Dan Snow (6:03)
Young James Cook was born in a little thatched cottage. I think there were two rooms. It was in Martin in Cleveland, now a suburb of the sprawling city of Middlesbrough in the very north of Yorkshire. He was born just south of where the river of a Tees opens into a rather grand estuary, before meeting the angry, inevitably grey North Sea. The cottage was made of clay and it was roofed with thatch. He was born 27-10-1728. We see from his baptism record his name James, and that his father was a day labourer. He was one of eight children, four of which died in their infancy, half the number of children, which I think was sadly around average for those times. One of his surviving brothers died in his 20s, so really only James and his two sisters reached full adulthood, if you don't count people in their 20s. His father had moved down from Scotland looking for work and Scottish education in the 18th century was very celebrated. It was more advanced than English education. So his father was literate, he was a keen self improver, very aware of the importance of education. And James was sent to the village school, we think, paid for by a wealthier local man who his father had impressed with hard work on his farm as a teenager. We find James Cook working in a shop in a local fishing port. And we can be fairly certain that it was there, the crash of the sea and the stories reported by fishermen who dried their nets on the quayside after hectic adventures afloat, that he discovered his passion for the sea, perhaps to live a life less ordinary, to escape from behind that till that desk and head out there into the wide world beyond. The shopkeeper he was working for was kindly. He made inquiries and he took cook around 20 miles or so up the coast to Whitby and found him a job as an apprentice to a master mariner. Whitby was an important place. It built ships, it built particularly the so called collier barks, which are going to be important. We're going to return to those strongly built, sturdy ships designed pretty much for one purpose, and that was to carry coal down from the northeast to London and elsewhere. The northeast of England was the Saudi Arabia of coal. In the middle of the 18th century, 1,000 ships a year exported Coal from the time the tees and 400 of those went to London alone, the great industrial city with its insatiable desire for power, for energy, you could expect the Crewmen probably do 10 round trips a year. And a few generations after Cook, it's not at all surprising that the world's first locomotive pulled passenger and freight carrying railway was built on the banks of the Tees to carry coal from the mines down to the waiting ships. This was a place where the future was being forged. Cook's first ship was called the Free Love. I think the name has changed its connotations from the 1960s onwards, but anyway, it had three masts, it was square rigged, 340 tons. It would look very similar to the much more famous later ships that Cook chose to take with him on his adventures. The east coast of England, the North Sea and the Thames estuary are, are a nursery of seamanship. And we're not talking a huggy watching Peppa Pig all day kind of nursery. This is a savage apprenticeship. It's a place of wrecks, of storms, of uncharted spits of land, of lee shores, of riptides, of sandbanks that move with winter storms. And a place, unlike the southwest and west coasts of Britain, a place with limited refuge when the weather turns nasty. Look at a map of Britain. That east coast is straight and featureless, a powerful easterly wind blowing off the North Sea and you're on a lee shore with few options. And all that meant it was a. Well, it was a pretty robust form of meritocracy. You, as the owner of a ship, are not going to hand your expensive asset over to someone who's average. You're going to find people who you can trust, who've got the miles in the logbook, the experiences and the scars to show for it. And out there in a storm on a lee shore, with a flood tide dragging you towards the sandbanks, it didn't matter who you were, grew up in a palace or a pigsty, the only thing that mattered was talent. We don't know much about his own personal experiences, but we can be certain that he was no stranger to clinging to a fully reefed topsail yard as a master down below roared at him to take sail in faster as he thumbled with ropes, tying up the sails, reefing the sails, his fingers numb with cold. He rose through the ranks. Took him about nine years. And in fact, he didn't just go to London. He went as far as St Petersburg. He went to Ireland. He got to know one of the hardest and toughest stretches of ocean in the world. Intimately, we know he was good at it because at age 26, he was offered the captaincy of a vessel. But he did something rather strange. In the summer of 1755, rather than taking this route to professional fulfillment and some fortune, he joined His Majesty's Royal Navy instead as well. Pretty much the lowest rank, an able seaman. Now, the 8th century Navy has a unfortunate reputation, which I don't think it deserves. People like Churchill have referred to it as all just being rum, sodomy and the lash. But even Admiral Vernon, who was an explorer, a great naval officer, first Lord of the Admiralty, in fact, he said the Navy was defrauded by injustice, manned by violence and maintained by cruelty. So even people who surgeon at the time could be critical of it. And Cook had now thrown himself on the tender mercies of this system. He would have taken a significant pay cut. But I think Cook's decision to do that tells us something important about the Navy. It wasn't just all press gangs. It wasn't unwilling recruits herded below and kept there through the threat of violence. Men like Cook, professional sailors, wanted to join. Why? I think part is interesting. It's exciting, probably more fun than the dangerous but slightly unchanging routes they used to sail on the colliers. It could be remunerative, potentially, if you capture enemy, prizes enemy ships. And I think it was exciting and critically, I think it was easier to get ahead than we might think. It was still a world in which a lot came down to how you spoke and whether you knew the right people. But even a man from Cook's lowly background could rise through the ranks on merit in the Navy. The son of a labourer could end up an officer, perhaps even commanding his own vessel. It's very telling that within a month of being sent to HMS Eagle, his first ship, he was a master's mate. They saw his talent very quickly and they promoted him. One of the reasons that Cook joined is the navy was going through one of its periodic, enormous phase of expansion. The 18th century navy would grow to huge sizes during its frequent bouts of war with France and Spain. And then the penny pinchers would come in and slash the numbers afterwards. Well, in 1755, Britain was teetering on the edge of a global war against first France and then France and Spain. It was the Seven Years War, which didn't last seven years, but that's not the podcast. The Navy was the bedrock of Britain's war effort. Cook was sent to the North American theater and clearly Any operations by land forces in North America had to be supported by the Navy. Troops had to be taken across their stores, supplies and probably transported around the rivers and estuaries of North America once they got there. And in fact, the first shots fired by the Navy were when a British admiral, before war had been declared, ambushed a French transport fleet heading off to Canada with reinforcements. Not the only time the Royal Navy ever dispensed with the niceties of war when it came to dealing with its ancestral foe. Cook was on board for HMS Eagle, battered the French ship Esperance, a 74 gun ship, as it was escaping across the Atlantic from North America. She chased it and a day from port she was battered into surrender after heroic resistance. In May 1757, eagle chased a 50 gun French merchantman off Brittany, also in the Atlantic, and at very close range blasted each other for about an hour until the French ship surrendered. Eagle had nearly 100 casualties and Cook reports that our sails and rigging cut almost to pieces. The French had suffered even worse. The fore, main and mizzen masts were all blown away. The ship was completely dismasted. There were 97 shot holes through her hull. Cook's early career left him in no doubt as to the brutal reality of 18th century war at sea. The following month, in the summer of 1757, Cook passed the exam for master. This doesn't really have a modern equivalent, this job. It's an essential job. It harks back to the time when the state would hire ships rather than build them itself. So, for example, Queen Elizabeth and the Spanish Armada, the state would simply charter a bunch of ships and the master of that ship would come along with the ship. He wouldn't be one of Her Majesty's naval officers, but he would come along and be responsible for the sailing and navigation of the ship, while the captain was responsible for the fighting of the ship. The rank lived on into the 18th century navy, but it effectively means he was a very senior person on board, usually very close to the captain who would respect enormously his, what you could call it, lived experience at sea. Technically, they were subordinate to the young gentlemen, people like the lieutenants. But often the master was one of the most important people on board. His first job as master was on the 64 gun Pembroke, HMS Pembroke, under Captain Simcoe. And they headed back to North America, where the war was going badly. I will not bore you about my favorite topic, the Seven Years War, but you may have heard me talk about other podcasts, how General Braddock's men marching towards what is now Pittsburgh, but was then Fort Duquesne in the Pennsylvania backcountry. They were ambushed, routed, destroyed by French and indigenous forces. Young George Washington had been very lucky to escape, I think got a bullet or two through his clothing. Another episode of the war was at Fort William Henry, where the British garrison had been forced to surrender and some of them were massacred by indigenous warriors as they attempted to escape. The frontier of the British colonies, where they met Native American land or French land, was a terrible place to make war. So Britain had been frustrated heading west into what is now western Pennsylvania. Britain had been frustrated in the traditional invasion corridor running between Montreal in Canada and Albany in New York. A more beautiful stretch of country you'll never see and bursting with history makes for a great road trip. But Britain had a plan and that plan obviously involved playing to their strengths, which was naval might. Why? Well, because of the Royal Navy. Essentially, you have pretty much the most perfect tool of maritime warfare ever forged. You should probably use it. And so they used it to surge reinforcements into North America while starving the French, blockading the French. Then they launched a large amphibious operation to capture Louisbourg. This was France's magnificent coastal fortress. Beautifully reconstructed, it dominates the St. Lawrence River. It sits at the southern tip of the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, a huge waterway into the heart of the continent. That fort was invested those red coated soldiers, escorted there by naval ships, landed by naval ratings. And naval ratings helped those redcoats to haul big artillery pieces into position. The French fort was slow, slowly blasted. The French were forced to sink some of their own ships in the harbour. It's not the last time they'd sink their own fleet when faced by the British. Another French ship was blown up by a stray British shell and others torched, burnt down to the waterline. There was no help coming from France. More British fleets were bottling up the French in harbour on the European coast. At one stage, the British Admiral Boscawen rode into the harbour under cover of cloudy weather to capture the two remaining ships. One was captured successfully, the other was grounded as it left the harbour and the BR burnt it to the water line as well. On 26th July, the Governor of Louisburg surrendered. Cook was present for those operations. And the following day Cook met a curious looking man on the beach and he was taking measurements with an instrument and making copious notes. And they started talking and it was the most important conversation James Cook ever had in his life. They were the same age. The man's name was Samuel Holland and Holland explained that he was Doing a survey. Holland offered to teach Cook how to survey immediately, recognizing the mathematical scientific spirit in the man he was talking to. They spent a few days at it, and then Cook practiced maritime survey on a short little cruise over the St Lawrence, where the British were busy burning supplies of fish and a few villages. Then back in Halifax over the winter, 1758-59. In between his more mundane duties, we hear that he's punishing men for stealing alcohol, obviously fighting. Holland and Cook grabbed every second they could to compile a chart of the St. Lawrence. It was the first usable chart of this mighty river estuary for which we have good evidence. And they needed a chart because the St. Lawrence is a 400 mile maze of rocks and inlets. One previous British fleet had been dashed to pieces as it tried to sail up and into the heart of the French empire in North America. The French did not allow any charts. The French had removed all navigation marks. They thought nature would be the most powerful redoubt protecting Canada. There was one particularly shallow bit called the Traverse. And the French didn't believe that big battleships could make it across the Traverse. They used to tranship everyone into small boats to make the final journey up to Quebec and Montreal. The reason they're making that chart is the following year, the British were planning a bold strike at the heart of the French empire in North America. Yes, there would be fighting on the frontier where the two empires met, in their invasion corridor, or Lake Champlain, for example, and in the west of Pennsylvania. But they would also strike at the head of the monster. They would sail a fleet right up the St. Lawrence river to the very walls of Quebec and capture the capital of New France. To do that, they needed to know that their fleet would get there in one piece. Suddenly, Cook found he's one of the most important men around. We hear from General Wolfe, who would lead the army element of this expedition, that Cook was closely advising the senior naval officer, Admiral Sanders. How close could ships get to various islands where the safe pastures were? And we hear slightly later on from a commodore who wrote an account, he noticed that Cook was getting special rewards for his, quote, indefatigable industry in making himself master of the pilotage of the St. Lawrence River. As the British fleet is feeling its way up the river in the spring and early summer of 1759, once the ice has cleared, Cook would often be found out ahead in a small boat guarded by marines clutching muskets as he conducted soundings, depth soundings, working out how deep it was, making notes, triangulating on Landmarks, working out where the deep channel was for the British ships. And he was enormously successful. To the consternation of the French, the British fleet turned up outside the walls of Quebec in the summer of 1759. The French were astonished. They did not think their own big ships, let alone those of a massive foreign battle fleet, would be able to make it up the R this far. From that second on, all that was left them was desperate defence against overwhelming odds. They managed to hold out for a couple of months. But in September 1759, Quebec was captured. Appropriate enough. The final landing on the north shore of St. Lawrence that captured the city was a combined operation that depended on the seamanship, the surveying and the professionalism of men like Cook and other naval officers. After that success, as the great French empire in North America fell into British hands, Cook was put to work doing more more surveying. His commanding officer recommended him to the Admiralty as a man of genius and capacity who would be ideal for this kind of work. He was 34. He returned to Britain. He married Elizabeth Batts, a somewhat long suffering woman, as you'll hear, and the year after the end of the war, so we're in the early 1760s, by this period, he was sent back to North America as a surveyor. Britain was suddenly in possession of a gigantic new empire, Canada, what is now the United States of America, east of the Mississippi. It needed surveying. They needed to know what they had there and how it could be exploited. Cook was responsible for Newfoundland, a very irregular shaped island, tricky navigation, but also has the advantage of being a giant harbor, a giant wharf stuck in the middle of the world's greatest fishing grounds. So it was an important national priority to get accurate charts of the waters around Newfoundland. He was given his own ship, Little 68 Tonner, a schooner renamed Grenville, after the Prime Minister, not whatever I find. As Prime Minister, he had a crew of 20 men under his command. He did five years in Newfoundland and he produced the first large scale accurate maps of the island's coasts and the first large scale hydrographic surveys. This gave Cook a mastery of surveying in very tough conditions. Newfoundland is high latitude, it's always windy there, there are plenty of rocks and shoals, there are massive tides. If you can do it there, you can do it anywhere. And his skill brought him to the attention of the Admiralty and the Royal Society, full of scientists at a crucial moment both in his career and in that point of British overseas discovery and ambition. We should say, by the way, that Cook's maps of Newfoundland were used into the 20th century. People sailing in Newfoundland waters would continue to reference cook's observations for 200 years. And while he was in North America, he had observed an eclipse of the sun and reported the data back to London. And that data had been used to help calculate the longitude of where Cook was by the St. Lawrence River. So this useful man on the east coast of the Americas is sending back lots of useful information and data. Very impressive. It gets noticed by the men of science of the Royal Society. He was published fantastically in the Philosophical Transactions, the Royal Society, and by working out the difference in the time of day between the eclipse being spotted in London and the eclipse being spotted in Newfoundland, Cook estimated that he thought there were 57 degrees and 31 minutes of longitude between that part of Newfoundland and Greenwich. Now, the modern calculation is 57 degrees and 37 minutes, so I think he was about 10 kilometers out, which is astonishing. Now, calculating longitude does depend slightly on the latitude, and all of that makes my brain hurt, so I will not bore you very much more with it. So, as well as making scientific breakthroughs, attracting the potential of the right people in London, he's also developing a reputation with the Navy as a good commander. The ship's logs are pretty free from sickness. He keeps his crew well, which is one of the great battles, especially in the peacetime navy. And also he avoids punishment, more so than many captains at the time. He took good care of his crew and many of them seemed to have stuck with him. He looked after their diets, their stomachs, and in return, they behaved for him. They did what he wanted. When he returns from Newfoundland after that fifth season, that's when he says that quote I mentioned before. My ambition leads me not only to go further than any other man has been before me, but as far as I think it's possible for man to go well, he didn't have long to wait. The opportunity was upon him. He would not return to Newfoundland. The Admiralty had other plans. The Admiralty had been on the receiving end of ferocious lobbying from the scientific community because there was a transit of Venus coming up. Now, what's a transit of Venus? In the 17th century, Halley had described how long it took for Venus to cross the face of the sun. And he later surmised that if you timed it from two different places on Earth, the positions of which you know precisely, then you can work out the distance from the Earth to the sun, which is very useful to know for all sorts of reasons. Apart from the abstract, it also really helps you to improve navigation, helps you to determine your position. At sea. Now, knowing where you were in the world was the object of a great global arms race. If you were an expensive warship or a rich trading vessel, you were much more likely in the 18th century to smash into a rock or a hostile coastline because your commander didn't know where you were than be sunk or set afire or captured by an enemy ship. Navigation was essential. Accurate positioning would allow quicker journeys, better returns, more cargoes in more hulls. It was essential for communication, war and trade. The scientific community and the navy wanted to observe the transit of Venus. The trouble was, it didn't happen very often, and there was one coming up in 1769, the transit that everyone was interested in. The French were going to send out expeditions and scientists petitioned the King for money to make sure there was a British expedition as well. They said it would cast dishonor upon them should they neglect to have correct observations made of this important phenomenon. Well, the King said, you had me at the French. Listen, here's a lesson from history, folks. Every scientist, include a passage on the worrying advances of a competitor power in your pitch document. You will get the funding. George III granted the Royal Society £4,000. He said he'd provide a ship and a crew from his Royal Navy, and the expedition was born. Now, the scientists, rather sweetly, were hoping to launch their own expedition with their own commander. And the admirals laughed. Their lordships were not going to let one of His Majesty's vessels out under the command of a sailor scientist. They were going to choose one of their own. In April 1768, they chose Cook. Why did they choose James Cook? He was a mere master, not the most exalted rank on paper. Previous expeditions into the Pacific had been commanded by men of noble birth and connection, men like Lord Anson, who I mentioned earlier. But they chose Cook. Now, I think part of the reason could have been that they didn't want to waste a senior captain on this mad errand to go and look at a planet on the other side of the world with a bunch of scientists on board. What if it'd be a cloudy day? But part of it, more importantly, I think it shows that Cook had made a huge impression, an extraordinary impression on the men in the corridors of power in the Admiralty. It was a credit to him and his successes. Interestingly, now they had to choose the right kind of ship. Now, to a landlubber, all boats and ships look the same. But when you love sailing, when you love boating, it is agony. Every single ship and boat has different characteristics. Do you want them to go in Deep water, shallow water, big waves, choppy waves, tidal races, lots of wind, no wind. There is a dizzying array of choices. Cook needed a ship that was big enough to carry plenty of stores. He was going to be at sea for a long time because the place that had been selected for him to view the transit of Venus was Tahiti, recently discovered on the other side of the world. But his ship could not draw too much. Any ship that was sailing through completely uncharted new waters needed to be able to, as expression went, take the bottom, take the ground. And that meant if the worst came for the worst, you could just drive your ship up on the nearest beach and pause. So you want a flat, strong bottomed vessel. It also had to be small enough to spar those stores to be dragged up on the beach. You would have to do running repairs in places without dry docks. That meant at high tide, you'd sail the boat up onto the beach, wait for the tide to go out, lay it on its side and give it a good scrape and a rub and a paint. Cook believed that the only ships that would fit the bill was beloved northern colliers. They had plenty of space, lots of stores, flat bottomed and very, very sturdy, designed for bouncing off the many sandbanks of the coast of Norfolk. It was upon these considerations, wrote Cook later, that the Endeavour was chosen for the enterprise. It was to these properties in her that those on board owe their preservation. As you'll hear, that's absolutely true. A collier called the Earl of Pembroke had been built in Whitby, which was, of course, Cook's adopted port, was renamed HMS Endeavour and the legend was born. 100 foot long, 29ft wide at its widest, 368 tons, and it drew a meagre 14ft. That means there's 14 foot, just over 4 meters under the waterline. Cook had to race to get ready for the expedition. There was a lot of work that he was doing. As you can imagine, wooden boats just decay instantly from the moment they're born. And there was chaos in the dockyards. There were strikes, there were riots as workers demanded more wages. Work was interrupted a couple of times. Cook was promoted to first lieutenant, which was probably appropriate for the commander of a vessel this size. Now, the ship would have had about only 16 crew for peacetime trade. Cook was given 70 able seamen, plus about 12 or so Marines, soldiers who fought at sea. Few of those men were over the age of 30. Cook was annoyed that his cook, his chef, only had one hand, but he turned out to be a Decent enough Cook. The hold was stacked with supplies that that cook, that chef would turn into food. Sauerkraut, salt beef, salt pork, peas, all of which should keep on long journeys across the ocean. Huge barrels of beer, brandy and arrack were also lowered in. You can't expect a British sailor sail halfway around the world and not get his rum ration. There was a goat to provide fresh milk for the officers. She was something of a veteran. She'd already been to the Pacific on a previous voyage. Now, as well as these sailors and marines, there would be scientists aboard. This was a scientific mission as well. Joseph Banks was a Lincolnshire landowner. He was young. He was 15 years younger than Cook. He was 25 years old. He'd been to Labrador to be a botanist on an expedition, so he had a little bit of experience. He was to join the expedition. He was accompanied by the Swedish naturalist Daniel Solander. He'd been a pupil of the great Karl Linnaeus. And there were also two artists accompanied them to draw their specimens. And Banks brought two black servants with him as well, and a secretary, plus two dogs. The crew ended up calling them the experimental gentleman. They never really got on. But these experimental gentlemen would go down in history because they would describe thousands of new species, among them Gugainvillea, kangaroos and much else. So Cook's orders were to go to recently discovered Tahiti to record the transit of Venus. He was then to, I quote, by all proper means cultivate a friendship with the natives, presenting them with such trifles as may be acceptable to them, exchanging with them for provisions of which there is great plenty, and showing them every kind of civility and regard. So that was it. Go to Tahiti and observe the transit that are they hoped and prayed for a clear day when they got there. But, and this is the big but, there were secret orders. The Admiralty told him. When this service is performed, you are put to sea without loss of time and carry into execution the additional instructions contained in the enclosed sealed packet, a sealed packet of secret orders. When he got to Tahiti, he was to open it and discover that his job was to look for a new continent. It was assumed by many scientists that there must be a huge landmass in the southern hemisphere to balance out the huge amount of land in the North, Eurasia and North America. In the north, it had been the subject of ferocious speculation, and Cook's job was now to go and find it. The secret orders said, whereas the making discovery of countries hitherto unknown and the attaining of a knowledge of distant parts which, though Formally discovered, have yet been but imperfectly explored, will redound greatly to the honor of this nation as a maritime power, as well as to the dignity of the crown of great Britain, and, and may tend generally to the advancement of the trade and navigation thereof. And the orders stated there was reason to imagine that a continent or land of great extent may be found to the southward. So this expedition, as so often, was, a blend of science and empire. As cook made his final preparations to head to Tahiti, the president of the royal society wrote to him with, I think, rather wonderful advice. I'm a big fan. He implored Cook to exercise the utmost patience and forbearance with respect to the natives of the several lands where the ship might touch, to check the petulance of the sailors, restrain the wanton use of firearms. To have it still in view that shedding the blood of these people is a crime of the highest nature. They are natural and, in the strictest sense of the word, the legal possessors of the several regions they inhabit. They may naturally and justly attempt to repel intruders whom they may apprehend are come to disturb them in the quiet possession of their country, whether that apprehension be well or ill founded. So, according to this advice, every effort should be made to avoid violence, and the crew should be reminded that these men were lords of their countries. It's rather enlightened. On 30 July, Cook sailed down the Thames. He left his wife pregnant with her fourth child. He would be born in early September and would be dead within the month. Cook would not see his wife or family again for years. They sailed down the south coast of England and put into Plymouth. They left that great port in the Southwest on the 25th of August, and this was it. They were heading off. The crew had been issued with two months pay and told not to expect the rest until they returned. Cook wrote that all expressed great cheerfulness and readiness to prosecute the voyage. Joseph banks wrote in his journal, all in excellent health and spirits, perfectly prepared in mind at least to undergo with cheerfulness any fatigues or danger that may occur in our intended voyage. There'd be plenty of both. They stopped at Madeira, that little Portuguese island, to buy 3,000 gallons of wine and an absolute boatload of onions. Interesting. At this point, Cook orders that two of the crew are flogged for not eating fresh beef. And fascinatingly, this was the only time in the voyage of the years that were to come that Cook ordered corporal punishment as a way of persuading men to eat better he would use different techniques in future. Sadly, in Madura, one man was dragged to his death by the anchor, the buoy line of which got wrapped around his foot. If you ever see a coil of rope on the deck of a ship, folks never stand in the middle of it because if that rope is suddenly let go, weighed down by an anchor or something heavy, it'll snap up your foot like python a and you'll be over the side and down into Davy Jones's locker. We know that Cook was a superb man, manager from previous expeditions who had been kept healthy. And he had a big plan on this voyage to deal with the threat of scurvy, which is the lack of vitamin C, effectively, which is a horrific disease. Your teeth fall out, your old scars open up all the rest of it. He was going to deal with that by using sauerkraut and as much fresh food as he could. Whenever he landed, he tried to get fresh food. Berry and celery and fresh fish. He thought about punishing the men if they wouldn't eat their sauerkraut. But he soon came up with a far more ingenious way to encourage them to eat it. A lot more carrot and less lash, as you'll hear. He organized the men into three watches. Typically, a ship was divided into two watches and they did four hours on, four hours off most of the day. He divided his men into three watches. They got eight continuous hours off duty and they sailed south. They crossed the equator according to the old, venerable traditions of crossing the equator. Lots of men who'd never done it before were thrown into the sea. From the main yard, they sailed into Rio de Janeiro and had a very interesting moment because the viceroy, the Portuguese viceroy in Brazil, did not believe they were a naval ship. They looked like a band of smugglers with this talk of scientific expeditions to the Pacific. They're very fishy and there's a very amusing set of letters which I won't bore you with, rather pompous and furious, being sent to and fro, each side accusing the other of a lack of respect for their respective majesties. Officials, representatives, banks snuck ashore and did a bit of what he's called botanizing, which is finding new species, plants, flowers, animals. But they did at Rio, a beach, the Endeavour. One of the reasons, remember, she'd been chosen for the job. You drive her up on the beach, the tide goes out and you can do some maintenance. They re caulked the planks. That is, they got into the seams between the planks and pushed this kind of gooey mixture of cotton and hemp, all soaked in tar, pine tar, and then sealed with hot pitch. And that was a way of binding these planks together and stopping water getting in. Then you scrape the hull down from all the barnacles and things that had accumulate on it, the accretions, and you do the inevitable repairs on the rigging. As they sailed south from Rio down the coast of South America, they had all the weathers. They had calm weather. The sea was still as a mirror. Sails hung loosely like laundry from the yards. Then they had storms, they had lightning, even up to lay to at one point, which is give up any attempt to sail and just go where the storm blows them. And everyone agreed that she was the finest vessel they could have chosen. Christmas Day brought a fresh breeze, and the captain notes in his log, the people were none of the soberest. Now thank you to Joseph Banks for providing a bit more detail here. All good Christians, that is to say, all hands, get abominably drunk so that at night there was scarce a sober man in the ship. Wind, thank God, very moderate, or Lord knows what would have become of us. Great naval tradition there. They landed at the bottom of South American Tierra del Fuego. Banks and the scientists went botanizing. They got caught in a snowstorm and tragically, his two black servants died of exposure, so brutal was the temperature. Then they girded themselves for the famous trip around Cape Horn with its towering seas and its endless easterly gales that blow around this circumpolar ocean, the Southern Ocean unbroken by land. The cannon, for example, was stored low down in the ship so it wasn't too top heavy. And they set off. The weather was predictably bad, yet in a savagely pitching deck, Cook managed to fix the position of Cape Horn, a little headland on a rocky island off the south coast of South America. And it became the most accurate fix ever. It was the precise correct latitude and it was only 40 miles out on the longitude. So until that point, people hadn't had a good idea where Cape Horn was on planet Earth. So he is a stunning navigator and surveyor. He's tacked south as far as he could go without the ship freezing up into the Southern Ocean, and then rode a beautiful southeasterly breeze north and west with every scrap of canvas spread getting warmer every day, studding sails set on the ends of the yards. That's extra sails that you put right out on the edge of the existing sails to catch every scrap of breeze you can. They were swept north and west into the heart of the Pacific. There were calm days when Joseph Banks and the scientists would go out in the rowing boat. They'd shoot seabirds and petrels and albatrosses, and the crew would then eat them gratefully after they'd been drawn and studied. Some days they'd travel 13 miles. Other days there'd be a fresh breeze behind them and they'd travel 140 miles. Tragically, one night a Royal Marine was being bullied by his mate, who apparently stolen a bit of seal skin. He jumped overboard and committed suicide. Life aboard a ship where you were an outcast was obviously intolerable. 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