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00:03In the late 18th century, three great voyages of discovery were made, which would push the
00:08borders of the British Empire to the ends of the earth. They were led by Captain James Cook. In
00:17just over a decade, his genius as a navigator and chart maker would add a third to the map
00:23of the known world. For many, he was the greatest explorer in history. For others, a ruthless
00:31conqueror. While Cook is famous for what he did, we know much less about who he really
00:39was. I'm off on my own voyage of discovery to search for Cook the man. Travelling in his
00:46footsteps, I want to uncover the forces that drove him to success and ultimately to his
00:59death.
01:12Between 1768 and 1775, James Cook, the obsessive discovering genius, had crossed oceans, charted
01:21new lands and discovered new peoples. He had secured his place in history.
01:31Like many people, I'd learned about James Cook at school. At first, I really didn't think
01:37he was for me. It was just more propaganda for an outmoded empire, the noble hero who discovered
01:43Australia and New Zealand and put a lot of the Pacific on the map.
01:48But while researching for my book, I learned more about the woman behind the imperial icon, his wife, Elizabeth.
01:56In 16 years of marriage, Elizabeth and James spent a total of just four years together. They had six children
02:04and Elizabeth buried all six alone.
02:08She survived James by 56 years, but just before she died, aged 93, she did something curious. She burned every
02:17single letter he'd ever written her. The inner world of James Cook went up in smoke, a hidden world I
02:24wanted to explore.
02:30My search for James Cook starts here at Whitby on the Yorkshire coast. Here, the 18-year-old former farm
02:38boy began his naval career as an apprentice to a Quaker ship owner called John Walker.
02:45Captain Cook Society's Cliff Thornton is bringing me to John Walker's house, now the Cook Museum. Here, 18-year-old
02:53James undertook not to play dice, cards or bowls or commit fornication nor contract matrimony.
03:01In return, John Walker agreed to find and provide meat and drink, washing and lodging, and to teach his apprentice
03:09the trade, mystery and occupation of a mariner.
03:14Now, tell me about the Walker family. Who were they?
03:18Well, first and foremost, they were a Quaker family. There was quite a large congregation within Whitby at that time.
03:25So that meant that their approach to life was very sober, very industrious. They believed in moderation.
03:32So these traits then were Quaker traits, but these surely were also the traits that were imbued in James Cook
03:41during his time here, do you think?
03:42When many captains were sailing into foreign lands, blasting away with the cannons to say, we are masked, Cook was
03:49going very peaceably and trying to establish friends and trade with the peoples.
03:54And I think you can trace some of those origins back to his time here.
04:01James Cook learnt to sail in the North Sea, some of the most treacherous waters in the world.
04:07The ships he learned on were Whitby Cats, the coal tankers of their day.
04:13He'll eventually take these strong, versatile ships to the ends of the earth.
04:21In June 1755, after nine years learning his trade, Cook joined the Royal Navy.
04:29Within two years, he was promoted to ship's master, responsible for navigation.
04:39So as ship's master in the mid-18th century, what does Cook have to work with?
04:44Well, maps or charts for a start.
04:47But the thing we have to understand is that the maps back then were not the more scientific documents we
04:52have today.
04:53Take a look at this. It's a Newfoundland map that was drawn in 1698.
04:58Looks like an OK map, doesn't it?
05:01Now compare it with a satellite image and you can see it's hopelessly inaccurate.
05:11But soon, accurate maps would be in huge demand.
05:17In 1756, Britain and France began the Seven Years' War.
05:27Two years later, 29-year-old Cook was sent to New France as part of a combined army and navy
05:34force.
05:39It's goal was to make North America British.
05:50The French first line of defence was here at Louisbourg Fortress.
05:54The British made a surprise landing on nearby Kennington Beach and won the Battle of Louisbourg.
06:00But for Cook, the victory was almost a side issue.
06:05The day after the fortress fell, Cook was walking on this little beach where he met a young man named
06:12Samuel Holland who was using a strange kind of instrument.
06:18As it would turn out, it was called a plane table.
06:30The plane table was a revelation to James Cook.
06:34He quickly grasped that it could be used to transform the accuracy of naval charts.
06:41Let's supposing we place the plane table here.
06:45And this stone represents the object we're taking a bearing on.
06:49Well, if you take a bearing with a plane table on that object, then you measure off a known distance
06:55here and take another bearing on the object.
06:58Since you know this distance by geometry, you can calculate what these two distances are.
07:02So, Cook, Holland, or in fact anyone could take what they saw before them in the landscape and translate that
07:10onto paper.
07:11In other words, they could make themselves a map or an accurate chart.
07:17James Cook had found his calling.
07:20Until now, sailors like him had been reliant on local knowledge, crude sketches, and written lists of sailing directions.
07:28Now, as a map maker, he would draw scientific charts, bringing precision where there had been none.
07:38We can still see the first chart he ever drew.
07:42It's kept here.
07:44This is the Hydrographic Office in Taunton in Somerset in England.
07:48And it contains charts for every scrap of coastline on Earth.
07:54But more importantly, it contains one of the most significant documents for me anywhere in the world.
08:02It's kept in the protection of the curator of maps, Philip Clayton Gore.
08:07Right, so it's in here, is it?
08:11Wow, isn't that just beautiful?
08:15It's extraordinary.
08:16This is the result of James Cook's meeting with Samuel Holland on that Canadian beach.
08:22This is James Cook's first chart.
08:25A draft of the bay and harbour at Gaspey on the St. Lawrence River, 1758.
08:37Cook's maps from Canada were so outstanding that he was appointed King Surveyor of Newfoundland.
08:43But what I'm beginning to see is how it suited his perfectionist nature and his passion for accuracy.
08:49He stands alone for his thoroughness and for his dedication of the application of this emerging science of hydrography.
08:57He's unremitting in his labour. He's almost verging on the obsessional.
09:02Now, here's the map Cook was given in 1762, the year he started charting the territory.
09:08If we compare it with the satellite image, it still doesn't match up with reality.
09:19OK, here's what Cook produced five years later.
09:22Now, this really is a map.
09:26Just look at this detail.
09:28And when you put it up against a modern satellite image, you can see just how precise it is.
09:36So precise, in fact, it was still being used well into the 20th century.
09:43Perhaps as he entered his mid-30s, this down-to-earth Yorkshire farm boy had travelled further than the New
09:50World.
09:51His charting ability made him invaluable to an ever-expanding empire.
09:56But it also meant he could start climbing Britain's rigid social hierarchy.
10:01And there's a clue that he knew it.
10:04Take a look at his signature.
10:05It's changing.
10:07He's adding elaborate flourishes.
10:10I think it's the signature of a man growing in confidence, preparing himself for better things.
10:20By 1767, James Cook was 39 years old, married with a growing family.
10:26His wife Elizabeth was 27, young James 4, Nathaniel 3, and little Elizabeth 18 months.
10:37Life for the Cooks had settled into a pattern.
10:41James spent summers surveying Newfoundland, winters back in London finishing his charts.
10:46Then one day, Cook was called to the Admiralty, the headquarters of the Royal Navy.
10:54The Admiralty wanted Cook to lead Britain's first scientific voyage of discovery.
11:01It was to set sail for the very edge of the known world, and then go beyond,
11:06to discover a new and fabled land of riches, and claim it for Britain.
11:13In the 18th century, at least a third of the Earth was still a mystery.
11:18Nobody in Europe knew what was in the blank space to the south.
11:23But there was a legend, that waiting to be discovered was a great southern continent.
11:29There was always the hope of finding another America.
11:33The America had made such an impact on European consciousness,
11:37and there was a hope that it would bring with it the riches that America had brought to Europe.
11:42So why did the power brokers at the Admiralty choose James Cook, who, on paper, was just a ship's master?
11:50Well, it would take a brilliant navigator to find it, and a superb mapmaker to chart it accurately.
11:57If it existed, they knew Cook would bring back the information they needed to claim the prized land.
12:05The Navy had already chosen his ship.
12:08Ironically, she was a whitby cat, the very type of ship on which Cook had learned his trade.
12:13Her name was the Earl of Pembroke, but it was changed to Endeavour.
12:22If you're looking for James Cook, this is probably the best place to find him.
12:27This is his ship.
12:30This replica of Endeavour was launched in 1993.
12:34Hi there. Hi, Penny.
12:35How are you going?
12:36Good. Welcome aboard.
12:37OK, it's a bit of a squeeze, so I'll dump my bag up there.
12:40Second officer aboard the Endeavour replica is Penny Keeley.
12:44She takes me below decks to the claustrophobic world of the 18th century Navy.
12:50Captain Cook's lobby and his cabin.
12:55Now, I can imagine there's a few banged heads in here.
12:59James Cook was over six foot tall, about six foot two.
13:02He had to spend three years cramped in this quarter.
13:09After months of painstaking preparation, everything was finally in place.
13:16August 26th, 1768.
13:20At 2pm, got on the sail and put to sea, having on board 94 persons,
13:24including officers, seamen, gentlemen and their servants.
13:30It was the biggest moment of James Cook's life.
13:34If successful, this voyage would propel him towards naval stardom.
13:41The day after Endeavour left, Elizabeth gave birth to her fourth child, a boy, Joseph.
13:48But within a month, baby Joseph would be dead.
13:51It would be three years before James Cook found out.
14:06After five months at sea, Endeavour rounded the tip of South America
14:11and entered the waters that would make Cook famous.
14:15The vast and mysterious Pacific Ocean.
14:19Three months later, Cook and his crew arrived at the island of Tahiti.
14:27Their intention was to observe a rare astronomical event,
14:31the transit of Venus across the face of the sun.
14:33But it wasn't this that caught the crew's attention.
14:40It's heaven on earth.
14:42That's the best posting you've ever got in a brutal navy.
14:46Natives were friendly, food was good.
14:48Native women were even friendlier than the native men.
14:50And you could have a night of pleasure for the price of an iron nail.
14:54So this was just mind-blowing.
14:56But for Cook's most eminent travelling companion, Tahiti provided something much more significant.
15:05Joseph Banks is a wealthy aristocrat with a passion for natural history.
15:10He's paid £10,000 to come on this voyage.
15:15But he's really entered into the spirit of things.
15:17He's collected hundreds of natural history specimens.
15:21And now he collects one more.
15:23A young Tahitian named Tupiah.
15:27Tupiah was a Tahitian priest.
15:30Banks saw him as an exotic souvenir to show off back in London.
15:35But here we can get a fascinating insight into the way Cook's mind worked.
15:42Tupiah was a navigator and Cook wanted to tap into his incredible knowledge.
15:48Knowledge of the mysterious waters of the Pacific.
15:57Cook respected his geographical knowledge, his navigational skills,
16:01and he was an invaluable translator for them all around Polynesia.
16:05But Cook draws upon local experience whenever he can.
16:08And I think perhaps that sets him apart again from other officers in the period.
16:12His willingness to learn from local knowledge to deal with indigenous peoples.
16:18After leaving Tahiti, Tupiah drew Cook a map.
16:22Two men, one guardian of the Polynesian world and its geography,
16:26the other an officer in His Majesty's Navy.
16:29And the common language they shared was that of navigation.
16:33Tupiah's knowledge was that of the amazing Polynesian people,
16:37the most widely travelled people on Earth.
16:40Tupiah's map stretches across some 2,200 kilometres of ocean.
16:47But on it, there was no sign of the great southern continent.
16:51We cannot find that Tupiah either knows of or has ever heard of a continent
16:56or large tracts of land.
16:58I have no reason to doubt his information.
17:04But as instructed, Cook sailed to 40 degrees south and found nothing.
17:10No sign of the southern land.
17:12So he went back to his secret orders which said,
17:15not having discovered the great southern continent,
17:18you are to proceed in search of it to the westward until you discover it
17:22or fall in with the land discovered by Tasman.
17:31In 1769, that land looks like this on maps.
17:35The Dutch explorer Abel Tasman had named it Statenland in 1642.
17:41It was widely believed to be the west coast of the great southern continent.
17:52All Cook knew was that he was looking at the east coast of an unidentified land.
18:00The quickest way to find out if this was the great continent was to ask the people who clearly lived
18:05here.
18:06People who were about to make a profound impact on James Cook.
18:20This mystery coast is in fact the home of Maori.
18:24They call it Eotearoa, the land of the long white cloud.
18:28We know it today as New Zealand.
18:34Endeavour dropped anchor at what's now Gisborne, about halfway up the North Island.
18:43Watching Endeavour arrive was Temaro.
18:46Temaro was leader of the Inate Oni Oni tribe.
18:49He'd never meet Cook because when a landing party was sent ashore from Endeavour,
18:54Temaro was shot dead.
19:00He'd never meet him.
19:00Hi, Barney. Nice to meet you.
19:03Barney Tupera is Temaro's descendant.
19:07Come on inside.
19:09Thank you very much.
19:11Barney and the Maori have not forgotten their meeting with Cook.
19:17The next day, Cook comes ashore and he writes that he saw an assembling of natives
19:22with flourishing weapons above their heads and doing what seemed to be a war dance.
19:28It wasn't just a war dance, it was a kapa haka.
19:32Cook was probably the first Englishman to witness a Maori haka.
19:39The haka that Cook saw would have been an expression of aggression,
19:43would have been an expression of celebration, but also of prowess and strength.
19:54Cook had no idea how to respond to this Maori haka.
19:58But what happened next was remarkable.
20:02Te Rakau, who was the leader of the kapa haka that came down onto the beach that day,
20:07would have then gone forward to meet him.
20:20What the hongi is, it's a way that we as Maori greet people, irrespective of whether we like them or
20:25not.
20:26It's quite an intimate, but very gentle and friendly way of greeting another person.
20:34Cook's instinctive response brought the dangerous situation under control.
20:38But that bridging of two diverse cultures was all too brief and things soon began to go wrong.
20:44For a reason unclear, Te Rakau grabbed Cook's sword.
20:53And then, of course, as we know, he was shot.
20:59From the British accounts, there is the story that Cook placed a red coat from one of the Marines over
21:07Te Rakau's body.
21:08Is that something that is picked up in your oral history, as perhaps a gesture of reconciliation?
21:15To some extent, it's probably fair to say that with the laying of the red coat,
21:20there was a desire to accept that maybe what happened shouldn't have happened and Cook taking responsibility.
21:31I am aware that most humane men who have not experienced things of this nature
21:36will censure my conduct in firing upon the people.
21:40But I was not to stand still and suffer either myself or those that were with me to be knocked
21:45on the head.
21:49James Cook knew that his time here had been a disaster.
21:54He called it Poverty Bay.
21:59I think he named this place as much for his own sense of failure as for any failure in getting
22:04provisions.
22:11Cook sailed north looking for supplies and safe anchorage.
22:15He had to find a way to communicate with the inhabitants to get what he needed
22:20and to find out if this was the great southern continent.
22:24But he knew he must tread carefully.
22:26So next time they went ashore, he sent in Tupaya, the Polynesian navigator.
22:33They set in at a place called Tolaga Bay.
22:40Endeavour anchored just over there.
22:43Then Cook rode around this headland and came into this cove here to get wood and water.
22:49After his disturbing first few days in New Zealand, he's learning that respect goes a long way with Mari.
23:01During our stay in this bay, we had everyday traffic with the natives.
23:06I suffered everyone to purchase whatever they pleased without limitation.
23:10But by this means I knew that the natives would not only sell,
23:14but also get a good price for everything they brought.
23:17We know from his journals that Cook was deeply worried about the effects his contact would have on the indigenous
23:24people in the Pacific.
23:26What seems to be happening here is much more than just an explorer plotting a stretch of coastline on the
23:33map.
23:33What we're seeing are the moral coordinates in the growing map of Cook the man.
23:43Cook suspected that this was an island and not the great continent.
23:47For the next six months, he minutely charted what turned out to be the two islands that we now know
23:53make up New Zealand.
23:55And he claimed them for Britain.
23:57His final map is a masterpiece.
24:05This is just the most brilliant piece of hydrographic work ever undertaken.
24:09It's pioneering, it's on the grander scale, it's done in the shorter space of time, and it's remarkably accurate.
24:15Nobody had ever done anything like this before.
24:18By April 1770, Cook hadn't seen his family in over 18 months.
24:24He'd missed James's seventh birthday, Nathaniel's sixth, and little Elizabeth's third.
24:29He thought he'd missed baby Joseph's first birthday.
24:33He had no way of knowing that Joseph had died a month after he'd left England,
24:37and it would be another 15 months before he got home and found out.
24:45For the moment, though, James Cook had a more immediate family to look after.
24:50His crew.
25:05Peppered throughout the journals of James Cook are constant references to feeding his men.
25:10He was obsessive about their diet and small wonder.
25:15The biggest threat to their health on board was scurvy.
25:20Scurvy killed more sailors in the 18th century than war, accidents and shipwrecks combined.
25:30Scurvy's a horrible condition caused by lack of vitamin C.
25:34Nobody knows this yet, not even James Cook.
25:36But he does know his men need to eat fresh food, something impossible on long voyages.
25:43So, instead, he places his faith in a substitute.
25:48Sauerkraut or pickled cabbage.
25:50Trouble is, his men refuse to eat it.
25:54And, frankly, I don't blame them. It smells disgusting.
26:00But here we see something quite remarkable.
26:04James Cook could order his men to eat it.
26:07He could threaten to flog them.
26:09But instead, he chooses a different tactic.
26:13Psychology.
26:15The sauerkraut, the men, at first, would not eat.
26:18Until I put in practice a method I never once knew to fail.
26:22This was to have some of it dressed every day for the cabin table.
26:27The moment they see their superior set of value upon it, it becomes the finest stuff in the world.
26:35In all his voyages, Cook, the humanitarian, would not lose a single man to Scurvy.
26:41But this voyage wasn't over yet. There were more discoveries ahead.
26:49On April 19th, 1770, Cook sighted the land which would forge his name in history.
26:56New Holland.
26:58He guided Endeavour into a beautiful bay.
27:06You still arrive in New Holland at that very bay.
27:09It's the site of Sydney Airport.
27:13Today, New Holland is Australia.
27:21James Cook anchors Endeavour just out there.
27:24As he's being rowed to shore, he clearly has a sense of occasion.
27:29He knows the first man to step ashore will be remembered.
27:33So he turns to his wife's cousin, 17-year-old midshipman Isaac Smith,
27:37and says,
27:39Isaac, you should go first.
27:44New Holland was mind-blowing for Joseph Banks and his fellow naturalist, Dr Solander.
27:50Everything there was so different from any other place on Earth.
27:55The scientists collected samples of 130 unknown species of plant,
28:01including one named after Banks himself, Banksia.
28:06James Cook had already named this place Stingray Harbour,
28:09but he went back to his journal and changed it to one that would become the most famous name in
28:15the land,
28:16Botany Bay.
28:18But one thing mystified Cook.
28:21There were few signs of the local inhabitants.
28:24Unlike the Tahitians or Maori, the residents of New Holland made it clear
28:30they wanted nothing to do with these white visitors.
28:33They wanted them to go away.
28:51On May the 6th, 1770, his work done at Botany Bay,
28:56Cook began working his way up the east coast of New Holland.
28:59For three months, he methodically and meticulously charted this unknown land.
29:10Cook had no way of knowing, but as he pushed up the east coast of New Holland,
29:15he was putting the entire voyage at risk.
29:18He was sailing Endeavour straight into a trap.
29:22The Great Barrier Reef.
29:26A marine minefield of treacherous coral outcrops over 1,200 miles long,
29:33the same distance as London to Moscow.
29:42James Cook drove his ship onwards.
29:46On June 11th, 1770, Endeavour smashed onto the reef.
29:59There were a hundred men on board Endeavour,
30:01the charts of New Zealand and the east coast of New Holland.
30:04This was a priceless treasure ship.
30:08Water gushed in.
30:10The men threw stores, cannon overboard, anything to lighten the ship.
30:15They were 20 miles from land, their lives hanging in the balance.
30:28After more than 23 terrifying hours, they managed to float her off the reef.
30:36Endeavour limped for three days towards the coastline.
30:39James Cook watched plumes of smoke rising from the land.
30:43Smoke meant people.
30:45People only settled where they could find fresh water.
30:53James Cook called Endeavour in right here.
30:56By now, the place was deserted.
30:58Whoever had lit those fires was long gone.
31:00We know from his records that he beached the ship right here,
31:05in this exact spot, and then pulled her up onto the mud,
31:09pushed her over to repair the hole in her side.
31:11Sidney Parkinson, the ship's artist, then rowed out roughly to where those boats are out there,
31:17turned around and drew the scene.
31:24What is so surprising about Cook is that he's managed all the rest of the voyage without doing this.
31:29He's managed to avoid running aground.
31:32Tahiti, all the way around New Zealand, most of the way up the east coast of Australia, in and out
31:36of the barrier reef.
31:37Remarkable.
31:37He's making the chance as he goes, and he manages to run aground just once.
31:43That's absolutely stunning.
31:46After seven weeks, Cook navigated the patched-up endeavour out through the maze of the Great Barrier Reef.
31:53Eighteen days later, on the 22nd of August 1770,
31:57Cook performed one of the most controversial acts of the whole voyage.
32:01He claimed the entire east coast of New Holland for Britain.
32:08It was an act which even today some regard as the illegal theft of a continent from its indigenous people.
32:23The next day, Cook sailed north into open water and back onto the map.
32:32Endeavour had finally rejoined the known world and now headed for the Dutch port of Batavia, modern Jakarta.
32:48Endeavour was still in bad need of repair.
32:50Not long after they arrived, they took on water.
32:54But that water was infected and disease struck.
32:58It was James Cook's worst nightmare.
33:01As they sailed for home, men he'd kept alive for two and a half years began to die.
33:11March 13th, 1771.
33:14South Africa.
33:15By now, Cook had lost over a third of his men.
33:19There were barely enough left to sail the ship into port.
33:25So close to home, having taken his crew around the world without losing a single man to disease.
33:32This was a tragedy for the man who cared so greatly for his men
33:36and devastating for someone who needed to be in control.
33:46July 12th, 1771, after two years and 11 months at sea, Endeavour sighted the White Cliffs of Dover.
33:55Britain's great scientific voyage of discovery was finally over
33:59and it was time for Cook to leave his wooden world on board Endeavour.
34:08James Cook headed home to Elizabeth and the family.
34:12He was expecting four children, but there were only two.
34:16Young James and Nathaniel.
34:19Baby Joseph had died while Cook was away, and so too had his only daughter.
34:30I've got children of my own, so the thought of Elizabeth mourning her little ones by herself
34:36really tugs at my heart.
34:38She buried two of them here at St Dunstan's Church, not far from the family home at Mile End.
34:44Baby Joseph and her namesake, the infant Elizabeth.
34:47Canny and pragmatic, she was raised in an ale house near the Thames,
34:52so knew what she was in for marrying a sailor.
34:54But James Cook was no ordinary sailor.
34:58In 16 years of marriage, they spent just four years together.
35:03If James Cook was exceptional, he needed a wife who was every bit as tough
35:08and determined to hold their family together.
35:11Theirs really was a partnership, despite the long years of separation.
35:16In her own way, she was just as remarkable as him.
35:25On June 16th, 1772, Elizabeth gave birth to George, their fifth child.
35:34Just five days later, James Cook said goodbye to Elizabeth and the children.
35:40He was going to the other side of the world, and he might never return.
35:50The Admiralty still believed there were huge areas in the Southern Ocean
35:54where a vast landmass might be found.
35:57But Cook had a second personal agenda,
36:00to chart the Southern Oceans and rid them of uncertainty.
36:05Now he's on a voyage that he says will make his previous discoveries
36:09more perfect and complete.
36:11More perfect and complete.
36:14That choice of words is really interesting.
36:17It gives us a valuable insight into his determination and his obsession.
36:24On 13th of July, 1772,
36:27Cook and his new ship, Resolution and the Adventure, sailed from Plymouth.
36:32It would take over three months to reach Table Bay at the southern tip of Africa.
36:40From here they headed south towards Antarctica, where the ships entered a strange world of ice.
36:57admiration and horror.
37:00The first is occasioned by the beautifulness of the picture, and the latter by the danger, and can only be
37:09described by the hand of an able painter.
37:12The able painter was 29-year-old ship's artist, William Hodges.
37:19He would show the world wonders like these, the very first images of the Antarctic.
37:27At 14 past 11 o'clock, we pass the Antarctic Circle and are undoubtedly the first and only ship that
37:37ever crossed that line.
37:42James Cook continued his sweep of the Southern Ocean.
37:46He'd been at sea for over four months and travelled over 10,000 miles without ever sighting land.
38:01But something was happening to Cook, the man who always wanted to be in control, began to show glimpses that
38:09all wasn't well.
38:12He was suffering so greatly from his stomach that he was in a great sweat and could hardly stand.
38:17It was indeed hardly remarkable that, after so great a responsibility and so prodigious a strain on both his mental
38:24and physical capacities, he should be completely exhausted.
38:28And as Sparman, HMS resolution.
38:32Cook recovered and the vast blank which was the Pacific Ocean was now being meticulously filled in by the hand
38:40of this master chart maker.
38:43Yet the growing sense of order on the chart contrasted with the growing disorder in his temper.
38:50Increasingly unpredictable, the new Cook was at times a far cry from the controlled man his crew was used to.
38:59On this voyage, Cook had achieved his ambition, to go as far as it was possible for a man to
39:06go.
39:07But had he pushed himself too far?
39:12Physically and mentally, flaws are beginning to show in this discovering genius.
39:17Flaws that will ultimately lead to his death.
39:29The summer of 1776 finds James Cook here, ensconced at Greenwich Hospital, a retirement home for sailors.
39:37Cook was bored and restless.
39:40At 48, he was the most celebrated sailor of his age.
39:44He had completed two extraordinary voyages of discovery, and he was about to be called out of retirement to start
39:51a third.
39:55Cook had been asked to dinner with the three most important men in the British Navy.
40:00They wanted him to lead one final voyage of exploration.
40:04They wanted him to find the fabled Northwest Passage.
40:09And the reason was Britain's love of tea, most of which came from Asia.
40:16The main trade route to the riches of Asia was around the bottom of Africa and across the Indian Ocean.
40:22But the Portuguese had controlled that for almost 300 years.
40:26The answer was to go the other way round, over the top of the world.
40:31A passage northwest from Britain up to the Arctic, down into the Pacific and round to China, cutting the distance
40:38almost by half.
40:39Like the great southern unknown, the Northwest Passage was one of those great cartographic mysteries.
40:48What happened in the northern coastline of Canada? What was there at the North Pole?
40:53From the very start of this voyage, James Cook was under enormous pressure.
40:58He only had a few months to prepare.
41:00He scoured the existing charts and accounts of previous voyages, but most of them were useless fantasies.
41:11Look at the quality of information he has to deal with.
41:14This Russian map purports to be a very accurate little map.
41:18But just look here, Alaska is shown as an island.
41:23This strait doesn't even exist.
41:25Yet Cook's been sent north to sail through it and find the Northwest Passage.
41:32But there were other worrying signs that James Cook's third great voyage would have its problems.
41:40One thing he wasn't doing, something he'd always done, was to check personally the ship, the supplies and the equipment
41:47for the voyage.
41:48He's neglecting the very thing that ensured his success on his other voyages.
41:56He said farewell to Elizabeth.
41:59She knew she faced years of separation.
42:02But even she couldn't guess it would be 56 years of being alone.
42:08They would never see each other again.
42:19In June 1776, the expedition set sail.
42:24Cook used two ships, Resolution, which he'd command, and Discovery.
42:30Once again he would travel round Africa and enter the Pacific from the east, before heading north to the Canadian
42:37coast in his search for the Northwest Passage.
42:41For some of his loyal crew, this would be their third voyage with Cook.
42:47One newcomer is ship's master, the brilliant but prickly William Bly.
42:53He'll become notorious for the mutiny on the bounty.
42:56But for now, he wants to sail with Cook, the great navigator.
43:01But as the voyage progressed, Cook, the cool, humane captain, underwent a dramatic, disturbing change.
43:10He loses his temper, he starts to shout and yell at the officers and men, he starts to lose control
43:16of his emotions.
43:16And there's a kind of tragic inevitability that it's not going to end well.
43:24If his behaviour was growing erratic towards the end of the second voyage, on the third, it was getting worse.
43:31Heaver, the name of the dancers of the Southern Islanders, which bore so great a resemblance to the violent motions
43:38and stampings on the deck of Captain Cook.
43:41It was a common saying among both officers and people.
43:45The old boy has been tipping a heaver.
43:48James Trevenan, midshipman, HMS Resolution.
43:56James Cook did have big problems.
43:59He was battling the wind and supplies were stretched to the limit.
44:02He'd also missed the northern summer, which meant extending the trip by another year.
44:08The Cook of old would have maintained his composure.
44:11This new Cook has a mean streak and he takes it out on others.
44:17The first to feel this was the island of Murir, near Tahiti.
44:22When the locals stole the ship's goat, Cook got so angry he set fire to their boat and village in
44:28revenge.
44:30Thus, this troublesome and rather unfortunate affair ended,
44:34which could not be more regretted on the part of the natives than it was on mine.
44:40The once peaceful James Cook was now becoming increasingly ruthless with the indigenous people he met,
44:47and his crew began to notice the change.
44:51Captain Cook punished, in a manner rather unbecoming of a European,
44:55by cutting off their ears.
44:58Firing at them with small shot as they were swimming or paddling to shore.
45:02Beating them with the oars and sticking the boat hook into them.
45:06George Gilbert, lead shipman, HMS resolution.
45:11Cook was aware of his changing behaviour, but it seems he was unable to control it.
45:21Actually, I sometimes wonder if he just wasn't a little bit depressed,
45:24because depression wasn't a condition that one admitted to or diagnosed back in the 1700s.
45:29Another more simple explanation might be that he just wore the burden of command for too long.
45:34He was worn down by continual responsibility.
45:39Cook had been away for over 18 months when he sailed up towards the North American continent.
45:45It was from here, New Albion, that he began his search for the Northwest Passage.
45:57New Albion included what we now call Canada.
46:01Here, James Cook met the Mawachat, the people of the deer.
46:05Cook's crew were the first white men they'd ever seen.
46:18When James Cook arrived in these waters, it said that the people who came out to meet him directed him
46:24to a village.
46:24And that's it over there, the village of Uquot.
46:32James Cook's ship resolution is really falling apart.
46:36Sloppy defence contractors aren't just a modern problem.
46:39The shipwrights back home have done a terrible job,
46:42and he now needs to chop down these trees to replace masts and make new timbers.
46:47All work that should have been overseen by Cook in London, not thousands of kilometres away here.
46:56After a month in Nootka, James Cook sailed off in search of the Northwest Passage.
47:02It was the start of his last great quest.
47:08Cook's ships crawled along the tortuous Alaskan coastline.
47:12Every bay and inlet was methodically checked.
47:15Any of them might have revealed the elusive route back to Britain.
47:19Weeks and months drifted by.
47:21There was no sign of Cook's prize, no sign of a quick route home.
47:31Cook should have been in his element.
47:34On previous journeys, his obsession with meticulous charting of unfamiliar coastlines
47:39had driven his crew to distraction, but now it was doing the same to him.
47:45One huge bay alone took 16 days to explore to his satisfaction.
47:51Could it be he was starting to doubt himself?
47:54What if the Northwest Passage didn't really exist?
47:58What if this last great voyage was a waste of time?
48:07In August 1778, resolution and discovery entered the Arctic Ocean.
48:13The two ships beat drums and fired guns to keep track of each other.
48:18Here, James Cook entered a world shrouded in fog.
48:25The Russian maps he'd gathered in London were useless.
48:31What could induce him to publish so erroneous a map that the most illiterate of his illiterate seafaring men would
48:38have been ashamed to put his name to?
48:43James Cook's behaviour is beginning to horrify his men.
48:47He runs with the wind in fog so thick they can barely see the length of the ship.
48:52Suddenly, he hears the sound of crashing surf and orders the ship halted.
48:57When the fog clears, they realise they've hurtled through a gap in the rocks little wider than the ship herself.
49:06Providence had conducted us through these rocks where I should not have ventured on a clear day.
49:11And to such an anchoring place, I could not have chosen better.
49:16Desperate for fresh meat, James Cook had some walrus butchered and ordered his men to eat it.
49:22They found walrus disgusting and refused.
49:26In a fit of pique, he cut their rations.
49:33That's completely out of character for him and shows just how badly he was losing the control, the respect of
49:40his crew.
49:41That's something that's never happened before.
49:45They now take the extraordinary step of writing him a letter of complaint.
49:51This is a very mutinous proceeding.
49:55Every innovation of mine, sauerkraut, all of them, have been designed by me to keep my people free from the
50:02dreadful distemper scurvy.
50:05James Cook's world was spiralling out of control.
50:09A ship that was falling apart, maps that were useless fantasies.
50:14He'd been at sea for a year, and after just three weeks in the Arctic Ocean, he'd hit a wall
50:21of ice.
50:22And it was not even winter yet.
50:25Now even the world's greatest explorer had to admit defeat.
50:32James Cook probably would have seen it as a failure of science.
50:36But perhaps it was a failure of the man.
50:39Perhaps he shouldn't have agreed to lead this voyage.
50:43He was almost 50.
50:44He'd spent most of the last ten years at sea, under the sort of pressure that most captains never experience.
50:52When he was younger, he seemed to thrive on this, but now it was taking its toll.
50:58Where once he lived solely by example, now he would sometimes resort to using fear and threats.
51:05He was losing the respect of his crew and officers, and the people he met in these new lands.
51:14With the northern winter looming, it would be months before he could search again for the Northwest Passage.
51:19He desperately needed somewhere warm to rest and resupply.
51:23So he took his two ships back to the Pacific, to a place that he discovered on his journey north.
51:30The Sandwich Islands.
51:31Today we know them as Hawaii.
51:37Amazingly, Cook sailed round them for six weeks without landing.
51:41His crew thought their commander was out of his mind.
51:46They certainly were, watching the land pass by day after day.
51:51Cook offered no explanation, and they didn't dare ask.
51:58Finally, resolution and discovery entered a wide bay and dropped anchor.
52:06You still enter Kealakakua Bay the way James Cook saw it, but the reception he received was astonishing.
52:14So many people came out and clambered aboard resolution and discovery that both ships started to list.
52:22I had nowhere, in the course of my voyages, seen so numerous a body of people assembled at one place.
52:30Besides those in canoes, all the shore were covered in spectators, and many hundreds were swimming about the ships like
52:36shoals of fish.
52:39After almost three weeks, resolution and discovery resupply and leave.
52:44James Cook's going back again to hammer away at the ice of the Northwest Passage.
52:51But just a few days out of here, resolution breaks a mast.
52:56It's that shoddy workmanship he never ever saw in London coming back to haunt him.
53:01The ships have to return.
53:06This time, there was no big welcome.
53:09The Hawaiians had already given James Cook everything they had, and were far from happy to see the ships return.
53:16The Hawaiians make it very plain that their patience is worn thin.
53:22The level of thefts goes up very considerably, and this is a sign that the chiefs no longer are protecting
53:28him.
53:29He'd outstayed his welcome.
53:31He was no longer an honoured guest. He was now a damn nuisance.
53:35And relations change.
53:39It's the 14th of February, 1779.
53:42James Cook awakes to learn that during the night, one of his ship's boats has been stolen.
53:47The events of the day now move very fast.
53:50He orders the bay to be blockaded.
53:52Discovery on that side of the bay sealing it, resolution sealing the other side.
53:57James Cook has decided to pick a fight.
54:09James Cook arrives on this beach.
54:11He's armed with nine marines.
54:13They head up towards a large village here called Ka'avaloa.
54:17It's perhaps the most sacred site on the island.
54:21He marches into this sacred village, goes straight to the chief's house, and seizes him.
54:29Cook intends to keep him hostage until he gets his boat back.
54:35James Cook brings the chief down here to the water's edge amid a gathering crowd of Hawaiians.
54:41Hundreds on this beach and more lining the rocks.
54:44To their eyes, James Cook's behaviour is a huge insult.
54:48On the other side of the bay, William Bly, ever aggressive,
54:51orders his men to open fire on a canoe trying to breach the blockade.
54:55They kill a high-ranking warrior.
54:58A tidal wave of anger then sweeps along the shoreline.
55:02The beach erupts into a volley of stones.
55:07James Cook himself fires the first shot, killing a man.
55:11Then, the Hawaiians attack.
55:36James Cook died right here.
55:38The sailors watching helplessly as his body is hacked to pieces.
55:43But what actually killed Cook wasn't daggers or stones or drowning.
55:48It was the belief that he could control every situation.
55:53That's the tragedy of his death.
55:56In his three epic voyages,
55:58James Cook had proved himself one of the greatest explorers this world has ever seen.
56:04The Empire would make him a hero.
56:06But the truth about Cook the man was washed away.
56:09I think the real Cook was more complex, more fascinating,
56:14and that his personal journey was perhaps the most dramatic of them all.
56:19What I've found is perhaps an unpalatable truth.
56:23That the ambitious, decent man who saw the human in everyone,
56:27that man lost himself along the way.
56:30So, a genius, yes, but a flawed and lonely genius.
56:36And perhaps that's the real reason why his wife Elizabeth burned those letters.
56:42To try to keep Captain Cook the man for herself,
56:47so that only the legend remained.
56:50...remained.
56:51...remained.
57:04...
57:05...
57:05...