Transcript

Let's begin this story on the 26th of August 1768; the day the HMB Endeavour set sail from England. At the helm was this man on his first voyage as captain of a ship. His name was James Cook. Unlike most captains of the Royal Navy, Cook came from a poor background growing up on a farm in Northern England. When he was 18, he got an apprenticeship on a ship and threw himself into the study of maths, navigation and astronomy; all skills he would need one day to become a captain. Eventually, he joined the navy where his knack for making incredibly accurate maps got the attention of many in power.

You see, by the 1700s Europeans had been mapping the globe for centuries, claiming land and resources as their own. Now, with better ships and technology than ever before, and a new desire for scientific knowledge, they were determined to conquer the world. So, when a special voyage was planned by the British government and Britain's most prestigious scientific institution. Cook's name came up.

The second most important person on the Endeavour was this young man. Joseph Banks. Unlike Cook, he grew up wealthy in London. He went to the best schools and inherited a great fortune. Banks' main love was botany, the study of flora, fauna and other living organisms in their natural environment. He paid for his own spot on the Endeavour along with a team of scientists and artists. He wanted the chance to travel to faraway lands and return with drawings, specimens and knowledge of new species that people in England had never imagined.

CAPTAIN COOK DIARY 26 AUGUST 1768: At 2pm we got under sail and put to sea, having on board 94 persons near 18 months' provisions and stores of all kinds.

So, where were they going? Well, the main aim of the voyage was to travel to Tahiti via the coast of South America. There, they'd observe a rare astronomical event that only happened every 120 years. The Transit of Venus. It's where the planet crosses between the Earth and the Sun and scientists figured that by studying it from different points on Earth, they could learn more about the size of our solar system. But then, there was another task. A secret task. Before sailing from England, Cook had been handed confidential instructions by the admiralty to open when he left Tahiti.

LETTER FROM THE BRITISH ADMIRALTY: There is reason to imagine that a continent or land of great extent, may be found to the southward. You are to proceed to the southward in order to make discovery of the continent.

You see, for centuries Europeans believed there was a big mass of land in the south to "balance out" the big mass of land they knew existed in the north. They called it Terra Australis Incognita or "unknown southern land" and now it was Cook's mission to find it.

With the help of a Tahitian priest and navigator named Tupaia, the Endeavour made its way to New Zealand or Aotearoa. Cook's first encounter with Maoris didn't go well and the crew shot and killed a number of people, but Tupaia helped to bring peace. Cook and Banks spent six months mapping the coasts of both islands proving they weren't part of Terra Australis Incognita.

They continued on and in April 1770 they spotted land again. This time it was the east coast of New Holland, as Australia was known to Europeans at the time. Though Indigenous people had been there for thousands of years, Europeans had never set foot on this side of the island before. And, like in New Zealand, the first encounters were often violent ones.

For the next couple of months, the Endeavour and crew sailed up to the tip of Queensland, mapping the coast and claiming the land for the King of England. At one point the ship was nearly lost when it ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef, but the crew spent weeks repairing it.

In 1771 the Endeavour finally arrived home again. It had been a long and difficult three-year voyage that had seen more than 30 men die, many from illness, including two scientists, an artist and Tupaia. Back in England, Banks quickly became famous with the first documented collection of Australian plant life. He also became a driving force behind the European colonisation of New South Wales in 1788. Captain Cook went on a second voyage in pursuit of that unknown southern land and ended up in Antarctica. His third voyage took him to Canada, Alaska and finally Hawaii, where he was killed in 1779.

All of the voyages had a lasting impact on the world, reshaping maps and changing the course of history. But it was that first voyage, the voyage of the Endeavour, that would be Captain Cook's enduring legacy.

End of transcript.