellite image,
and you can see it's hopelessly inaccurate.
But soon accurate maps would be in huge demand.
In 1756, Britain and France began the Seven Years War.
Two years later, 29-year-old Cook was sent to New France as part of
a combined army and navy force.
Its goal was to make North America British.
The French first line of defence was here, at Louisburg Fortress.
The British made a surprise landing
on nearby Kennington Beach and won the Battle of Louisburg.
But, for Cook, the victory was almost a side issue.
The day after the fortress fell, Cook was walking on this little
beach where he met a young man named Samuel Holland,
who was using a strange kind of instrument.
As it would turn out, it was called a plane table.
The plane table was a revelation to James Cook.
He quickly grasped that it could be used to transform
the accuracy of naval charts.
Let's suppose we place the plane table here.
And this is a stone, represents the object we're taking a bearing on.
Well, if you take a bearing with the plane table on that object, then you
measure off the known distance here
and take another bearing on the object. Since you know this distance
by geometry you can calculate what these two distances are.
So, Cook, Holland or, in fact, anyone could take what they saw
before them in the landscape and translate that onto paper.
In other words, they could make themselves a map
or an accurate chart.
James Cook had found his calling.
Until now, sailors like him had been reliant on local knowledge,
crude sketches and written lists of sailing directions.
Now, as a map maker, he would draw scientific charts bringing precision
where there had been none.
We can still see the first chart he ever drew.
It's kept here.
This is the Hydrographic Office in Taunton in Somerset in England.
It contains charts for every scrap of coastline on Earth.
But, more importantly, it contains one of the most significant documents
for me anywhere in the world.
It's kept in the protection of the Curator of Maps, Philip Clayton-Gore.
Right, so it's in here, is it?
Wow, isn't that just beautiful?
It's extraordinary.
'This is the result of James Cook's meeting with Samuel Holland
'on that Canadian beach.
'This is James Cook's first chart.
'A draft of the bay and harbour at Gaspay
'on the St Lawrence River, 1758.'
Cook's maps from Canada were so outstanding that he was appointed
King's Surveyor of Newfoundland.
But what I'm beginning to see is how it suited his perfectionist nature
and his passion for accuracy.
He stands alone for his thoroughness and for his dedication
of the application of this emerging science of hydrography.
He's unremitting in his labour. He's almost verging on the obsessional.
Now, here's the map Cook
was given in 1762, the year he started charting the territory.
If we compare it with the satellite image, it still
doesn't match up with reality.
Here's what Cook produced five years later.
Now this really is a map.
Just look at this detail.
And when you put it up against a modern satellite image,
you can see just how precise it is.
So precise in fact, it was still being used
well into the 20th Century.
Perhaps as he entered his mid 30s, this down-to-earth Yorkshire farm boy
had travelled further than the New World.
His charting ability made him invaluable
to an ever-expanding empire.
But it also meant he could start climbing
Britain's rigid social hierarchy.
And there's a clue that he knew it. Take a look at his signature.
It's changing.
He's adding elaborate flourishes.
I think it's the signature of a man growing in confidence,
preparing himself for better things.
By 1767, James Cook was 39 years old,
married, with a growing family. His wife Elizabeth was 27.
Young James, four, Nathaniel, three and little Elizabeth, 18 months.
Life for the Cooks had settled into a pattern. James spent summers
surveying Newfoundland, winters back in London finishing his charts.
Then one day, Cook was called to the Admiralty,
the headquarters of the Royal Navy.
The Admiralty wanted Cook to lead
Britain's first scientific voyage of discovery.
He was to set sail for the very edge of the known world and then go beyond
to discover a new and fabled land of riches and claim it for Britain.
In the 18th Century, at least a third of the Earth was still a mystery.
Nobody in Europe knew what was in the blank space to the South.
But, there was a legend
that waiting to be discovered was a great southern continent.
There was always the hope of finding another America.
America had made such an impact on European consciousness.
And there was the hope that it would bring with it the riches
that America had brought to Europe.
So, why did the power brokers at the Admiralty chose James Cook,
who, on paper, was just a Ships Master?
Well, it would take a brilliant
navigator to find it and a superb map maker to chart it accurately.
If it existed, they knew
Cook would bring back the information they needed to claim the prized land.
The Navy had already chosen his ship.
Ironically, she was a Whitby Cat, the very type of ship on
which Cook had learnt his trade.
Her name was the Earl of Pembroke, but it was changed to...Endeavour.
If you're looking for James Cook,
this is probably the best place to find him.
This is his ship.
This replica of Endeavour was launched in 1993.
Hi, Penny. How are you going? Welcome aboard. Good, thank you.
It's a bit of a squeeze so I'll dump my bag up there.
'Second officer aboard the Endeavour replica is Penny Keeley.
'She takes me below decks, to the claustrophobic
'world of the 18th Century Navy.'
Captain Cook's lobby and his cabin in here.
I can imagine there's a few banged heads in here.
James Cook was over six foot tall.
About six foot two. He had to spend three years cramped in this quarter.
After months of painstaking preparation,
everything was finally in place.
'August 26th, 1768.
'At 2pm got under sail and put to sea, having on board 94 persons
'including officers, seamen, gentlemen and their servants.'
It was the biggest moment of James Cook's life.
If successful, this voyage would propel him towards naval stardom.
The day after Endeavour left, Elizabeth gave birth to her
fourth child, a boy, Joseph.
But within a month, baby Joseph would be dead.
It would be three years before James Cook found out.
After five months at sea, Endeavour rounded the tip of South America,
and entered the waters that would make Cook famous...
the vast and mysterious Pacific Ocean.
Three months later, Cook and his crew arrived at the island of Tahiti.
Their intention was to observe a rare astronomical event -
the transit of Venus across the face of the sun.
But it wasn't this that caught the crew's attention.
It's heaven on earth.
It's the best posting you've ever got in a brutal navy.
The natives were friendly, the food was good, native women were even
friendlier than the native men and you could have a night of pleasure
for the price of an iron nail. So this was just mind blowing.
But, for Cook's most eminent travelling companion,
Tahiti provided something much more significant.
Joseph Banks is a wealthy aristocrat with a passion for natural history.
He's paid £10,000 to come on this voyage but he's really entered into
the spirit of things. He's collected hundreds of natural history specimens
and now he collects one more - a young Tahitian named Tupaya.
Tupaya was a Tahitian priest. Banks saw him as an exotic souvenir
to show off back in London.
But here, we can get a fascinating insight
into the way Cook's mind worked.
Tupaya was a navigator, and Cook wanted to tap into his
incredible knowledge - knowledge of the mysterious waters of the Pacific.
Cook respected his geographical knowledge, his navigational skills
and he was an invaluable translator for them all around Polynesia.
Cook draws upon local experience whenever he can and I
think that sets him apart, again, from other officers in the period -
his willingness to learn
from local knowledge and to deal with indiginous peoples.
After leaving Tahiti, Tupaya drew Cook a map.
Two men - one, guardian of the Polynesian world and its geography,
the other, an officer in His Majesty's navy -
and the common language they shared was that of navigation.
Tupaya's knowledge was that of the amazing Polynesian people,
the most widely-travelled people on Earth.
Tupaya's map stretches across some 2,200km of ocean.
But on it, there was no sign of the great Southern Continent.
'We cannot find that Tupaya either
'knows of or has ever heard of a continent or large tract of land.
'I have no reason to doubt his information.'
But as instructed, Cook sailed to 40 degrees south and found nothing.
No sign of the southern land,
so he went back to his secret orders which said, not having discovered the
great Southern Continent, you are to proceed to the westward
until you discover it or fall in with the land discovered by Tasman.
In 1769, that land looks like this on maps.
The Dutch explorer Abel Tasman had named it Staten Land in 1642.
It was widely believed to be the west coast of
the great Southern Continent.
Land ahoy!
All Cook knew was that he was
looking at the east coast of an unidentified land.
The quickest way to find out if this
was the Great Continent was to ask the people who clearly lived here,
people who were about to make a profound impact on James Cook.
MAORI WELCOMING CHANT
This mystery coast is in fact the home of Maori.
They call it Aotearoa,
the Land Of The Long White Cloud.
We know it today as New Zealand.
Endeavour dropped anchor at what's now Gisborne,
about half way up the North Island.
Watching Endeavour arrive was Te Maro.
Te Maro was leader of the Ngati Oneone tribe. He'd never meet Cook, because
when a landing party was sent ashore from Endeavour Te Maro was shot dead.
Hi, Barney. Nice to meet you.
'Barney Tupara is Te Maro's descendant.'
Come on inside.
Thank you very much.
Barney and the Maori have not forgotten their meeting with Cook.
The next day, Cook comes ashore and he writes that he saw an assembling
of natives with flourishing weapons above their heads and
doing what seemed to be a war dance.
It wasn't just a war dance. It was a kapa haka.
Cook was probably the first Englishman to witness a Maori haka.
The haka that Cook saw would have been an expression of aggression,
would have been an expression of celebration, but also of prowess and strength.
Cook had no idea how to respond to this Maori haka.
But what happened next was remarkable.
Te Rakau, who was the leader of the
kapa haka that came down onto the beach that day,
would have then gone forward
to meet him.
What the hongi is - it's the way that we as Maori greet people.
Irrespective of whether we like them or not.
It's quite an intimate, but very gentle and friendly way
way of greeting another person.
Cook's instinctive response
brought the dangerous situation under control.
But that bridging of two diverse
cultures was all too brief and things soon began to go wrong.
For a reason unclear, Te Rakau grabbed Cook's sword.
And then of course, as we know, he was shot.
From the British accounts, there is the story that Cook placed
a red coat from one of the marines over Te Rakau's body.
Is that something that
is picked up in your oral history as perhaps a gesture of reconciliation?
To some extent it's probably fair to say that with the laying of the red
coat, there was a desire to accept that maybe what
happened shouldn't have happened, and Cook taking responsibility.
'I am aware that most humane men who have not experienced things
'of this nature will censure my conduct in firing upon the people.
'But I was not to stand still and suffer either myself
'or those that were with me to be knocked on the head.'
James Cook knew that his time here had been a disaster.
He called it Poverty Bay.
I think he named this place as much for his own sense of failure as for
any failure in getting provisions.
Cook sailed north, looking for supplies and safe anchorage.
He had to find a way to communicate with the inhabitants to get what he
needed and to find out if this was the great Southern Continent.
But he knew he must tread carefully. So, next time they went ashore,
he sent in Tupaya, the Polynesian navigator.
They set in at a place called Tolaga Bay.
Endeavour anchored just over there.
Then Cook rowed around this headland
and came into this cove here to get wood and water.
After his disturbing first few days
in New Zealand, he's learning that respect goes a long way with Maori.
'During our stay in this bay, we had every day traffic with the natives.
'I suffered everyone to purchase whatever they pleased without limitation.
'But by this means, I knew that the natives would not only sell
'but also get a good price for everything they brought.'
We know from his journals that Cook was deeply worried about the
effects his contact would have on the indigenous people in the Pacific.
What seems to be happening here is much more
than just an explorer plotting a stretch of coastline on a map.
What we're seeing...
are the moral coordinates in the growing map of Cook the man.
Cook suspected that this was an island and not the great continent.
For the next six months, he
minutely charted what turned out to be the two islands that we now know
make up New Zealand and he claimed them for Britain.
His final map is a masterpiece.
This is just the most brilliant piece of hydrographic work
ever undertaken. Pioneering, it's on a grander scale,
it's done in a shorter space of time and it's remarkably accurate.
Nobody had ever done anything like this before.
By April 1770, Cook hadn't seen his family in over 18 months.
He'd missed James's 7th birthday, Nathanial's 6th, and little
Elizabeth's 3rd.
He thought he'd missed baby Joseph's first birthday. He had no
way of knowing that Joseph had died a month after he'd left England
and it would be another 15 months before he got home and found out.
For the moment though, James Cook
had a more immediate family to look after.
His crew.
Peppered throughout the journals of James Cook are constant references
to feeding his men.
He was obsessive about their diet and small wonder.
The biggest threat to their health on board was scurvy.
Scurvy killed more sailors in the 18th Century than war, accidents
and shipwrecks combined.
Scurvy is a horrible condition caused by lack of Vitamin C.
Nobody knows this yet, not even James Cook. But he does know
his men need to eat fresh food, something impossible on long voyages.
So, instead, he places his faith in a substitute.
Sauerkraut or pickled cabbage.
Trouble is, his men refuse to eat it.
And frankly, I don't blame them.
It smells disgusting.
But here, we see something quite remarkable.
James Cook could order his men to eat it.
He could threaten to flog them.
But, instead, he chooses a different tactic.
Psychology.
'The sauerkraut the men at first would not eat.
'Until I put in practice a method I never once knew to fail.
'This was to have some of it dressed every day for the cabin table.
'The moment they see their superiors set a value upon it, it becomes the
'finest stuff in the world.'
In all his voyages, Cook the humanitarian
would not lose a single man to scurvy.
But this voyage wasn't over yet.
There were more discoveries ahead.
On April 19th 1770, Cook sighted the land which would
forge his name in history.
New Holland.
He guided Endeavour into a beautiful bay.
You still arrive in New Holland at that very bay.
It's the sight of Sydney Airport.
Today, New Holland is Australia.
James Cook anchors Endeavour just out there.
As he's being rowed to shore, he clearly has a sense of occasion.
He knows the first man to step ashore will be remembered.
So, he turns to his wife's cousin, 17-year-old midshipman Isaac Smith
and says Isaac, you shall go first.
New Holland was mind blowing for Joseph Banks
and his fellow naturalist, Doctor Sallander.
Everything there was so different from any other place on Earth.
The scientists collected samples of a 130 unknown
species of plant, including one named after Banks himself, Banksia.
James Cook had already named this place Sting Ray Harbour
but he went back to his journal and changed it to one that would become
the most famous name in the land.
Botany Bay.
But one thing mystified Cook.
There were few signs of the local inhabitants.
Unlike the Tahitians or Maori, the residents of New Holland
made it clear they wanted nothing to do with these white visitors.
They wanted them to go away.
On May 6th 1770, his work done
at Botany Bay, Cook began working his way up the east coast of New Holland.
For three months, he methodically
and meticulously charted this unknown land.
Cook had no way of knowing that as he pushed up
the east coast of New Holland, he was putting the entire voyage at risk.
He was sailing Endeavour straight into a trap -
the Great Barrier Reef...
..a marine mine field
of treacherous coral outcrops over 1,200 miles long - the same distance
as London to Moscow.
James Cook drove his ship onwards.
On 11 June 1770, Endeavour smashed onto the reef.
There were 100 men on board
Endeavour, the charts of New Zealand and the east coast of New Holland.
This was a priceless treasure ship.
Water gushed in. The men threw stores,
cannon overboard, anything to lighten the ship.
They were 20 miles from land, their lives hanging in the balance.
SHOUTING AND BELLS RINGING
After more than 23 terrifying hours,
they managed to float her off the reef.
Endeavour limped for three days towards the coastline.
James Cook watched plumes of smoke rising from the land.
Smoke meant people.
People only settled where they could find fresh water.
James Cook pulled Endeavour in right here.
By now, the place was deserted.
Whoever had lit those fires was long gone.
We know from his records that
he beached the ship right here, in this exact spot.
And then pulled her up onto the mud,
pushed her over to repair the hole in her side.
Sydney Parkinson, the ship's artist,
then rode out roughly to where those boats are out there,
turned around and drew the scene.
What is so surprising about Cook is that he's managed all the rest of
the voyage without doing this. He's managing to avoid running aground -
Tahiti, all the way round New Zealand, most of the way up
the east coast of Australia, in and out of the Barrier Reef. Remarkable.
He's making the charts as he goes. And he manages to run aground just once.
That's absolutely stunning.
After seven weeks, Cook navigated the patched-up Endeavour out through the
maze of the Great Barrier Reef.
18 days later, on 22 August 1770, Cook performed one of the most
controversial acts of the whole voyage.
He claimed the entire east coast of New Holland for Britain.
It was an act which even today
some regard as the illegal theft of a continent from its indigenous people.
The next day, Cook sailed north into open water and back onto the map.
Endeavour had finally rejoined the known world and now headed
for the Dutch port of Batavia, modern Jakarta.
Endeavour was still in bad need of repair.
Not long after they arrived, they took on water.
But that water was infected and disease struck.
It was James Cook's worst nightmare.
As they sailed for home, men he'd kept alive
two and a half years, began to die.
13 March 1771, South Africa.
By now, Cook had lost over a third of his men.
There were barely enough left to sail the ship into port.
So close to home, having taken his crew around the world without losing
a single man to disease.
This was a tragedy for the man who cared so greatly for his men,
and devastating for someone who needed to be in control.
12 July 1771, after two years and 11 months at sea, Endeavour sighted the
White Cliffs of Dover.
Britain's great scientific voyage of discovery was finally over.
And it was time for Cook to leave his wooden world on board Endeavour.
James Cook headed home to Elizabeth and the family.
He was expecting four children,
but there were only two - young James and Nathanial.
Baby Joseph had died while Cook was away,
and so too had his only daughter.
I've got children of my own, so the thought of Elizabeth mourning her
little ones by herself really tugs at my heart.
She buried two of them here, at St Dunstan's Church, not far from the
family home at Mile End. Baby Joseph
and her namesake, the infant Elizabeth.
Canny and pragmatic, she was raised in an alehouse
near the Thames, so knew what she was in for marrying a sailor.
But James Cook was no ordinary sailor.
In 16 years of marriage, they spent just four years together.
If James Cook was exceptional, he needed a wife who was every
bit as tough and determined to hold their family together.
Theirs really was a partnership, despite the long years of separation.
In her own way, she was just as remarkable as him.
On 16 June 1772, Elizabeth gave birth to George, their fifth child.
Just five days later,
James Cook said goodbye to Elizabeth and the children.
He was going to the other side of the world, and he might never return.
The Admiralty still believed there were huge areas in the Southern Ocean
where a vast land mass might be found.
But Cook had a second, personal agenda - to chart the Southern Oceans
and rid them of uncertainty.
Now, he's on a voyage that he says will make his previous discoveries
more perfect and complete.
"More perfect and complete."
That choice of words is really interesting.
It gives us a valuable insight into his determination and his obsession.
On 13 July 1772, Cook and his new ship, Resolution, and the Adventure
sailed from Plymouth.
It would take over three months to reach Table Bay
at the southern tip of Africa.
From here, they headed south, towards Antarctica, where the ships entered a
strange world of ice.
'Admiration and horror.
'The first is occasioned by the beautifulness of the picture.
'And the latter by the danger.
'And can only be described by the hand of an able painter.'
The "able painter" was 29-year-old ship's artist, William Hodges.
He would show the world wonders
like these - the very first images of the Antarctic.
'At 14 past 11 o'clock,
'we passed the Antarctic Circle and are undoubtedly the first and only
'ship that ever crossed that line.'
James Cook continued his sweep of the Southern Ocean.
He'd been at sea for over four months and travelled over 10,000 miles
without ever sighting land.
But something was happening to Cook.
The man who always wanted to be in control, began to show
glimpses that all wasn't well.
'He was suffering so greatly from his stomach, that he was in a great
'sweat and could hardly stand.
'It was, indeed, hardly remarkable that,
'after so great a responsibility and so prodigious a strain on his mental
'and physical capacities, he should be completely exhausted.
'Anders Sparrman, HMS Resolution.'
Cook recovered and the vast blank which was the Pacific Ocean was now
being meticulously filled in by the hand of this master chartmaker.
Yet the growing sense of order on the chart, contrasted with the growing
disorder in his temper. Increasingly unpredictable, the new
Cook was at times a far cry from the controlled man his crew was used to.
On this voyage, Cook had achieved his
ambition - to go as far as it was possible for a man to go.
But had he pushed himself too far?
Physically and mentally,
flaws are beginning to show in this discovering genius.
Flaws that will ultimately lead to his death.
The summer of 1776 finds James Cook here,
ensconsed at Greenwich Hospital, a retirement home for sailors.
Cook was bored and restless.
At 48, he was the most celebrated sailor of his age.
He'd completely two extraordinary voyages of discovery.
And he was about to be called out of retirement to start a third.
Cook had been asked to dinner with
the three most important men in the British Navy.
They wanted him to lead one final voyage of exploration.
They wanted him to find the fabled Northwest Passage.
And the reason was Britain's love of tea - most of which came from Asia.
The main trade route to the riches
of Asia was around the bottom of Africa and across the Indian Ocean.
But the Portuguese had controlled that for almost 300 years.
The answer was to go the other way round - over the top of the world.
A passage north-west from Britain up to the Arctic, down into the Pacific
and round to China, cutting the distance almost by half.
Like the great southern unknown, the Northwest Passage
was one of those great cartographic mysteries.
What happened to the northern coastline of Canada?
What was there at the North Pole?
From the very start of this voyage,
James Cook was under enormous pressure.
He only had a few months to prepare.
He scoured the existing charts and accounts of previous voyages,
but most of them were useless fantasies.
Look at the quality of information he has to deal with.
This Russian map purports to be a very accurate little map.
But just look here. Alaska is shown as an island.
This strait doesn't even exist.
Yet Cook has been sent north to sail through it
and find the Northwest Passage.
But there were other worrying signs that James Cook's third
great voyage would have its problems.
One thing he wasn't doing, something he'd always done, was to check
personally the ship, the supplies and equipment for the voyage.
He's neglecting the very thing that ensured his success
on his other voyages.
He said farewell to Elizabeth.
She knew she faced years of separation,
but even she couldn't guess it would be 56 years of being alone.
They would never see each other again.
In June 1776, the expedition set sail.
Cook used two ships - Resolution, which he'd command, and Discovery.
Once, again he would travel round Africa and enter the Pacific from the
east, before heading north to the Canadian coast, in his search for
the Northwest Passage.
For some of his loyal crew,
this would be their third voyage with Cook.
One newcomer is ship's master, the brilliant but prickly William Bligh.
He'll become notorious for the mutiny on the Bounty.
But for now he wants to sail with Cook, the great navigator.
But as the voyage progressed, Cook, the cool humane captain underwent a
dramatic, disturbing change.
He loses his temper, he starts to shout and yell at the officers
and men. He starts to lose control of his emotions.
And there's a kind of tragic inevitability that it's not going to end well.
If his behaviour was growing erratic towards the end of the second voyage,
on the third it was getting worse.
'Heiva, the name of the dances of the southern islanders,
which bore so great a resemblance to the violent motions and stampings on
'the deck of Captain Cook...
'It was a common saying among both officers and people -
'the old boy has been tipping a heiva.
'James Trevenen - Midshipman, HMS Resolution.'
James Cook did have big problems.
He was battling the wind, and supplies were stretched to the limit.
He'd also missed the northern summer, which meant extending the trip
by another year.
The Cook of old would have maintained his composure.
This new Cook has a mean streak, and he takes it out on others.
The first to feel this was the island of Moorea, near Tahiti.
When the locals stole the ship's goat, Cook got so angry
he set fire to their boats and village in revenge.
'Thus this troublesome and rather unfortunate affair ended -
'which could not be more regretted on the part of the natives than it
'was on mine.'
The once-peaceful James Cook was
now becoming increasingly ruthless with the indigenous people he met.
And his crew began to notice the change.
'Captain Cook punished in a manner rather unbecoming of a European,
'by cutting off their ears,
'firing at them with small shot as they were swimming or paddling to shore,
'beating them with the ores and sticking the boat up into them.
George Gilbert - Midshipman, HMS Resolution.'
Cook was aware of his changing behaviour, but it seems he was
unable to control it.
Actually, I sometimes wonder if he just wasn't a little bit depressed,
because depression wasn't a condition that one admitted
to or diagnosed back in the 1700s.
Another more simple explanation
might be that he just wore the burden of command for too long.
He was worn down by continual responsibility.
Cook had been away for over 18 months when he sailed up
towards the North American continent.
It was from here, New Albion,
that he began his search for the Northwest Passage.
New Albion included what we now call Canada.
Here, James Cook met the Mowerchat, the people of the deer.
Cook's crew were the first white men they'd ever seen.
When James Cook arrived in these waters, it's said that the people who
came out to meet him directed him to a village, and that's it over there.
The village of Ukot.
James Cook's ship Resolution is really falling apart.
Sloppy defence contractors aren't just a modern problem.
The shipwrights back home have done a
terrible job, and he now needs to chop down these trees to replace
masts and make new timbers - all work that should have been
overseen by Cook in London, not thousands of kilometres away, here.
After a month in Nootka, James Cook sailed off
in search of the Northwest Passage.
It was the start of his last great quest.
Cook's ships crawled along the tortuous Alaskan coastline.
Every bay and inlet was methodically checked.
Any of them might have revealed the illusive route back to Britain.
Weeks and months drifted by.
There was no sign of Cook's prize, no sign of a quick route home.
Cook should have been in his element.
On previous journeys, his obsession with meticulous
charting of unfamiliar coastlines had driven his crew to distraction.
But now it was doing the same to him.
One huge bay alone took 16 days to explore to his satisfaction.
Could it be he was starting to doubt himself?
What if the Northwest Passage didn't really exist?
What if this last great voyage was a waste of time?
In August 1778, Resolution and Discovery entered the Arctic Ocean.
The two ships beat drums and fired guns to keep track of each other.
Here, James Cook entered a world shrouded in fog.
The Russian maps he'd gathered in London were useless.
'What could induce him to publish so
'erroneous a map that the most illiterate of his
'illiterate seafaring men would have been ashamed to put his name to?'
James Cook's behaviour is beginning to horrify his men.
He runs with the wind in fog so thick, they can
barely see the length of the ship.
Suddenly he hears the sound of crashing surf
and orders the ship halted.
When the frog clears, they realise they've
hurtled through a gap in the rocks little wider than the ship herself.
Providence had conducted us through these rocks where I should not have
ventured on a clear day.
And to such an anchoring place I could not have chosen better.
Desperate for fresh meat, James Cook had some walrus butchered
and ordered his men to eat it.
They found walrus disgusting and refused.
In a fit of pique, he cut their rations.
That's completely out of character for him, and shows
just how badly he was losing the control, the respect, of his crew.
That's something that's never happened before.
They now take the extraordinary step of writing him a letter of complaint.
'This is a very mutinous proceeding.
'Every innovation of mine - sauerkraut,
'all of them - have been designed
'by me to keep my people free from the dreadful distemper scurvy.'
James Cook's world was spiralling out of control.
A ship that was falling apart.
Maps that were useless fantasies.
He'd been at sea for a year,
and after just three weeks in the Arctic Ocean, he'd hit a wall of ice.
And it was not even winter yet.
Now, even the world's greatest explorer had to admit defeat.
James Cook probably would have seen it as a failure of science.
But perhaps it was a failure of the man.
Perhaps he shouldn't have agreed to lead this voyage. He was almost 50.
He'd spent most of the last ten years
at sea, under the sort of pressure that most captains never experience.
When he was younger he seemed to thrive on this.
But now it was taking its toll.
Where once he led solely by example,
now, he would sometimes resort to using fear and threats.
He was losing the respect
of his crew and officers, and the people he met in these new lands.
With the northern winter looming, it would be months before he could
search again for the Northwest Passage.
He desperately needed somewhere warm to rest and resupply.
So he took his two ships back to the Pacific, to a place that he
discovered on his journey north - the Sandwich Islands.
Today we know them as Hawaii.
Amazingly, Cook sailed round them for six weeks without landing.
His crew thought their commander was out of his mind.
They certainly were - watching the land pass by day after day.
Cook offered no explanation and they didn't dare ask.
Finally, Resolution and Discovery entered
a wide bay and dropped anchor.
You still enter Kealakekua Bay the way James Cook saw it.
But the reception he received was astonishing.
So many people came out and clambered
aboard Resolution and Discovery that both ships started to list.
'I had nowhere in the course of my voyages seen so numerous a body of
'people assembled at one place.
'Besides those in canoes, all the shore were covered in spectators,
'and many hundreds were swimming about the ships like fish.'
After almost three weeks, Resolution and Discovery resupply and leave.
James Cook is going back
again to hammer away at the ice at the Northwest Passage.
But just a few days out of here,
Resolution breaks a mask.
It's that shoddy workmanship he
never oversaw in London coming back to haunt him.
The ships have to return.
This time there was no big welcome.
The Hawaiians had already given James Cook everything they had,
and were far from happy to see the ships return.
The Hawaiians make it very plain that their patience has worn thin.
The level of thefts goes up very considerably,
and this is a sign that the chiefs no longer are protecting him.
He'd outstayed his welcome.
He was no longer an honoured guest.
He was now a damn nuisance.
And relations change.
It's 14th February 1779.
James Cook awakes to learn that during the night, one of his ship's
boats has been stolen. The events of the day now move very fast.
He orders the bay to be blockaded.
Discovery on that side of the bay sealing it.
Resolution sealing the other side.
James Cook has decided to pick a fight.
James Cook arrives on this beach.
He's armed and with nine marines.
They head up towards a large village here called Kaawaloa.
It's perhaps the most sacred site on the island.
He marches into this sacred village, goes straight to the chief's house
and seizes him.
Cook intends to keep him hostage until he gets his boat back.
James Cook brings the chief down here
to the water's edge amid a gathering crowd of Hawaiians.
Hundreds on this beach and more lining the rocks.
To their eyes, James Cook's behaviour is a huge insult.
On the other side of the bay, William Bligh - ever aggressive -
orders his men to open fire on
a canoe trying to breach the blockade.
They kill a high-ranking warrior.
A tidal wave of anger then sweeps along the shore line.
The beach erupts into a volley of stones.
James Cook himself fires the first shot, killing a man.
Then the Hawaiians attack.
James Cook died right here,
his sailors watching helplessly as his body is hacked to pieces.
But what actually killed Cook wasn't daggers or stones or drowning -
it was the belief that he could control every situation.
That's the tragedy of his death.
In his three epic voyages, James Cook had proved himself
one of the greatest explorers this world has ever seen.
The empire would make him a hero, but the truth about Cook the man
was washed away.
I think the real Cook was more complex, more fascinating, and that
his personal journey was perhaps the most dramatic of them all.
What I've found is perhaps an unpalatable truth -
that the ambitious, decent man who saw the human in everyone,
that man lost himself along the way.
So - a genius, yes, but a flawed and lonely genius.
And perhaps that's the real reason why his wife Elizabeth
burnt those letters - to try to keep Captain Cook the man for herself,
so that only the legend remained.
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