The Rest Is History: 381. Captain Cook: To the Ends of the Earth

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Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. It's five-year mission

to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations,

to boldly go where no man has gone before.

Anyway, so that is Dominic, the introduction to Star Trek. I know you're not a fan.

Definitely not a fan now.

But why have we begun a episode on Captain James Cook by introducing Captain James Kirk?

And the answer is because Gene Roddenbury, who obviously came up with the idea of Star Trek,

was a massive, massive fan of Captain Cook. And Captain Kirk is modeled on Captain Cook.

And the Enterprise is the endeavor. And Mr. Spock is Joseph Banks, the science officer.

I should apologize to the listeners for what they've heard. William Shanner, of course,

is himself a man with very dubious audio background, isn't he, Tom? Because he did

those terrible cover versions. So did Lenny. The ballad of Bilbo Baggins.

Yeah, Bilbo. No, we don't need to hear it. Thank you. Save that for the club members, Tom.

So yes, I'm just so sorry about all that. However, let's pick up from where we were last

time. We're talking about the life and times of Captain Kirk and specifically his first voyage

to Australia and New Zealand, don't we? But could I just add on the Star Trek thing?

The great thing in Star Trek is that Captain Kirk and his crew on the Enterprise,

when they're going across space, have to bear in mind the prime directive, which is a charge not to

interfere with alien civilizations, not to give them their technology and things like that.

And that, again, is a concept that derives from the challenges that face Captain Cook.

And just as Captain Kirk throughout Star Trek cheerfully ignores this, so he'll kind of go down

and get out his laser gun and blow things up and get off with aliens and all kinds of things.

This is an issue as well for the crew of the Endeavour, is it not, throughout this voyage?

It is indeed a weekend to get into this almost immediately.

So if you remember from the last episode, Captain Kirk has been given the mission of going off to

Tahiti to establish an astronomical post to observe the transit of Venus. And if you want to know

the astronomical details of this, the rationale for it, you obviously would listen to our previous

podcast. Yes, well, you spelt that out in immense detail. Yeah. Very clear. Very clear. Good.

But also, of course, he has these secret sealed instructions, which is that if he discovers

the fabled Great Southern Continent, Terra Australis, then he is to claim it for Great Britain.

Because, of course, hanging over this the whole time is the fear that some other European rival,

not least the French or perhaps the Spanish, will get there first. And so that sort of sense of

urgency, I think. There is a sort of low-level urgency there the whole time.

So we ended last time with Tierra del Fuego. They leave Tierra del Fuego and the people covered with

seal oil, and they sail out into the unknown, into the Pacific, and they pass all these sort of

little islands and atolls. They got into the Pacific on the 21st of January, 1769. And they're at sea

for months. Huge stretches of time pass where effectively nothing happens. To understand Cook's

mentality and the challenges of life on the endeavor, you have to take into account the fact

that everything takes so long. There are long periods at sea. It's very, very cramped. It's

incredibly cramped. Very difficult conditions sometimes, storms. However, they do have milk,

because they have their goat. They have their goat. So the goat is now halfway around its second

navigation of the world. So the goat is more experienced than any of them, actually.

But on the 11th of April, Tom, they reach Tahiti. Some of them think this could be the

sort of northern part of the Great Southern Constance, which of course it isn't.

And Tahiti, of course, is famously beautiful. And Joseph Bank says,

the scene we saw was the truest picture of an Arcadia of which we were going to be kings,

that the imagination can form. So I mean, that's immediately, it's an Arcadia,

and we're going to be the kings in it. But actually Tahiti is not Arcadia. It's not an Eden,

because it has its own history. It has its own dynamics. And part of those dynamics are the

fact that actually Europeans have been visiting it quite a lot. So Endeavour is the third European

ship to arrive in Tahiti within the previous 18 months. And so part of what the kind of the fantasy

is that this is, you know, virgin land, that Tahitians are unspoiled by contact with the

outside world. They're not at all.

What's more, that guy who had sailed before Samuel Wallace,

he had told Cook, hadn't he, before Cook left, he had said,

you have to be careful of a couple of things. First of all, as is always the case when you

stop at an island, the locals will want to trade with you, and your men will want to trade with

them. And in particular, the locals will want iron. So they want nails. So again, this is the kind of

the prime directive thing of don't give your technology to the people that you meet with.

So that always has to be very strictly regulated, because it can soon tip over

into thieving, into arguing, into quarrels, all this kind of stuff. So that's one thing.

You also don't want to have your men stealing from the ship's stores to sell things to the

locals or giving them weapons, for example. And secondly, an issue that runs right throughout

this, you mentioned Captain Kirk getting off with aliens. There is always a sort of sexual

dimension to this, isn't there? So there is throughout all of these voyages, there is the

issue of all these men who've been cooped up on the ship, absolutely desperate to get out and

interfere with the local women. And there is money to be made, there are nails to be gained,

there is iron to be gained from either the local women effectively selling themselves

to the sailors, or their husbands, fathers, whoever. Effectively, I mean,

I hate to say it, Tom, but kind of pimping them out.

Yes. And this is something that Paul's cook, and he's able to trace it because over the course

of his various voyages, he returns to various places and discovers that the sexual economy

is becoming more and more sophisticated and is horrified by this. And the other thing that

horrifies him, and again, this is a kind of running theme throughout all three of the voyages

that he does, is he's terrified that Europeans will introduce venereal disease. And this again

is a kind of running anxiety. So I think it's telling that when the endeavor arrives at Tahiti,

basically everyone, everyone takes a lover, a Tahitian lover, except for Cook himself. And

we don't know why he never says, so it could be that he is committed to his marital vows.

He seems to have been very devoted to his wife, but it could also be that it's expressive of his

horror at the idea of the risk of contaminating Tahitans or all the other native peoples that

in due course they'll meet with venereal diseases. Or it could be that he's making a statement of

the fact that he is above the rest of the crew, that he's holding on to his discipline, that he

is the captain and he has to uphold kind of points of difference. I mean, it could be all three,

of course, Tom, but I think that last point offers the most sort of acute insights into Cook. Cook

is a man throughout whose self-control, his self-discipline, his status as the captain,

all those things matter enormously to him. He never really lets himself go, does he?

Until his very final voyage, which we won't be doing this week, we'll be doing perhaps next year,

where he does start to unravel a bit under the pressure. But in this point, he regulates himself

just as he wants to regulate his crew and the world, actually.

So in that sense, he's not Captain Cook. I mean, he does do his best to uphold the prime directive.

And weirdly, there is a kind of quality of the prime directive to his instructions from the

Royal Society, who are absolutely clear that he is not to cause trouble, that he's not to interfere.

He is supposed to kind of simply observe. And of course, basically, that's impossible,

because you can't just turn up and be neutral. And this, of course, is one of the great discoveries

of anthropology, the European science of anthropology, is that you can't just observe the

very process of observing changes societies. And right from the beginning, these interactions

are always kind of pregnant with danger, aren't they? There's always the possibility

of misunderstandings, of arguments. When they go ashore for the first time, Joseph Banks is kind

of crony Dr. Solander, sort of Swedish scientist, and the SIPP surgeon, a guy called Munchhaus,

they discover on that first trip ashore that their pockets have been picked, and they've

lost some opera glasses and a snuff box. And that issue of things being taken, which to the sailors

seems so outrageous, and Cook seems so outrageous, that runs right through all the voyages,

the different attitudes to kind of private property, and arguments about theft in particular.

I mean, these massive spoiler alerts, these are going to dog-cook to the very last day of his life.

And Cook is, on the one hand, he's very cognizant of his instructions from the Royal Society that he

should not interfere in any way. At the same time, he's aware of his dignity and status as a

captain of a British ship, and never doubts at any point that he has to make clear to the people

that he's visiting the awesome power that he commands as an officer, that the people that he

is visiting have to be left in no doubt what the firepower of Britain is. And there's an

inevitable tension there. You know, it's difficult for Cook to negotiate clearly.

Well, there's an altercation quite early on. Somebody steals a musket, or a Tahitian tries to

steal a musket, and the Marines are ordered to open fire, which they do, and the culprit is shot dead.

And even at that point, Banks actually says, that was very foolish just to fire on them. He says,

if we quarrel with these Indians, we wouldn't agree with the Angels. Sidney Parkinson, who is the

artist, he says, what a pity that such brutality now, of course, these are his words, what a pity

that such brutality should be exercised by civilised people upon unarmed ignorant Indians.

So there you have the condescension, obviously, the towering condescension of the Europeans,

but also a sense that a sense of regret that they're monopoly, they're far superior technology,

and their powers of violence, you know, they're never far from being used,

and that quite often Cook and other officers will resort to violence because they feel that

they need to lay down a marker and to draw a line. And of course, that comes at a cost.

But this is the pressure on Cook as the captain. I mean, he has to negotiate these shoals,

whereas Banks, for instance, doesn't. And so Banks is actually having,

he's having a lovely time on Tahiti. I mean, he has one problem, is that the artist that he's

brought, a man called Alexander Buckin, shortly after they arrive in Tahiti has an epileptic fit,

goes into a coma and dies. And Banks is distraught at this, not because Buckin has died,

but basically because it's like losing his iPhone shortly after going on holiday.

You know, he doesn't have anyone to take the equivalent to photographs.

So he's very upset about that. So he says, his loss to me is irretrievable, my airy dreams of

entertaining my friends in England with the scenes that I am to see and vanish, which makes very

clear what the cause of his grief is. But he's having a wonderful time. So for instance, he sees

something sensational that no European has seen before, if they have, they haven't described it.

And he says of this extraordinary Tahiti in custom, we stood admiring this wonderful scene

for full half an hour. Do you know what that was? I do, because I've seen the notes.

Go on, tell the listeners. So this is when the double canoe arrives, is it?

No. Oh, I'm looking at different parts of the notes.

It's surfing. Oh, yes, of course, the surfing. Joseph Banks is the first to observe surfing.

So I think this is the second time we've mentioned surfing in the rest of history,

the first time, of course, being Ag for Christie. He was a keen surfer.

That's right. But Banks watches it. You know, he sees surfing and he's transfixed by it.

And I'm sure that if he'd stayed there longer, he would have taken it up. He'd been an excellent surfer.

So, Tom, what I thought you were talking about was the moment when Banks is approached by a

double canoe with a men and... Yes. Well, this is also a great moment.

Men and some women. The man gives Banks some plantain and some branches and then they spread

these sheets on the ground. One of the women comes forward and then as Banks puts it,

what does he say? She unveiled all her charms. She gave him a most convenient opportunity for

admiring them by turning herself gradually around. She takes all her clothes off and she sort of

bears her buttocks to him. And does this three times, doesn't she?

Yes, three times. And then the cloth on which she did this is presented, formally presented to Banks.

And he says that he then took her and another woman to his tent. And to both of them, I made

presence but I could not prevail upon them to stay more than an hour. So, very Captain Kirk.

So, what happened in that intervening hour? Yeah.

And so, this is, you know, Banks obviously assumes that this is kind of sexual exhibitionism. And

it's reports like these that when they get back to Europe will convey a sense that Tahiti is a home

of free love and it will be interpreted in all kinds of ways. Nicholas Thomas in his wonderful

book Discoveries offers a different interpretation of it that I think sounds more plausible to me.

His argument is that what the woman is revealing is not her private parts but the decorations on

her skin, which are kind of markings, patterns, all over her buttocks and over her private parts.

And she is demonstrating by the fact that she has these, that she is of sufficient age to embark on

negotiations over the, you know, the selling and the buying of cloth and other things.

So, essentially what she's doing is she's presenting her kind of business qualifications.

Her credentials.

Yes, it's like a kind of MBA.

Right.

And of course, these markings on her body are also something that will have a huge impact

on Cook's crew in due course on the Royal Navy and ultimately on society back home in England

because the Tahitian word for these markings is tatau and Banks transcribes this as tattoo,

thereby introducing the word tattoo into the English language and in due course into lots

of other European languages as well.

So, this is why Tom, Royal Navy sailors are associated with tattoos. Thanks to Cook and his...

Yeah, because over the course of the voyage, again and again, the kind of Polynesian peoples that

Cook and his crew are seeing have these tattoos and they become more and more impressed by them.

And they end up thinking, well, you know, we quite like a bit of this.

And so, they go back and this then generates the fashion.

So, by the end of the 18th century, you know, a tattoo has become the marker of a sailor.

Tom, you don't have any tattoos, do you?

I don't. I mean, it's not generally a historian. The historian Dan Jones has tattoos.

He has loads of tattoos. Actually, Dan Jones is probably the only historian in Britain who

does know his own podcast.

But he does have tattoos.

But he does have lots of tattoos. So, maybe you should do a podcast about them.

So, surfing and tattoos. Yeah.

Banks is all over that. And of course, he's being a cad with the ladies.

He's being a cad.

I mean, whether he's playing his guitar for them, I don't know.

Cook assumes, doesn't he, that his men will have got venereal disease from the natives,

actually, from the Tahitians. Because he says, after a few weeks, 24 seamen and nine out of the

11 marines have all got disease. And he thinks it's venereal disease. But actually, it's not.

It's something called yours. Do you know what yours is?

No.

It's a very infectious disease, which apparently was endemic all over the Pacific.

So, you get sores on your body and stuff.

Okay. But it's not venereal.

No. However, talking of venereal things, Tom, what a lovely link.

Yes. Wonderful. Very well done.

Back to science.

On the 3rd of June, the much anticipated transit of Venus happens.

And they're able to take all their measurements. That all goes very well.

They now know how far apart things in the solar system are, which is wonderful.

A job well done. And Cook is ready to celebrate. And then he discovers that his own men,

so this is the theft thing, his own men have broken into the ship's stores and stolen 120

pounds of nails to sell to the natives, to the Tahitians. And I'm assuming they've done this

in return for sexual favors, Tom, because you would guess that's what they want in return,

wouldn't you?

Yeah, I guess so.

There's a lot of thefts. There are muskets, pistols that are stolen.

But Cook is really trying to patrol that. So, there's a butcher who kind of threatens

the Tahitian woman, and he has him very publicly flogged.

Yes, he does.

It's a challenge, I think, to keep all these balls in the air, as it were.

His reaction to this shocks some of his men. So, for example, when he finds that all this

stuff has been stolen like a rake and a water cask, he rounds up a whole load of canoes.

And he threatens to burn them. And his hard line with the people of Tahiti worries some

of his men. It worries banks. Banks doesn't prove it. Now, you said banks, it's easy for

him to say that because he's not facing these kind of dilemmas. But the danger is always

that a European overreaction will then provoke a reaction from the locals. And of course,

that's the issue that Cook contends with in the very final days of his life in his third voyage.

It is. But in Tahiti, I mean, he does establish good relations

with lots of people on Tahiti. It's carrot and stick, I guess.

Yeah. We always perceive these encounters now. We see them as damaging, traumatic,

all of these kinds of things. But there is an element, isn't it, that these encounters were

tremendously invigorating to people on both sides. If you're somebody who likes novelty,

who is curious about the world, there is always a degree of ambiguity and uncertainty about them,

but clearly Cook himself, he finds these encounters exciting.

And banks absolutely does. So banks, he's out there all the time. He's kind of

watching, you know, looking at tattoos and inviting ladies into his tent to negotiate

over cloth and studying the rituals and, you know, inquiring about the traditions and trying to work,

you know, compile dictionaries of Tahitian and English. And he is really fascinated by it and

can kind of plunge into that in a way that Cook can't because Cook has so much else on his mind.

And I guess that the tension in what you were talking about, the fascination that Tahitians

have with the Europeans and that banks has with, you know, and the other Europeans have with Tahitians,

is notoriously exemplified by something that happens on the 12th of July. So that's the day

after the transit of Venus, where banks records that one of the islanders, a man called Tupia,

wants to come with them, that he wants to see the world on the endeavor. And banks says that he

might keep him as a curiosity, as well as some of my neighbors do lions and tigers at a larger

expense than he will probably ever put me to. It's a statement that seems emblematic of everything

that people today would disapprove of, you know, the Enlightenment project that it's acquisitive

and it reduces other peoples to the status of objects. And I think there is a kind of aspect

of that. But equally, when you read Banks's journals, the delight that he is taking in people

who likewise are taking delight in him, I think is evident as well. So, you know, the complexities

of it, it's not good or bad. Yeah, all kinds of shades of complexity there. I agree with you.

It's an ambiguous relationship. And actually, the words I just scribbled down were condescension

and curiosity. And those two things are always coexisting. So, of course, the Europeans, Cook

and his men, regard themselves as civilized, and they regard the people of Tahiti as backward.

I mean, there's no doubt about that. Yet at the same time, it's not pure, it's not just a condescending,

patronizing relationship. They also are fascinated, absolutely fascinated by all the rituals,

by all that stuff. They are seeing things that nobody, you know, nobody in North Yorkshire.

No, has seen all this stuff that Cook has seen. And also, the Russoian idea that all the clutter

and the appurtenances and the questiveness of European proto-capitalist civilization is

something to be cast aside, and there's a kind of innocence. Yes.

That the Tahitans embody, which again is a fantasy. I mean, it's kind of ignoring the

complexity of the dynamics in Tahiti. But as you say, it's a very, very complicated relationship,

kind of matrix of paradoxes. But you see that in both Cook and Banks, don't you?

That there's part of them that is drawn. Yes. And will become increasingly drawn

over the course of the voyage. Yeah. So, we should probably take a break, Tom,

because we haven't got to our destination. We're not really remotely near our destination,

which is New Zealand and Australia. But we will get there after the break and discover

what Captain Cook made of those two splendid places. So, we will see you after the break.

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Hello. Welcome back to the Restless History. We are boldly going with Captain Cook,

and he has been on Tahiti. He's witnessed the transit of Venus, and it's all been a bit of a

mess. But, you know, he's seen all kinds of wonderful and extraordinary things on Tahiti.

But that stretch of his mission is done, and now he opens his sealed envelope that he's

been given by the Admiralty. And in it, he is given the specific order that he has to go

and discover Terra Australis incognita. But there is this proviso that if you shall fail of discovering

the continent before mentioned, you will, upon falling in with New Zealand, carefully observe

the latitude and longitude in which that land is situated and explore as much of the coast as

the condition of the bark, the health of her crew, and the state of your provisions will admit of.

So, off they head to New Zealand for that reason. So, Tom, they know that New Zealand exists.

It did. Disabled Tasman had sailed around New Zealand, or around part of New Zealand,

in 1642. But he had been discouraged from landing because he'd been worried about the locals,

the Maori, hadn't he? Yes. And so, this is, again, is something that

Cook will have to work out how to handle when he arrives on the shores of New Zealand. But before

they get there, Dominic, on the 25th of August, attentive listeners may remember that in the

previous episode, I mentioned that banks had packed some Cheshire cheese. Oh, yes!

Oh, yes! Cask of Porter. And the reason he'd taken that was to mark the anniversary of their

departure from England. So, on the 25th of August, he takes a Cheshire cheese from his larder.

He taps the cask of Porter, and as Banks himself says in his journal,

it proved excellently good, so that we lived like Englishmen and drank the healths of our

friends in England. Oh, that's nice. So, that's nice, isn't it?

That's a lovely note. So, anyway, we're replenished with Porter and cheese.

They glimpse the shores of New Zealand on the 7th of October, 1769. So, this is from Parkinson's

Journal. He says, about two o'clock in the afternoon, one of our people, Nicholas Young,

surgeon's boy, described a point of land from the starboard bow at about nine weeks' distance,

very west and by north. We bore up to it, and sunset, we had a good view of it.

We regaled ourselves in the evening upon the occasion. The land was called Young Nick's Head,

and the boy received his reward. So, this is the North Island of New Zealand, and they end up

landing at a place that they call Poverty Bay. And actually, right from the start, they see people,

don't they? They see Mary, who run away from them at first. And at that very first landing,

there is a confrontation. So, their party kind of splits up. There's some of them by the boats,

there's some of them that have gone to look at the huts. On the way back to the ship,

cook and the hut people, the hut team, they hear shooting, and they get back and they discover

that the men by the boats have fired shots at a group of Mary who were advancing with spears

at them. And they have killed the first Mary. So, it's the first Mary to die at the hands of

Europeans, who is a chap called Te Mauro. And that kind of, you know, the interactions with

the Mary are much more difficult, should we say, than those with the people of Tahiti right from

the outset, aren't they, Tom? Yes. But in a way, kind of the counterintuitive

aspect of Cook's attitude to the Mary is that he seems to have admired them hugely. So, he's very

upset about what happens, about the killings, and is very, very anxious to establish relations with

them to try and repair the damage. But he also recognizes, I think in the Mary, a quality of

independence, a kind of quality of heroism that he really admires. And in due course, you know,

there'll be brushes with cannibalism and all kinds of things. And Cook will consistently

attempt to explain how and why the Mary do what might to European eyes seem shocking actions.

And you can see over the course of his writings about this particular stretch of the voyage

and his interactions with the Mary, how his understanding of, I suppose, a kind of form

of cultural relativism, a kind of a recognition that his understanding as a European is only one

way of seeing the world that does often seem very modern. Yeah. Remarkably, he's curious.

I think Cook wouldn't have been Cook if he wasn't curious in the first place. He would never have

left North Yorkshire. He would never have gone away to sea. He'd never joined the Royal Navy,

all of those things. But he doesn't stop as it were educating himself. He's interested in the

world. The day after that first violence, he and his men land again, they find a big party of Mary

now about 100 people who dance at them. They brandish their weapons, distorted their mouths,

lolling up their tongues and turning up the whites of their eyes. So this will be familiar to anyone

who's watched The All Blacks. The All Blacks, exactly. The whole accompanied by with a strong

horse song calculated, in my opinion, to cheer each other and intimidate their enemies and may

with propriety be called a dancing horse song. It lasted three or four minutes. So this, as Tom says,

if you watch The All Blacks' rugby team, the New Zealand rugby team perform the hacker before a

match, this sounds remarkably like it. Now, they have this guy from Tahiti, Tupia. Who is the guy

that Banks had said, I'll keep him as a curiosity. And an extraordinary thing that they can use

Tupia. But this is denying Tupia's agency, isn't it? I mean, that's the thing that Banks may think

that he's bringing him as a curiosity, but actually to Tupia. Tupia is being incredibly

intrepid. And yes, it's the endeavor that's a curiosity. Yeah, that's true. But they can use

him as a translator. This is an extraordinary boon for them. But also a stunning revelation

to Cook of the fact that Tahiti is a long way from New Zealand. I mean, it's a very, very long way.

And yet clearly the same people who are in New Zealand linguistically are related to people

in Tahiti, which can only mean that they've sailed there. Yeah. And so again, that is something that

is eye-opening for Cook, the realization that his voyage of discovery, traversing these vast

expanse of the ocean, Europeans are not the first to do it. Polynesians have done it.

Yeah. And that again, I think is enhancing his sense of respect and admiration for the peoples

that he's meeting. Yes. He gets Tupia to tell them we are their friends. We've only come to get

water and trade with them. And that if they offered to insult us, we could with ease kill them all,

so that you have the combination you see. He wants to be friendly, but we could kill you.

But Tupia told us plainly that they were not our friends and told us several times

to take care of ourselves. And that confrontation too ends in violence. So Cook and Banks have

brought along some beads and some nails. In other words, they offered to the Maori.

One of the Maori steals a sword. The British fire at them to try to disperse them. Banks is using

bird shot, so which won't kill you. But the Marines eventually end up firing their weapons.

Again, one of the Maori is killed. And later on, I mean, a mad thing to do, Cook's men try to

capture a Maori canoe so that they can ensure the canoeists that they mean them no harm. And as a

way of capturing the canoe, they start shooting at it and kill four people. Yeah. This is very

Captain Kirk. Yeah. And as Cook's biographer Richard Hoff says, to kill more than half a canoe

load of intended detainees in order to cultivate a friendship with the natives appears to be an

unbalanced calculation, which I think is fair enough. But actually, interestingly,

they feel great remorse about this. I mean, I'm not excusing their behaviour by any means,

but they do feel remorse. Banks says, the most disagreeable day my life is yet seen.

But again, it's not just that they're feeling remorseful at the casualties that they've inflicted.

It's that they, or certainly Cook, is feeling hugely impressed by everything that he's seen.

So I mentioned about the cannibalism. So they start to go up the New Zealand coastline, don't

they? Yeah. Starting to chart it. And Hoff calls this one of the great achievements in the history

of hydrography. So I'll take his word for that. But in the course of this voyage, they keep coming

across evidence of cannibalism. One of the sailors there saw one of the Indians with the arm bone of

a man eating the flesh from it. Several canoes alongside with Indians, one of which had four

men's heads with the hair on and flesh very green. They had dried them in the sun about three or four

days, one of which Mr. Banks bought inevitably. That's very Banks behavior. Very Banks behavior.

But Cook, he says, notwithstanding their cannibals, they are naturally of a good disposition and have

not a little share of humanity. Yeah. You know, it's this sense that Europeans don't eat people,

Maori do, whatever. Those are the customs of the world. I think it's important to say

with the violence, Cook never, his instinct is never to use violence initially. I mean,

that's not why he's come, is it? Actually, the Royal Society have specifically told him.

They absolutely have. Do not lamb and start shooting the natives. I mean, don't forget,

we'll be talking about, as we said last time, we'll be talking about Cortez and the conquest of

Mexico. Those stories, which are only 250 years previously, are very much in the minds of Europeans

in the 18th century. And they're what Cook wants to avoid. And they're what they want to avoid,

the black legend of Spanish sadism and corruption and all this kind of thing.

And people like Cook think of themselves as better than that. They think, well,

we're not the 16th century Spaniards. We are civilized, kindly people, enlightened people.

Now, of course, they don't always live up to their own ideals, but they have a sense of themselves

as not wanting to, you know, they do, as you said, Banks use that word, Arcadia, about Tahiti.

They do have a sense of this as a kind of lost Eden and one in which they don't want to willy-nilly

interfere with the locals. Do you think that's fair, Tom?

Well, so I think Cook is caught between two senses of responsibility. So as we said,

he has these instructions from the Royal Society, you know, don't fire, don't inflict violence.

But at the same time, Cook, as an officer, is responsible for his men and is kind of determined

to use force to demonstrate to people who might otherwise attack and kill his men that this is

foolish. And I think he clearly feels, I mean, we know he does because he kind of hints at it

in his journals. He's very anxious returning to England that he will be judged badly by the

Royal Society for this, that they will feel that he's failed because of the casualties that he's

inflicted. But equally, he feels responsibility to his men and that's the kind of the tension that

he's wrestling with the whole way through. Anyway, that's New Zealand. So he has taken possession

of it in the name of the Crown. So above Queen Charlotte Sound, which is at the very top of the

South Island, kind of facing the harbour of Wellington, facing the North Island. Cook has

built a can and he has hoisted the Union flag and he's taken formal possession of it. I mean,

not that any of the locals are listening. In the name of Queen Charlotte and of the King,

and for the use of his majesty, they've all drunk Queen Charlotte, that's George III's

wife's health. A local Maori, an old man has come with them and is the only person to watch

this ceremony. And they present him with the empty bottle. That's nice. And he apparently is

delighted with this gift, delighted with it, and goes back home with his trophy. They circumnavigate

both the islands, the North Island and the South Island. But they don't, I mean, whenever they land,

there's always complications, aren't there? They haven't had the kind of relationship at all that

they had on Tahiti. By the time they circumnavigated it, which is March 1770, they're all keen to get

on. Bank says the men began to sigh for roast beef, which is very 18th century conduct. And so now

they're going to set off and set their course westwards towards what they regard as New Holland.

Of course, they don't call it Australia then, because they think Australia is probably going

to be something else, don't they? They still think there might be another continent.

So they leave. It's a shame it wasn't called New Holland, really.

No, no, I think it's better as Australia. New Holland would be ghastly placed on.

We'd never hear the end of it from you. I'd love it.

Yeah, you and the real Tom Holland. So they leave New Zealand 31st of March, 1770.

Two years now, they've been away. And for two weeks, they sail. Then they see the first signs

of hints of land from the birds that are flying above them. So birds that stop in that sort of

perch in the rigging that they know must be land birds. And then on 19th of April, 1770,

a chap called Zachary Hicks climbs up in the rigging. He's always been very keen to be the

first to see land. And at six o'clock, he shouts out, land ahoy. And this is the moment that

was that lovely reading, wasn't it, Tom, at the very first episode. Cook recording in his journal

that they have finally spotted the eastern coastline of New Holland. And Cook's intention,

he will call it New South Wales. I think it's still unknown why South Wales. Do you know why

it was called South Wales? I mean, no offense to South Wales, but it's not the first part of

the British Isles that I'd named New Land after. Interestingly, and this will please

our Kiwi listeners and offend our Australian listeners. Cook says of Australia, visibly

worse than the last place we were at, which was, of course, New Zealand. That's great news for

New Zealanders, isn't it? It's not long before they start seeing signs of human habitation.

So they see smoke rising from fires. And then in due course, they go ashore because they need

wood, they need water and so on. And then they meet the Aboriginal inhabitants of Australia.

And what's amazing about them is, say, unlike the Maori, certainly unlike the Tahitians,

they show no interest whatsoever. So Cook writes, no one was once observed to stop and look

towards the ship. They pursued their way in all appearances, entirely unmoved by the

neighborhood of so remarkable an object as a ship must necessarily be to people who have never seen

one. And it's kind of expressive clearly of a determination on the part of the Aboriginal

inhabitants of Australia to have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with these peculiar

people who have turned up and started raising flags everywhere. So to use your Star Trek

Paranal, it's as though an alien spaceship descends on, you know, chipping Camden,

and the people just don't even carry on. They just carry on as though nothing had happened.

So when they finally arrive at what ends up being called Botany Bay,

so that's the 28th of April, 1770, they sail along the shore. They see people

stark naked spearfishing, doing their thing on the coast. Those people don't look up at them.

Cook anchors the ship. He goes inland and Banks describes how then they're quite close to some

hearts. And he says, soon after this, an old woman followed by three children came out of the wood.

She carried several pieces of stick and the children also had their little burdens.

She often looked at the ship and expressed neither surprise nor concern.

She lit a fire and four canoes came in from fishing. They landed, hauled up their canoes,

and began to dress their fish for dinner to all appearance, totally unmoved at us.

And Banks and Cook, who are so curious themselves about other people and other places,

are completely bewildered by this attitude from the Aboriginal Australians.

But of course, Banks does have other things to keep himself busy, namely all the flowers

that he finds in what can be called Botany Bay. And it has to be said that in general,

the naming of places by Cook in his expedition, I mean, they're terrible.

Poverty Bay.

Poverty Bay or West Bay, Ship Bay.

Cape farewell.

I mean, terrible names. But Botany Bay's an excellent name, isn't it?

Yeah, I think it's only about an excellent name because we're used to it. Don't you think?

No.

I mean, if one of Banks had been a historian, he'd called it History Bay.

Yeah, but there's no history, but there's loads of flowers. So Botany Bay's great, anyway.

There's no history. Tom, that is the cancellation remark. Finally.

No, no. I mean, there's no kind of evidence of history. Even though it's not like there's

a history museum or anything. But there's loads and loads of plants. So it's a Botany Bay. It's

not History Bay.

Well, anyway, they go ashore. The first man ashore is called Isaac Smith.

So Cook lets his wife's nephew be the first person to go ashore, which is nice. They go ashore.

And they do try to communicate with the Aboriginal Australians, but pretty unsuccessfully.

So they're throwing gifts of beads and nails. And the Aboriginal men throw rocks at them.

Yeah. So it's not going well.

Or indeed, in one case, some of the fellows throw a couple of spears.

And as so often the way Cook resorts to shooting muskets or small shot at them,

they collect some spears. They collect some artifacts.

Banks starts to get very interested in the local fauna, doesn't he? Because he finds the tracks

of what is probably a dingo. Is that right, Tom? Are you familiar with dingoes?

Yeah, we'll be coming to this. He does in Ducal Sea a dingo. But first they have to sail on their way

and so they head from Botany Bay northwards and they run into the Great Barrier Reef, don't they?

Oh, they get stuck.

They get stuck. That's a very Star Trek episode. Kind of like the Enterprise getting stuck in some...

That's a filler episode. You've run out of cash. Yeah, I've got the budget for more actors.

Yeah. They end up kind of ripping a hole in the ship and they have to go in and amend it.

And I mean, very, very... I mean, they come very close to complete disaster.

But while they are repairing their ship, they kind of establish better relations with the

Aboriginal peoples. So apparently the first time when a European learns the name of an Aboriginal

person is on this occasion and the Aboriginal person was called Yapariko, if the introductions

were properly understood. For the first time, they are kind of communicating. And famously,

you talked about animals. There is a conversation about a peculiar beast,

which Cook describes as the full size of a greyhound and shaped in every respect like one

with a long tail, which it carries like greyhound. In short, I should have taken it for a wild dog,

but for its walking or running in which it jumped like a hare or deer. That's Cook on

this strange animal. Banks describes it, to compare it to any European animal would be

impossible as it has not the least resemblance of any I have seen. And Cook and Banks are so

local Aboriginal people, well, what was this animal? And the Aboriginal person replies,

and this is the anglicisation of his reply, kangaroo. And so they Cook and Banks record

it as a kangaroo. Now, it's often said that Cook had misunderstood what was being said,

and that the Aboriginal person perhaps was saying, I don't know, what? Can't you speak in

my language or something like that. But apparently, so I'm quoting Nicholas Thomas here,

not only is kangaroo, in fact, a close transcription of the googie yimmy dea word,

but the endeavor voyage word list of some 60 terms is regarded by the most expert contemporary scholar

as generally accurate. So that's good. So apparently kangaroo really is a kangaroo.

That's good. And it's at this point that Banks sees a dingo, and he also sees a flying fox.

These first interactions with the local inhabitants, actually, the remarkable thing is that

when you read Cook and Banks' recollections, that spirit of curiosity, I would say is,

I mean, the condescension is always there. But it's much less pronounced than one might expect.

So this is about the first, that first dinner that they have with Aboriginal people, they

invite them for dinner and the Aboriginal people actually refuse. But Cook says,

their features were far from disagreeable, their eyes were lively, their teeth even and white,

their voices were soft and tunable. And they repeated many words after us with great facility.

Actually, he goes on to say, doesn't he? He thinks they have a tremendous life.

Yeah. So Cook says, from what I've said at the natives of New Holland, they may appear to some

to be the most wretched people upon Earth. But in reality, they are far more happy than we Europeans,

being wholly unacquainted, not only with the superfluous, but the necessary conveniences so

much sought after in Europe. They're happy in not knowing the use of them. They live in a tranquility

which is not disturbed by the inequality of condition. So again, that's the kind of the

Rousseau idea that this is the natural condition of happiness that humans have. And it's expressive,

I think, of a sense that Cook is groping towards that this is why they're not paying any attention

to the ships and the trinkets and the things that they're giving that they don't need them.

And that therefore this is the basis of their happiness.

Yeah, they cover not magnificent houses, household stuff, etc. They live in a warm and

fine climate and they enjoy a very wholesome air. So they have very little need of clothing.

And then they say, when we gave them cloth, they weren't bothered. They have no use for cloth.

And actually, Cook doesn't say this in a contemptuous way. He's fascinated by them.

No, he's admiring of it. Fascinated by them.

So Tom, they leave Australia on the, they leave the north tip of Australia about the 20th, 22nd

of August. And then where are they heading next?

They head off to Atavia, which I think is Jakarta. It's very, very rife with malaria. They all

fall terribly ill. And then they, they head off to Cape Town and they all get distant tree.

So this is very unfortunate because Cook has looked after his men so well, the whole journey.

And then I think kind of 30 or 40 men die of disease on that stage of the trip. But they

ran Cape Town, head up to England and they, they spot landsend on the 10th of July, 1771.

And they anchor off deal on the, on the 13th of July. And that's it, they're home.

They're back. So they are greeted with considerable approbation when they return.

Cook dines with Benjamin Franklin, dines with James Boswell, who is the, of course,

the biographer of Samuel Johnson, who is very impressed by the news of the kangaroo.

And Boswell records an extraordinary evening with Johnson,

where he impersonates a kangaroo. Nothing could be more ludicrous than the appearance of a tall,

heavy, grave-looking man like Dr. Johnson standing up to mimic the shape and motions of a kangaroo.

He stood erect, put out his hands like feelers and gathering up the tails of his huge broon

coot. So as to resemble the poach of the animal made two or three vigorous boons across the room.

So I love that. I love that image of Dr. Johnson bounding across the room.

He is, Cook is presented to the King by the First Lord of the Admiralty.

So that's Lord Sandwich, I think it is. Yeah, Lord Sandwich.

Considering Cook's background, this is amazing. But Dominic,

do you know the crew member that is garlanded with the greatest honour?

Is it by any chance, Tom Joseph Banks?

It's not Joseph Banks.

It's not. Well, who is it?

It's the goat.

Oh, God.

So the goat. The goat has now gone round the world twice.

It's the first goat ever to do that.

And it's lauded as the most famous goat in history and is garlanded with honours.

So the British government votes the goat a pension.

The Lords of the Admiralty give her the privileges of an in-pensioner of Greenwich Hospital.

And this is the only time that such an honour has ever been given,

not just to any goat, but to any animal full stop.

And the Royal Society give her a silver collar and she is put out into a lovely field

where she can sit there with her lovely collar, nibbling away and is very happy.

And Dr. Johnson, when in due course the goat dies,

Dr. Johnson writes a eulogy to her in Latin, but this is the translation.

In fame scare second to the nurse of Jo, this goat who twice the world have traversed around,

deserving both her master's care and love, ease and perpetual pasture now has found.

That's so moving. But Tom Theo, our producer,

is asking the key question that will occur to many of our listeners.

Is the goat referred to just as the goat or does it have a name?

It does have a name, but we don't know what it is. No one ever says.

Oh, no.

So it just has to be referred to as the goat.

Like David or George.

Very good.

I think that cheapens the memory of this heroic.

It does. It's a very unfair comparison.

Way fairing goat.

So Tom, Cook obviously has two more voyages to go.

And we will come to those, won't we?

We will come to those and we'll probably do them at some point next year.

And there are perhaps, I think it's fair to say, more ill-starred.

Certainly the third one is much more ill-starred than the first.

Very much more, yes.

The first is the one that is legendary because it is the first moment,

but it's the first moment that an Englishman has glimpsed the coasts of Australia and New Zealand

and set foot on Australia and New Zealand.

And of course, that will have incalculable long-term demographic and geopolitical consequences.

And this is the reason why Captain Cook is seen as an embodiment of the evils of colonialism.

Yes.

And why his statue...

Captain Crook, he's called.

Why his statue is controversial.

His statue in Hyde Park in Sydney, for example, is controversial to this day.

And yet the picture that emerges from these two episodes, I would say,

he's not N. N. Cortez.

He's not Cortez at all.

He is not a greedy man, a rapacious man.

And of course, he does raise the British flag over both those places, Australia and New Zealand,

and claim them for the crown, which some of our listeners may say,

oh, that's disgraceful behavior.

But his prime motivation is the thrill of curiosity.

And I know of discovery, isn't it?

Do you not think?

I suppose the thing is that he knows, and the Admiralty know,

that someone is going to claim it.

Some European power is going to claim it.

And so I guess his attitude might as well be Britain as anyone else.

Yeah, of course.

He's an advertisement.

I mean, of course, he's going to think that.

That's the 18th century cast of mind.

He sails up and then he moves on.

I mean, he's not planting colonies.

He's not leading armed expeditions into the interior.

And of course, it's not Cook who proposes that botany baby used as a convict settlement.

That is actually Joseph Banks who does that.

Yes.

Basically, Joseph Banks, even though he's, you know,

he never goes back to Australia and spends all his time in England.

And he's advised the British government on colonization policy in Australia.

So it's probably Banks rather than Cook that should be more in the firing line.

I think Cook comes out of these voyages very well.

Yeah, you've become a real Convert Cook, haven't you?

Marvin texted me about two weeks ago and said,

you found Captain Cook terribly boring and we're feeling very miserable.

I think he is quite boring.

I mean, as an individual, I think he is quite boring

because he keeps, you know, he's so kind of close.

But I think the scale of his achieve,

I mean, you just have to think yourself back into a world

where you don't know where you're going.

You have no real sense what's out there.

You are responsible for a ship full of men.

You have to negotiate with people that you have no real idea who they are,

what they are, what language they're speaking or anything.

I think in that context, the scale of his achievement is incredible.

Yeah.

His amount of science above all Cook, isn't he?

It's the amount of the Enlightenment.

I think that's the thing that is often missing.

But I think that he out-thinks the Enlightenment

and I think that's what's moving.

He comes to think outside the box of the Enlightenment sense of superiority

that a philosopher can accurately frame all the variety and multiplicity

of the world within a single system.

I think he starts to recognize that the European sense of a system

must be inadequate to embrace the complexities of what he's seeing.

And I think that that is what is moving about it.

His sense of how rich humanity is evolves over the course of his voyage.

So for our Australian and New Zealand listeners,

we will be with you in person.

The Cook and Banks of Temporary Podcasting.

The Cook and Banks of Podcasting will be with you in person in November.

Frankly, Tom, I cannot wait.

No, I can't wait either.

I absolutely cannot wait.

This very morning, Tom and I were discussing our trip,

our forthcoming trip to Hobbiton in New Zealand,

a place of which Captain Cook and Joseph Banks could never have dreamed.

But I'm sure they would have loved it.

So we will be with you listeners next week,

but we will be seeing some of you in New Zealand and Australia very, very soon,

actually in the flesh.

So we're looking forward to that hugely.

So thanks so much for listening to this.

And in all kinds of ways, we will be seeing you very soon.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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