Original subtitles

Captain Cook was the son of a humble farmworker

and because of the class system,

almost certainly destined to become a humble farmworker himself.

But he was a bright boy, and he was going to smash the system.

Now, his dad's boss noticed that the lad had promise

and he arranged for him to have an apprenticeship in a shop.

So now it seemed that Cook was destined to spend his days

weighing out cheeses and herrings.

But he also spent time listening to stories from the old seafarers.

And legend has it that one day, one of them paid him

with a shiny, South Sea shilling

and that was the call.

BRIGHT MUSIC

'The Age of the Great Explorers was

'one of the most dramatic in history.'

Ooh!

'When men risked their lives...'

Cast orff and set sail. Whoa!

Take up on the peak! '..to seek new lands.'

We're somewhere north of the dog's arse.

Where the camera gone? Hello.

They crossed thousands of miles of treacherous ocean,

they built floating fortresses, they mapped the stars,

they developed whole new branches of science.

Eurgh! Absolute pish.

'But were these explorers really heroes or just a bunch of chancers?'

It's a miracle he found anything at all, really.

Completely made-up, the man was a charlatan.

'And is their legacy one of triumph...'

Ooh!

'..or destruction?' Crikey.

Now it's turning a little bit dark.

'I'm doing a bit of discovering of my own...'

Unbelievably terrible.

Medieval sat-nav 2.0, a stick.

Oh, has he just shat on my trousers? PIG SQUEALS

'..to learn how these explorers conquered the oceans...'

Look at that.

I love it.

Nobody panic yet.

It's not just a map, it's a weapon!

'..and change the world forever.' Whoa!

Dial out! Ah, gold!

If you were in the Navy now, the French would definitely have got us.

HE LAUGHS

SHATTERING

GULLS CALLING

'You join me at an exciting time, viewers - the 18th Century.'

It was an age of wonder.

The mysteries of science were being revealed,

the Industrial Revolution was just around the corner.

And into this knowledge-hungry world

stepped a sailor of extraordinary abilities.

His voyages would bring massive advancements

in geography, navigation, biology, medicine.

He would chart the final unknown third of the globe

and he was also the last great explorer of the Age of Sail.

He was Captain James Cook.

'Today, he divides opinion

'and in some parts of the world, he's known as "Captain Crook".

'But back in 1746,

'he was just a 17-year-old shopkeeper, longing to go to sea.

'And Whitby docks in England's North East was

'the right place to be.

'Cook wangled himself an apprenticeship on the coal ships

'and moved into the attic of a local ship owner

'where he stayed up late each night, poring over his books.'

Now, in Cook's time, Whitby was a sort of a mariners' university town,

or it was referred to at the time as the "nursery of the sea".

And considering how young these apprentices would have been,

they did some remarkable homework.

'Being a sailor wasn't all hauling ropes and guzzling rum -

'you had to be an A-plus student.'

It's full of very complicated geometry,

mathematical calculations about sailing and direction.

It's incredible.

And then right at the back, when all else has failed -

geometry, astronomy - there is a psalm.

A psalm for you to sing. Psalm 28.

'O Lord my rock to thee I cry in sighs consume my breath.

'O answer or I shall become like those that sleep in death.'

I didn't write that in the back of my exercise books when I was a boy.

I drew pictures of flying cars with machine guns on them.

'Young sailors of a delicate disposition would not last long

'working the coal boats on the perilous North Sea shore.'

This coast is strewn with rocks and reefs.

Throw into that frequent fog, wild storms, dangerous currents,

this is some of the toughest sailing in the world.

Cook spent nine years here

learning to be an expert sailor and navigator.

'But the coal run wasn't enough for young Cook.

'He was envious of the dashing, bewigged, naval officers he saw,

'fresh from adventures in the Pacific South Seas.

'So, in 1755, aged 26, he signed up for the Navy.'

Winston Churchill famously said

that life in the Royal Navy was all "rum, sodomy and the lash",

and Dr Johnson said that a man at sea was effectively in prison

but with the added risk of drowning.

"A man in prison," he said, "had more space, better food

"and, commonly, better company."

'Right. All aboard.'

'This is the Bessie Ellen. Roughly the same length as Cook's ships,

'but a mere youngster at 120 years old.'

Right, crew, chop-chop.

OK, Tommy, go out on the bow sprit and take off the gaskets.

'After nine years at sea, Cook was able to command a ship himself.

'But that meant diddly squat in the Navy.

'He had to start from the bottom, like me.

'My commanding officer is Nikki Alford...'

C'mon, Kim, put some effort into it. '..and she runs a tight ship.'

So, hierarchy on board,

er, the captain, that's you, is the boss. Yeah.

But it doesn't matter who's on board.

If the king was on board,

you're still the boss. That's true.

Yeah. Can you have Tom, the director, flogged,

is that possible? Well, possibly.

Right. It's not a democracy.

So, when Cook made that massive decision

to go and be just a lowly able seaman, he was 26 years old,

so I mean in Navy terms, that's quite middle-aged, isn't it?

Yeah. Yeah, it was. But it must have been quite hard

for him being an old, knowledgeable, already master of his own ship. Yes.

And there were quite strict punishments.

Yeah, afraid so.

Hanging for insubordination.

Flogging... Yes.

Cat o' nine tails. It was a pretty mean life.

Erm... DOG BARKS

Where did the dog come in the hierarchy?

Most important crew member on board.

I'm talking to you and asking you a lot of questions

because I suspect that when this exchange ends,

you're going to give me some... seaman-like jobs to do.

Enough chatting and let's get this boat sailing.

'I've filibustered all I can.

'Time to impress the captain with my naval know-how.'

OK, so, this is the mainsail

and the mizen is the... No, no, no, no, no.

No? Come on, wake up.

I do motorboats. Engines. Brilliant invention.

We'll make a sailor of you before the end of the day.

Right. And we'll get you on the halyards.

They're over there, aren't they? Well, I hope so.

'Suddenly, a spot of rum, sodomy, and the lash seems preferable...

'especially as I really ought to be in the sick bay.'

I need to explain that a few days ago,

I fell off my bicycle and slightly spaffed this arm,

which is... a great excuse.

Right, landlubber. You can do this easy one.

Jump up there, and undo the knot.

'Cook, of course, could have done all this in his sleep.'

Right, this one? Crew, stand by.

'Me, not so much.' Right.

'First, you have to release the flappy white thing.'

Whoa! Weyy. Take up on the peak.

'Then yank on a rope to get it up.'

God, have we got to pull it all the way to the top? Yeah.

'Good teamwork is vital.' I'm not really doing anything here.

CREW LAUGH

Put some effort into it. Sorry.

I think the dog does better than this.

'Mainsail raised...'

Four fifths of the way there.

OK, make fast the throat. Carry on on the peak.

'..next up is the jib. Speed is of the essence.'

James, take hold of the knot. Now pull it.

There you go. Oh!

Look at that. Now keep pulling.

If you were in the Navy now, the French would definitely have got us.

'With all Cook's skills, suddenly being back near the bottom rung

'must have been pretty humiliating.'

I've done a double gunner's daughter and a half shank.

I'll look that one up. SHE LAUGHS

'Able seamen had to muck in with everything.

'There were no bogs or running water,

'so if you wanted to drink, wash or cook,

'you needed one of these...' There we go.

Oh, shot. Yeah. It's lunchtime,

so we have to pull up a bucket of seawater

and start chopping potatoes.

'Nikki's finally found a job more my level.'

DOG GROWLS No, Bracken.

Whoa, look at that! Bounty!

You can choose what you want for lunch.

Well, it looks like it's gonna be potatoes and onions.

DOG GROWLS

What's wrong with the dog? SHE LAUGHS

Why does it? Why does he hate that bucket?

He just hates buckets.

James, if you get the potatoes and start peeling,

we'll get another bucket. Aye-aye.

Bracken! Enough!

He's really angry.

GROWLING

'Now, I've proven myself a bit of an unable seaman,

'but Cook, of course, was the very model of a modern master mariner.'

Within two years, he was a ship's master,

which meant he was in charge of navigation

under the direction of the captain.

That was a big job and a very, very important one.

Trouble is, Cook's career then sort of ran aground a bit

because only the posh kids could become commissioned officers,

and obviously, he wasn't a posh kid.

So he'd arrived at the class glass ceiling.

He'd gone as far as, effectively, being a non-commissioned officer.

Bit quicker on the potatoes.

'But you can't keep a good swot down.

'Cook was destined for far greater things.'

GROWLING No! Bracken!

'That's quite enough shore leave, viewers. Get back to work at once.'

Hurry up, we haven't got all day!

'Dreaming of the Pacific South Seas,

'young James Cook had joined the Navy.

'But he wasn't going to the South Seas on his first trip,

'he was going to war.'

Fire!

Now, you join me below decks with some charts.

And the year is 1759.

Britain is having a massive scrap with France over Canada.

And the French held Quebec.

And the British wanted to mount an assault,

but doing it was proving extremely difficult.

'The Brits were desperate

'for a sneaky way to attack Quebec and take Canada.

'And Cook was about to find them one,

'using his superpower - geometry.'

Cook went off and charted all this.

He charted all the elevations, he did depth sounding,

all this stuff to produce

really a fantastically, magnificently accurate chart.

'Using Cook's chart,

'the British ships sailed all the way upriver past Quebec,

'the soldiers mounted a sneak attack,

'and the French - quelle surprise - surrendered.'

So, this chart that he produced,

it's not really just a map, it's a weapon!

And it made Cook famous, his name became a buzzword in London.

And pretty soon, he was asked to go and chart all of Newfoundland,

which he did.

And remarkably, here, on this acetate sheet,

I have a modern map of Newfoundland.

Now, that's been established

with satellites, satnav, geo-positioning,

all that sort of stuff.

If I lay the modern one over Cook's work...

..it is astonishingly accurate.

This actually isn't a chart, this is a love poem in geometry.

Pretty bloody good.

'Cook's charts were so accurate,

'they were in use for a further 200 years -

'and we'll see later on just how he did it.'

Cook was granted the title of "King's Surveyor".

That was the highest office of surveyor you could attain

unless you were gonna become God's Surveyor.

But his greatest adventures still lay before him

because a third of the globe... still needed to be charted.

Aah!

'Sorry, I'm absolutely ruddered on rum.'

'At the other end of the social spectrum, meanwhile,

'was another young science bod looking to make his name...'

This is the Chelsea Physic Garden,

where a young man called Joseph Banks came to study botany.

Now, he wasn't a typical student,

he was a very wealthy playboy roustabout type

who'd inherited a fortune from his father.

But he was very passionate about his subject,

he was very meticulous, and he bloody loved a pot plant.

'Banks saw thrilling new plants from all around the world

'turning up here at Chelsea,

'and he decided to make a name for himself

'by going and finding some of his own.'

So, what he did, since he was well minted,

was to buy his way into an expedition

that had been organised by the admiralty

and the Royal Society to the Pacific.

He contributed �10,000 - about 1.5 million in today's money.

Now, other young men of the time

were embarking on the accepted grand tour of Europe,

but Banks said that this was for blockheads.

"My grand tour," he said, "will be of the world."

'The official purpose of this voyage

'was to travel to the South Pacific island of Tahiti

'and study a rare astronomical event -

'Venus passing in front of the sun.

'But there was a second, top-secret mission.

'The bigwigs at the Admiralty had much grander plans

'that would only be revealed later on.

'Plans that would need a captain who was especially talented at charting.

'Cook was finally going to the South Seas.

'Now, what vessel would he be taking on this historic voyage?

'A sleek Merchantman, perhaps? A 24-gun naval frigate?'

KAZOOS PLAYING

No, it was one of these, his old mate the Whitby coal ship.

Blunt nosed, purposeful.

If they'd been around at the time,

somebody would have called it the Land Rover of the Seas.

Top speed, eight knots, eight nautical miles an hour.

Average speed more like four knots.

Cook would be going around the world, 25,000 miles,

at a brisk walk.

Something like this.

All the way to Tahiti.

'This ship is just a replica,

'but the same size as the real Endeavour -

'just 105 feet for 95 sailors.'

The great thing about using a coal ship is that

if you're not required to carry the coal,

there is a great deal of space on board for stuff.

And they brought a lot of stuff.

Permission to come aboard, skipper?

Thank you.

BEEP By the way, if you're still running,

Endeavour didn't have a door in the side like this.

You'd have to go, you know... This is not accurate.

'Nor is this cafe bit. Keep moving. Four knots.'

Up here, aft, below the poop deck...

'That's better. Except it looks far too tidy.'

Banks brought along tons of books, hooks, nets,

hunting equipment, big barrels of preserving fluids,

salts, waxes, everything you need for all that botanical guff.

And it's said that the value of his kit

was roughly twice that of the ship itself.

'Banks immediately demanded use of the Captain's quarters

'for his science-ing.

'Cook told him they could share.'

But of course, Banks was a toff,

and he'd also done a great deal to finance the whole expedition,

so he couldn't really turn him down.

Although I would have been tempted.

'Cooped up on a ship, tempers can easily fray.'

He already sounds like an irritating BLEEP, Joseph Banks.

LAUGHTER

'So, Cook took it upon himself to make sure

'all his sailors were as happy and jolly as jolly sailor boys can be.'

Cook clearly cared about the welfare of his men.

In the Royal Navy, the jolly sailor boys

worked four hours on, four hours off.

But Cook's crew enjoyed four hours on, eight hours off.

He insisted that they ate their greens,

that they aired their bedding,

that they washed themselves in lovely, fresh, salty seawater.

And he was also very keen on vigorous exercise.

And to make exercise more "fun", he brought along some musicians

and made the sailors dance the hornpipe.

THEY PLAY 'BARNACLE BILL'

'They had to do this every day.'

'Every. Single. Day.'

Bravo.

You have to remember that for the people of England,

things like yoga and Pilates of the Caribbean hadn't been invented yet.

That's a shit joke. No it's not, it's really good.

'I'm here all week, folks. Try the sea biscuit.'

'Ah, this is more like it.

Even more vital to on-board morale

'than the incessant shrieking of Satan's own song

'was alcohol - and lots of it.'

Details of the amount of booze on board the Endeavour

are, unsurprisingly, a bit vague.

And I say "unsurprisingly" because, as you'll see in a moment,

everybody on board was absolutely gang-planked.

For the men, there was a ration of half a pint of rum twice a day,

once at noon, once at 6pm.

They could instead, or maybe as well as, have eight pints of beer.

And if you were a "hossifer",

you could have a pint and a half of red wine.

'And that's just a normal day.

'On special occasions, they got completely barnacled.'

The very polite Captain Cook says,

"Yesterday being Christmas Day,

the people were none of the soberest."

Joseph Banks, on the same day, says, "All hands got abominably drunk.

"Wind, thank God, very moderate

"or the Lord knows what would have become of us."

And I sort of get it, to be honest, because if you woke up every day,

knowing you'd have to spend it with the same crew,

you'd wanna get pretty keel-hauled.

By the way, I should explain that

I've had a bit of an accident and fractured my wrist,

but it's OK because the nurse who set it for me

did it in the beer-drinking position.

So, it only remains for me to say,

ow, "Cheers, me hearties."

BEEP Have you definitely cut?

Yeah. Right. I'm gonna have a few of these pints.

Actually, I'm the officer, I'm having the wine.

You lot can have the beer and the rum.

'So, science stuff - check.

'Hornpiper - check.

'Enough alcohol to drown a hornpiper - check.'

'Just one last thing...'

Cook, of course, was not yet a captain.

He had to be hastily commissioned so that he could give orders.

And give orders he did. The orders were to 'cast orff and set sail'.

95 permanently sloshed sailors did that,

and the Endeavour would be their home for the next three years.

'BARNACLE BILL' PLAYS

'Dear God.'

'At an average four knots, they bimbled their way

'to Rio in Brazil for some repairs,

'saw their first penguins off the Falklands,

'and rounded Cape Horn into the mysterious Pacific Ocean.

'Finally, in 1769, after eight months at sea,

'the Endeavour reached Tahiti.

'The paradise beaches were a dream come true for the sailors -

'not least because they'd heard rumours from a previous voyage

'that it was full of beautiful women

'who would offer sex for the price of a single iron nail.'

Cook was very worried about his sailors

spreading sexually-transmitted diseases,

and he gave them all a stern talking to,

like that rather awkward one you got

from a teacher at sixth form college.

There was another problem as well.

The last ship to arrive, HMS Dolphin,

had quite literally started falling apart

because the sailors had nicked so many of these.

'Cook's little talk didn't work.

'Some of the sailors seemed to think

'they were on a particularly thuggish stag do.

'The Tahitian people remained friendly,

'but there was another friction point.'

The ship's tools and equipment kept going missing.

Even Cook himself had a pair of his socks stolen from under his head

while he was having a crafty kip on the beach.

But to the people of Tahiti,

European ideas about possession and ownership

were completely meaningless.

But to try and get his stuff back,

Cook did things like held canoes to ransom.

But unfortunately, the marines were rather less patient than him,

and when a musket was taken,

they immediately shot the perpetrator dead.

And that set a rather unfortunate pattern

of things to come on Cook's voyages.

'Cook got down to business,

'building a mini-observatory to study the transit of Venus.

'But when the moment finally came,

'Venus's thick, gassy atmosphere blurred the outline

'and made their measurements useless.'

The mission had been a complete failure.

But it didn't actually matter

because all that stuff about Venus was a load of old bollocks,

it was just a cover story, really.

'It was time to reveal the real mission -

'top secret orders from the Admiralty.'

'There is reason to imagine that a continent,

'or land of great extent, may be found to the Southward.

'You are hereby required and directed to put to sea

'to make discovery of that continent.'

The hunt was on.

'It's 1769.

'James Cook and the Endeavour are on a top-secret mission

'to find new land in the South Pacific.'

And it's that way... roughly.

'All the nations of Europe believed

'there was a vast undiscovered continent

'in the southern hemisphere.

'And whoever got there first

'would be rich and powerful beyond imagination.

'100 years before, Dutch explorer Abel Tasman

'had spotted the tip of a promising landmass,

'but no European had ever set foot there.

'Cook was about to "discover" New Zealand,

'to the surprise of everyone already living there.

'For the scientists onboard, this new land was a dream come true.

'Cook studied the landscape

'and Banks the miraculous flora and fauna.

'And of course, they met the people.'

Cook was, very obviously,

the first European to meet the Maori people

and the first person to see a haka,

which probably scared the crap out of him.

And it gets a bit worse from thereon because when Cook's men went ashore,

they were approached by a local leader called Te Maro,

and one of the sailors got into a bit of a panic

and shot him... dead.

And then another Maori was apparently reaching for his weapon,

so the ship's surgeon also had a bit of a panic

and shot him... dead.

A bit of a pattern was emerging now,

namely panicking and shooting people dead.

And it so happens that actually, Sean, our cameraman,

is in fact, a Kiwi and has Maori ancestry.

So we can ask him, is Cook a popular figure in, well, your family

and in New Zealand in general?

I grew up in a Maori community,

and it was known that our grandparents suffered.

They weren't allowed to speak their own language at school.

My grandfather was beaten for speaking

his own native language. Really?

Where I grew up, there was a statue of Cook, but it's been taken down.

'Six months on, Cook set sail again,

'following his nose to the east coast of Australia -

'another first for any European.

'Banks was in his element.

'He saw his first dingo, lorikeet, and mudskipper,

'and found so much botany that they named a bay after it.

'The Indigenous Australians, probably quite wisely,

'mostly avoided the strangers on their shores.

'But for the Europeans, this voyage would go down in history

'as one of the most remarkable ever made...

'as long as nothing terrible happened.'

One night, the Endeavour was sailing serenely along

just off the northern coast of Australia.

Captain Cook was sound asleep in his bunk.

Suddenly, the ship came to a juddering halt.

Men were throwing from their hammocks, there was absolute chaos.

They had hit the Great Barrier Reef and become stuck.

'The hull was ripped to pieces on the sharp coral,

'but the crew managed to wrap a sail under it

'to slow the water coming in and make it to shore,

'where they would undertake the most important repairs of their lives.'

Most expeditions went with multiple ships, but Endeavour was by herself.

So if anything went wrong, the crew faced a stark choice -

mend it or perish.

'Dunno about you, but I'd choose mend it.

'Especially as it involves two of my favourite things -

'wood and tools.'

WOOD PLANE SWISHING

We have scaled down the Endeavour for the purposes of demonstration.

This is a wooden-hulled boat, exactly as she was.

'I'm helping boatbuilder Jordan Kimpton

'replace a plank on the good ship Shrinkle.'

Good afternoon. Hello.

'We'll do it just as the Endeavour's crew did.

'And with just as much urgency.'

I've got this exact plane.

It's a beautiful bit of kit. These are lovely.

Oh, mine's got the screw adjuster though, instead of the lever.

Oh, right. I always find it difficult

working with the blade in the front position

because unless you hold it down firmly...

Er, can we talk about the boat? BEEP

Now, this is, er, similar to the damage to the Endeavour,

not quite as critical because it's not down below the waterline,

but the principle is the same.

We have to replace and blend in this plank.

Yeah, that's right.

And has a slight curve to it. Does it have a slight taper as well?

Er, a very slight taper, very slight curve,

and a couple of little bevels on it.

'The wooden shipbuilding technique of Cook's era

'is still much the same today

'and involves a tool I haven't seen before.'

This must have a name in boat building.

It's a spiling baton. Spiling baton. I love it.

Fancy stick.

Well, navigation was done with fancy sticks

for a long time, so there's no reason

why building the boat shouldn't be.

'The fancy stick is tacked on so we can mark our measurements

'for the new plank using callipers to...

'Oh, hello.'

They're rather nice, aren't they? They're lovely.

If you go back, well, only 50 years,

the country was full of tools like this. I mean...

Sorry, anyway, I was slightly side-tracked there.

You carry on, sir.

'The Endeavour's crew had to replace

'seven planks that had been ripped through by the sharp coral...'

You take dimensions from the top and the bottom of the gap

and then mark the dimension on the spiling baton.

'..a bit of a reminder of how fragile their floating world was.'

We now have to join those marks a bit like a dot-to-dot,

to form a curved line that'll be the guide for sawing,

and then we can get it banged in. Yeah.

SAW WHIRRING

'After some fine adjustments...'

Is that a number four or a four and a half? It's a four.

'..comes an absolutely riveting bit.'

Right, we're about to do some riveting.

'Backing the nails with roves pulls the new plank in tight.'

That is lovely.

'In theory, Cook could replace every single part of the Endeavour.'

We come up against the paradox of the ship of Theseus here, don't we?

Because at what point is it no longer the original boat?

It's the age-old conundrum.

But, I mean, every cell in your body changes every seven years.

Are you the same person? Exactly. Mm, no. I'm not.

But in spirit, this will always be the same boat

even if eventually, you replace the whole thing.

It will have a history of continuous use and development.

Yeah. So it is still Shrinkle.

'Right, if you're of an excitable disposition, cover your eyes.

'There's one final magnificent tool.'

We use a Japanese saw. Ohh!

Which, er, we can get nice and tight onto the transom.

'I should probably be explaining how Cook would have used iron nails

'rather than copper,

as the corrosive effects of saline water

'from ferrous metals were only analysed by the navy in the 1790s,

'but let's just watch instead.'

Beautiful.

Thank you.

After seven weeks, all the planking on the Endeavour was mended,

and she was ready to set sail for home.

And not before time, actually, because, as Joseph Banks observed,

"The men were beginning to sigh for roast beef."

So men, even engaged on

perhaps the greatest adventure that humankind had yet campaigned,

were still thinking about supper.

Amazing.

'The first voyage was something of a triumph.

'Cook had explored parts of the world totally unknown to Europeans,

'and he had charted them.'

We're going to talk about how Cook managed to map so much of the world.

But basically, it's all about triangles.

Now, I have here... You would call this a...

A hand-bearing compass. A hand-bearing compass.

Essentially, I'm going to take three points...

Over there is the lighthouse.

And if I sight the lighthouse first...

'Cook loved geometry so much that he divided the world up into angles.

'And I'm doing the same - taking a compass bearing to a landmark...'

And that is zero, three, five.

'..and drawing a line along that bearing on the chart.

Zero, three, five.

'We are somewhere on that line.'

Pendennis Castle is...

zero, zero, four.

'And if we do this three times...'

The beach. OK.

Two, eight, one.

'..where the lines meet must be where we are.'

So now you can see, we are in the triangle here.

We're somewhere in there.

Reasonably accurate, really, for a handheld device, isn't it?

'And this is exactly what Cook did. Except, the exact opposite.

'O-level trigonometry maths fans - this one's for you.'

Now, Cook, of course, did not have this handy chart.

He was drawing the chart,

but the way he did it is similar to what we just did.

It's all about triangles.

Let's say there is a coastline here.

We don't know the shape of it yet, we can't draw it.

Cook's ship is here

and he picks, say, three points on the coastline over here,

He then takes bearings, like this,

so he knows where they are relative to his ship,

but he then sails his ship forward,

so, say, a quarter of a nautical mile to here.

And then he does those sightings again,

so he's building up a series of triangles

that will tell him exactly where all those points are.

And he does this time and time and time again

on thousands and thousands of points along the coastline

until he can eventually determine the shape of the coastline.

It was very, very meticulous work.

'And Cook was a meticulous man.

'He would chart 4,500 miles of coast on this voyage.

'But these were no mere geometrical love poems.

'They would make Britain a superpower.'

So, what does this coloured piece of cloth on a stick actually mean?

Well, let's consult Cook's rather verbose instructions again.

Er, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

"You are, with the Consent of the Natives,

"to take Possession of Convenient Situations in the Country

"in the Name of the King of Great Britain.

"Or, if you find the Country uninhabited,

"take Possession for his Majesty

"by setting up Proper Marks and Inscriptions."

So what this is really is a land grab.

It's an act by an Empire hellbent on world domination,

and a warning to the people like the Spanish and the French

to bugger oeuf.

But, quite obviously, a lot of the places

where this flag was planted weren't uninhabited.

And the following years of various shootings and other mishaps

suggest that the consent of the natives thing

wasn't quite what we were expecting.

In the following decades, more ships arrived,

helped, obviously, by Cook's excellent charts.

And they brought with them European disease, war, settlement,

and the systematic destruction of whole civilisations.

'It's 1771,

'and after three years away at sea and exploring two new countries,

'Captain Cook and the ship's scientist, Joseph Banks,

'returned to a hero's welcome.

'And what everyone was desperate to know was -

'what had they brought home with them?

'Time for a visit to the hallowed halls

'of London's Natural History Museum.

'Because these explorers didn't care about gold...'

'..their treasure was scientific knowledge,

'and it's kept in the museum's murky depths.'

I'm sure this one just moved.

'Even the most hideous residents are beautiful

'to fish mortician and senior curator, James Maclaine.

'And some of his favourites were brought back

'on board the Endeavour.'

I think the estimate's about 500 fish specimens

were collected during the first voyage.

'Many of these had never before been seen by Europeans

'and were brand new to biologists.'

So, when somebody describes a new species for the first time,

forever after, those specimens then represent that species.

So these are all incredibly important for science,

so, some of them are very bizarre as well.

So, there's a really nice thing here which is called a box fish.

You're actually gonna get it out? I'll be very gentle with it.

Look at that!

And it's got this like very hard, box-like, er, shell to it.

Let's see if I can... It's got a face like a dog.

Joseph Banks touched that and thought, "This is very hard,

"this box-like fish that we'll call a box fish."

He touched that, and now I'm touching it.

That's really weird, isn't it?

Possibly my favourite of all the things here are these.

So, these are called frog fish.

And they have a lure on their forehead.

Oh, yes.

That there is its little fishing rod.

It will attract some little fish over

and then they can sort of inflate their whole head

and then the fish just gets sucked in.

If part of this falls off, I'll be just...

We'll delete the footage if that happens.

Delete myself.

'Frog fish intact and safely stowed away,

'which is more than can be said for Banks' collecting methods.'

They can be very vague.

This thing here, it just says "Islands of the Pacific Ocean".

That's precise (!)

I've read that the whole business of collecting on board was quite untidy

because Cook and Banks shared a big cabin.

But Banks would bring all his specimens

and string them out to dry or dissect them on the map table,

so the whole thing was just covered in slime.

Well, I think there was, yes, so much going on.

The sailors got very much involved with the collecting as well.

So they'd be in the middle of something

and then some guy would run in, "I've just caught this."

And, er, I mean, I've been on a collecting expedition myself,

and it does get very excitable when the net comes in,

and everyone sort of gathers around.

'The liquid the fish were preserved in

'got the sailors quite excited too.'

They used to use something called spirits of wine,

which was completely drinkable.

I think on one of the voyages,

there was an issue with the rum running out.

The preserving alcohol

would suddenly be of great interest to the sailors.

'The best way to stop the sailors drinking it

'was to stick a load of dead fish in it.

'And those dead fish changed the course of science forever.'

When all these came back,

the scientific community of Europe

must have suddenly flocked to London to see all this stuff.

This... this was a massive boost to our scientific esteem,

wasn't it, having all this stuff? Oh, absolutely.

It laid the groundwork for so many of the things that followed,

like the Beagle with Charles Darwin and the Challenger expedition.

So our ideas about evolution and the origin of species...

..are all linked into these yellow-topped jars

that Cook and Banks had in their cabin

and chucked in a big barrel of alcohol.

Very much, yeah.

'And they still have a place at the cutting edge of science today.'

There are many, many, many uses for a dead fish in a jar

and some of them you just cannot predict.

So recently, somebody wanted a bit of shark skin

so that they could design a tyre for use on the surface of Mars.

So you just cannot tell

what people are gonna want to do with a dead fish.

'Now, delightful as our fishy friends are,

'they all look a bit drab.

'Preserving dulls the colours...

'which is why art was an all-important part of science.

'And why ship's scientist Banks

'brought an artist on the expedition to capture things in the moment.'

This is the work of Sidney Parkinson, artist to the expedition.

This is actually the photography of the era, isn't it? Yes.

'And Library Collections Manager Andrea Hart

'is giving me a peek at the negatives.'

Oh, cripes!

'While Banks was onshore collecting an astonishing 30,000 specimens,

'Parkinson was back on the ship with cramp in his drawing hand.'

They had very small cabins,

there's reference in Banks' journal to,

especially some times when there were particularly foul seas,

that his pots would go leeward.

And then also in Tahiti,

it was very, very warm so they were plagued by mosquitos.

There was reports of flies eating the paint

before it could dry on the paper.

'More than 1,300 of Parkinson's artworks came back on the Endeavour,

'which is more than can be said for Parkinson.'

Tragically, Parkinson died

six months before the voyage returned to England.

What actually killed Parkinson? Dysentery.

Oh, dear.

But he did record all this stuff, which is a remarkable legacy,

something that's advanced science

and our understanding of a completely new world.

And to do all that before you shit yourself to death

is... is quite an achievement.

'Just before his final visit to the khazi,

'Parkinson also painted Sean's family album.'

This is literally recounting the discovery of my tribe.

This is where my guys are from. Really?

Yeah. This is actually quite a cool moment.

Sorry, I'm gonna bathe in it for a sec.

'Once we get our cameraman back,

'we can film some of Parkinson's rather special last drawings.'

Ahh.

They are the first European drawings of a kangaroo.

Are they? Mm.

So I expect the first time somebody said, "I've seen this animal,

"but it only hops around on its back legs

"and it looks a bit like a giant mouse

"and it's got a little version of itself and..."

they'd have said, "Don't be stupid."

And probably given him 50 lashes.

'The kangaroo looks lovely and peaceful, doesn't it?

'There's a reason for that.'

To be able to draw any living species,

there was an element of having to shoot them.

And that is part of the scientific process.

So this is... this is the first European record

of what a kangaroo is and looks like.

And it would have been the first time -

probably an hour or two after this -

that Europeans knew what a kangaroo tasted like.

Exactly.

Which is a bit like chicken, obviously.

SHE LAUGHS

'Parkinson's drawings caused a sensation,

'and Joseph Banks became a very influential man.

'But while he clearly loved nature,

'he was no peace-and-love, plant-based hippy.

'Like many of his day, he was a firm believer

'in colonies, plantations, and slavery.'

And here he is, look, unceremoniously dumped

in a corner of the Chelsea Physic Garden, rendered immortal in...

Oh, actually, it feels a bit like resin.

He hasn't actually been cancelled yet, but give it another few years,

and he'll be completely overgrown with Santolina villosa.

'Not long after the voyage, there was a crisis in British prisons.

They were bursting at the seams with convicts.

'And Banks suggested shipping them off

'to a lovely little spot he knew -

'Botany Bay, Australia.

'Within 100 years, 160,000 prisoners had been shipped.

'Britain would pave paradise and put up a penal colony.'

A whole new and obviously completely alien society emerged,

and the Aboriginal Australians,

who had lived there presumably untroubled for 60,000 years,

found their land seized

and their ancient culture just torn apart and cast aside.

All that happened in just a century, one and a bit lifetimes.

Cook's little voyage left quite a big wake.

'And that was only his first voyage.'

'Welcome to Greenwich in the mid-18th century.' Lovely.

'Captain Cook is home from his first voyage to New Zealand and Australia.

'New lands down under!

'But now the Admiralty wanted newer lands under down under.

'They believed in a mysterious Great Southern Continent,

'still out there, waiting to be discovered.

'And in 1772, Cook was given two new ships and sent to find it.'

But there was a problem because sailors at sea

still couldn't work out exactly where they were.

Latitude - how far south or north you are,

that's not such an issue because it's a matter of observation.

You can simply see

how high the noonday sun is above the horizon.

But longitude - how far east or west you were,

that's altogether more difficult.

And that was the great navigational challenge of the day.

'Until now, longitude was essentially an educated guess.

'It was an age-old problem,

'and back in 1675,

'the Royal Greenwich Observatory was built just to try and solve it.'

This is the prime meridian.

It is, if you like, longitude ground zero.

This is the line from which all other lines of longitude -

east and west - are measured and established.

It's here, because the British invented time, it's ours.

'Right, viewers, strap in for science.

'Longitude is inextricably linked with time.

'In 24 hours, the Earth turns a full 360 degrees through the sun's beam.

'And in one hour, it turns through 15 degrees. Everyone with me?

'So if, onboard your ship, the midday sun is at its highest

'one hour later than midday back at Greenwich,

'you must be 15 degrees west.

'Two hours later, then you must be 30 degrees west, and so on.

'Now. if this is all making your brain ache, you're not alone.

Sir Isaac Newton said that longitude was the only problem

that had ever made his head hurt.

And he invented gravity.

'The obvious way to know what time it was back home

'was to bring a clock on the ship.

'But it wasn't that easy.'

CLOCKS CHIME

'Nor it turns out, is filming in clock shop.'

CLOCKS CHIME

And, action!

The problem was that pendulum clocks like this one wouldn't work at sea

because...

if you're at sea, you get swell.

Pendulum has stopped,

beat of the clock becomes irregular.

That isn't going to work.

But then, of course, you have this sort of mechanism.

But all of these intricate parts

would be subject to extremes of heat and cold at sea.

They would expand, they would contract.

Moisture would get in,

salt would form crystals, bung up the mechanism

and cause the steel parts like these shafts and arbours to corrode.

'And a slow clock would mean a major cock-up for Cook.'

Your ship's clock only had to be a couple of minutes out

for you to miss an entire island.

And then no rum for you,

lost at sea just because your clock's wrong.

CLOCKS CHIME

'Clocks were not the answer.

'The longitude problem drove men mad.

'The government offered a huge reward

'to anyone who could come up with a longitude solution.

'And I've got special access to see some attempts...

'under strict supervision from these two.'

I'm now privileged to be in a very special place,

the top secret storeroom of the Royal Museums, comma, Greenwich.

This is the place where they hide the bits of maritime history

they don't want you to know about.

Follow me.

TENSE MUSIC

'These dusty vaults hold long-forgotten inventions,

'enough firepower to sink the Bismarck,

'and what appears to be a private army of nautical daleks.

'I'm under strict instructions not to touch anything,

'which always makes me want to touch everything.

'I think they can probably tell.'

I'm very used to putting those on cos I wear them a lot at home.

Great.

LAUGHTER In the workshop! Come on!

Oh, right. Yeah, yeah. Fine.

This is Louise, who is Senior Curator of the Royal Observatory

and therefore a curator of time itself.

'Time Lord Louise is showing me the leading longitude contenders.

'There's a very fiddly one that used the differences

'in the Earth's magnetic field...'

The magnetic compass doesn't always point true north

compared to the North Star, Polaris.

Sometimes, it varies by about four degrees or ten degrees.

And the idea was that you could match up your compass with a chart

and figure out where you are. It's beautifully made.

It requires quite a lot of arithmetic...

'Fraid so. Yeah. ..doesn't it?

'There's a rather complicated one

'that used the position of the moon relative to the stars...'

What they used to do is send that data from the observatory

to a whole network of mathematicians,

known as human computers.

They number-crunched all the data, sent it back,

and then this book gives you the position of the moon

every three hours, every day for the year ahead.

This must have taken months and months to compile.

'And there's a rather intriguing one that we can demonstrate with...'

An orrery. Correct.

Orrery. Is that right? Yes.

So you've got the sun in the centre with Mercury, Venus.

You've got Earth and its little moon. Yes.

But I really like it because it shows Jupiter with its four moons.

So, back in 1610, the Italian astronomer Galileo

used a newly-invented telescope like this one here to look at Jupiter.

And he noticed four little dots of light.

And if you look at the model,

you can see that sometimes, the moons go behind,

and sometimes, they go in front of the planet.

And Galileo realised that if you knew

the configuration of those moons at one location

and you compared it to what you could see at your location,

you could work out the difference in time and longitudes.

'The simplicity of the theory is irresistible.

'As is the orrerrerr...erry.'

Am I allowed to touch that one? I'm afraid not.

That's absolutely fabulous, yes. Am I allowed to touch that?

No. Now, this is all great

because it's based on very, very sound scientific reasoning.

But once you take it to sea,

you come face-to-face with what is sometimes called,

in scientific circles, the crapness of reality.

'Over to Bessie Ellen for that reality check.'

Ow. Where's the end?

BLEEP

'Yes, it is a bit crap.'

Where's the camera gone? Hello.

'I have not come to exterminate you.

'I'm demonstrating the reality of viewing

'Jupiter's moons at sea...'

This is absolutely hopeless.

'..using this model of a celatone,

'inspired by a Galileo design to help

'sailors keep their telescope steady.'

I mean, obviously this wouldn't work in the day, it's got to be at night.

But it's not gonna work anyway

because it's absolutely bloody useless.

One report said that at best,

you could hope to hold Jupiter in your sights for about a second,

which is nothing like long enough.

I mean, apart from it making you look like a total berk,

it simply didn't work.

Ow!

'In the end, the answer to the biggest headscratcher

'of the sailing age was straightforward.

'Just make better clocks.

'And someone did.

'A genius carpenter called John Harrison replaced the pendulum

'with swinging balances, anti-friction bearings,

'and the grasshopper escapement.

'And I think he deserves a phwoarrr.'

'It took him almost 30 years,

'and four goes to achieve perfection in the H4.

'You're probably wondering what all this has to do with Captain Cook.

'Well, for the first time in history,

'the Navy were on to a solution -

'and they needed their top navigator to test it

'on his round-the-world voyage.'

Wow, look at that!

That is actually what you need, to know where you are at sea.

That is Cook's actual sextant, absolutely immaculate.

And this is K1,

which is an exact copy of Harrison's H4.

They took the original apart, measured it precisely

and then made a new one, and it's absolutely fabulous.

I mean, imagine having that in your pocket, and somebody saying to you,

"Have you got the time on you?"

"Well, as a matter of fact, I have. And it's exactly right."

Can I really not touch this?

'This time, they've sent in the big guns.'

Sorry! Can you touch it for me, please?

This is fantastic. I never thought I'd arrive at a time in my life

when I had someone to touch things on my behalf.

Ooh, look at the back. Oh, yes!

Can you open it?

Go on! SHE LAUGHS

Well, thank you for touching it for me. It's appreciated.

After hundreds and thousands of years of people being lost at sea

and perishing horribly and being consumed by monsters

and all the rest of it, you just need that -

that elaborate school metalwork project

and the world's most valuable clock.

That's it. Job done.

'And there's one final Cook treasure that I can't touch.'

This is Cook's actual logbook.

Look at his writing. It's so neat!

And this was written on a ship, remember, pitching about.

And his most famous quote is on this page. Here it is, look.

"I had ambition not only to go further than anyone had been before,

"but as far as it is possible for man to go."

Another captain later on put it a little more succinctly -

"to boldly go where no man has gone before".

BRIGHT MUSIC

And on Cook's second voyage, he would do just that.

'Welcome back to 1772, Cook's second voyage,

'and the search for the Great Southern Continent.

'Now with new-fangled, cutting-edge navigational instruments...'

There is the sun.

'..for superbly accurate longitude calculation.'

We're somewhere north of the dog's arse.

'For the first time, Cook knew exactly where he was.

'But unfortunately, where he was was the Antarctic.

'This isn't authentic 18th century footage,

'but the misery of sub-zero sailing transcends time.'

It was utterly crap.

The ropes turned to solid ice, the sails turned to sheets of steel,

the animals froze to death, the crew had to stay below deck

and were miserable and moaned constantly, as crews often do.

But Cook fought bravely on.

He went below 70 degrees south,

and he became the first person to cross the Antarctic Circle.

'Cook had gone further than any man had gone before.

'And it sounds bloody awful.

'The ships pushed on south,

'through howling gales and stormy seas.

'But thick fog and a great wall of sea ice blocked their path,

'and the Great Southern Continent eluded them.

'They didn't see land for four months,

'which meant they were stalked by a terrible maritime menace.'

Scurvy had been the sailor's scourge

since the first ocean crossings were attempted.

In fact, on one naval expedition to the Pacific during Cook's time,

two thirds of the crew died from it.

Here are some pictures of the symptoms for you to enjoy.

"Those affected have skin as black as ink, rictus of the limbs,

"a strange plethora of gum tissue sprouting out of the mouth,

"which immediately rotted

"and lent the victim's breath an abominable odour."

Wow!

'While we all know a lack of vitamin C was to blame,

'back then, there was just a vague idea

'that it was something to do with diet. But what?

'Cook decided to use his sailors as human guinea pigs.'

Now, here on the counter in front of me,

'I have a range of possible cures.

'So I'm going to test Cook's cures with some...'

Dichloro...phenolindophenol.

'Even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious,

'it's just an inky blue liquid

'that goes clear when you add enough vitamin C.

'Scientists of the day recommended lemon juice,

'which had been boiled down to preserve it.'

One, two, three.

'Sadly for the sailors...' Oh, dear.

'..boiling kills off most of the vitamin C.'

That's hopeless. Right, sauerkraut.

'Fermented cabbage sounds promising.'

No, that's not looking good for the jolly sailor boys.

'Unfortunately, they boiled that too.'

OK. Carrot marmalade.

'Delicious! But that's vitamin A, wrong vitamin.'

Point nine. It's just rubbish.

'It seems most of Cook's cures had only very low levels of vitamin C.

'And yet, not a single one of his sailors would die of scurvy.

'He believed it was all thanks to this final cure -

'an unfermented beer called wort.'

"He took a quart of the wort.

"This gave him three stools in the 24 hours -

"plentiful, loose and offensive.

"The discharge became less putrid, his pains went gradually off.

"Not a man in the ship was more in spirits

"and lively than him."

'Delightful. Let's see.'

Greatly championed by Cook.

He thought this was the mother of all cures.

One, two, three, four, five...

'Cook was right about most things...'

68, 69.

Absolute pish!

Better off just drinking the beer.

'..but wort wasn't one of them.'

There is no vitamin C whatsoever in the wort.

'So, how to explain the mystery of no-one carking it?'

Cook, being a fastidious man

and being very concerned about the welfare of his crew,

insisted on gathering fresh plants to eat every time they went ashore.

That would have made a difference.

The other thing he did

was insist that the men washed up the pans from the cooking

very, very thoroughly because if they didn't,

there was a residue of animal fat in them,

that would get into people's guts,

and that would impede the absorption of vitamin C.

'Cook's crew might not have been getting much extra vitamin C,

'but unlike other sailors, they could properly digest

'the tiny amounts of it in their normal food.

'Cook was clueless, though.

'He reported back to the Navy that the miracle cure was wort.'

So, in reality,

Cook probably set the war on scurvy back by a number of years.

Sorry.

'When he finally arrived home in 1775,

'Cook was celebrated as the greatest captain of the age.

'He could retire a happy man.'

Cook was famous, the first person on Earth to cross the Antarctic Circle.

He was splashed on front pages, he dined with nobility,

his portrait was painted by the great artists of the age.

But he was now 46 years old,

that was a ripe old age for a mariner at the time.

So he decided on a gentler command.

He came and he took charge

of the Naval Hospital for Retired Sailors here in Greenwich.

That lasted for three months.

'You just can't keep a good salty seadog down.

'One last challenge awaited Cook.

'Off he went, via his old haunts of New Zealand and Tahiti,

'in search of the Northwest Passage -

'a sea route linking Europe with Asia

'over the top of the frozen north of Canada.

'But by this third voyage, something was different about Cook.

'He was becoming a bit of a tyrant.'

His temper became violent and uncontrollable,

and the punishments he dished out grew in severity.

12 lashes became 24 lashes, then 48 lashes and then 72.

And he had some bloke's ears cut off because he'd nicked something.

And on one island, he burned a whole village to the ground

over a dispute about two stolen goats.

'There are various theories

'on illness or infection affecting Cook's behaviour.

'And whilst it's in no way an excuse,

'spending most of your life at sea

'must have sent you off the deep end a bit.

'Let's ask the scariest captain I know.'

Out in the middle of the ocean,

has either of you ever gone a bit mad?

You know, thick fog for days, cold and fog.

You're restrained to your quarters, it's miserable.

I think on the longer passages,

everyone is gonna go a little bit mad.

Yeah. It's like you almost feel

like you're in a goldfish bowl.

Except that you know that no-one's looking in.

I mean, if you were with just your film crew,

how long would it take you to go mad with them?

About 15 minutes usually. Yeah, exactly.

So can you imagine, you know, three weeks in a sort of...

Yeah, but what about three years?

'Royal Navy physicians of the time calculated that

'sailors were seven times more likely to go mad than landlubbers.

'And for captains, it was even worse.'

I suppose command is lonely anyway, isn't it?

Because you have to maintain a distance

to maintain your authority.

Yeah, they do call it "the lonely burden of command"

and the responsibility on your shoulders

is a great deal more than when you're just a deckhand.

And you don't sleep

because you are responsible for everybody and the boat.

But I haven't gone mad yet... I don't think.

It's not really for you to judge, though, is it?

No, not really. I suppose not. Good point.

'Cook's displeasure cruise finally reached the Arctic.

'He pushed his crew hard - to the very edge of mutiny -

'and once more, went further than any man had gone before...

'..but no further.

'Only 50 miles south of where the North West Passage begins,

'ice forced them to retreat south for winter.

'And handily, they'd stumbled across the Hawaiian Islands -

'another first for Europeans.

'But a last for Cook.'

At first, it was just like the early days in Tahiti.

The Hawaiians welcomed these weird sailors

and fed them and threw great parties for them.

And when the ships finally departed, everybody was the best of mates.

But then a mast broke, and the ships had to return,

and this time, the reception was not quite so friendly.

And soon, all the old tensions started to emerge.

One of Cook's rowing boats disappeared,

and in one of his increasingly violent and unreasonable rages,

he set off with a party to a local village to try and kidnap the king.

'There was panicking, and there was shooting.

'Blades were brandished, bullets were fired,

'and four marines and dozens of Hawaiians were killed.

'Cook was stabbed to death and his body burned.'

Cook's powdered wig would never be found.

'How to sum up a man of so many contradictions?

'A son of a farmer, who rose to the greatest heights of celebrity?

'A conscientious captain, on whose watch terrible things happened?

'A symbol of national pride or of the evils of Empire?'

Captain James Cook is a British legend.

SOMBRE MUSIC

Here is his statue looking out over Whitby

where he learned so much of his craft.

Elsewhere in the world,

in Australia and New Zealand and some of the islands where he landed,

he's sometimes referred to as "Captain Crook".

And many of his statues have been pulled down

for all the usual reasons.

But hang on a minute. It has been said that

we should live in the present for the sake of progress,

but with an eye to the future for the sake of humanity.

And I think that's how Captain Cook lived and worked.

I mean he... he enormously advanced the sciences of navigation,

map-making, surveying, even crew welfare.

But at the same time,

his diary is riddled with self-doubt about what he's doing

and the effect it might have on people.

In truth, I don't think Cook was interested in wealth or power,

he was a nerd.

Look at his work, look at his journal,

look at his books of navigation homework.

Captain Cook's legacy is enormous.

He completed our view of the world

and with it, perhaps, our view of ourselves.

Right. Let's explore fish and chips.

'BARNACLE BILL' PLAYS

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