Captain Cook

I'm going to show you how great I am. This was our fighting power. I just want to say from the bottom of my heart, I'd like to take this chance to apologize to absolutely nobody. Hello and welcome to How to Take Over the World. This is Ben Wilson. Today we are talking about the great British captain and explorer James Cook. I think if I could trade places with anyone in history, James Cook is on the shortlist.

of people whose life that I most envy. What he was able to do just sounds so unbelievably fun and adventurous and exciting. He's widely considered the greatest sea explorer of all time. He mapped the Pacific Ocean from Australia and New Zealand up through the Polynesian Islands all the way up to the west coast of the United States, Canada, and Alaska. Many of these islands...

were already known to Europeans, although many of them were not mapped. But even so, many others were completely unknown to Europeans. Like, this is the closest you're going to get to exploring an alien planet. For example, the Hawaiian Islands. Just had never been visited by Europeans before. And so, yeah, it's just like a completely.

New place new culture new language new customs that he gets to see an experience and explore for the first time same with the Aboriginal Australians the Europeans had never had contact with them before I raised the comparison of exploring an alien planet

And this is because these areas would have been totally alien to him. It was Terra Incognita, just completely different world. And I'm not the first person to make this comparison. Actually, if you think about Star Trek, okay, the subject of this episode is James Cook. The captain in Star Trek is named James Kirk. Captain Cook ship was called the Endeavor. Captain Kirk ship is called the Enterprise.

The Star Trek mission is to explore new worlds, seek out new life and boldly go where no one has gone before. And that is reminiscent of exactly what James Cook was trying to do with his journeys. And this is not. coincidental this is intentional uh star trek the creators of star trek really admired james cook and used this as a template a model when they created star trek i'm not the first person to make this comparison

James Cook really was the closest thing we have to a real life Star Trek, you know, visiting, exploring all these completely new, adventurous, exciting places. And so I was interested in this story because. It is really interesting and exciting, but also because it's something I've been thinking a lot about recently is how does one live an adventurous life like this? How can we find excitement like someone like James Cook?

Because we live in a world with no unexplored corners, no unknown peoples. And I don't know if I have the answer. That's a really difficult one. But I do think in doing this episode, I came to some answers and I have some ideas. that I'll explore at the end of how we can live a life like this. Like, no, you can't set out to the high seas like James Cook did. But I think there is a way to capture a lot of the sense of thrill and adventure and excitement that he had in his life.

James Cook was also a great leader and a very accomplished man. He's worth studying for the leadership tactics that he used to keep his crew together and allowed him to accomplish so much. I should mention also that his life is not uncontroversial. During the madness of 2020 and all the riots that went on in the United States and all over the world, statues of James Cook were defaced and sometimes torn down in places like Australia. And that is because, you know.

setting aside some of the wider dynamics to some of the indigenous peoples of polynesia australia new zealand you know he's seen as a figure of colonization who brought violence and destruction to many Pacific islands. And so, yeah, I can understand if you were a native Hawaiian or Tongan, you might have ambivalent feelings about colonization in general.

and what happened to your island through that process. I get that. However, James Cook really is kind of a misplaced target for those feelings. He was very liberal minded. He had quite an affection for the native islanders of Polynesia. He sought to understand them on their own terms. He was often, though not always, lenient in terms of punishing natives for crimes such as theft.

He was just a very tolerant person in general, and his missions were always to explore and not to set up commercial enterprises or colonize in really any meaningful way. I do think it's stupid to just condemn and slur him as some sort of genocidal maniac when that wasn't who he was at all. However, again, he did kind of kick off.

this process of colonization that would follow. So on some level, I kind of understand maybe the feelings of ambivalence about him as a figure. And I also don't think it's illegitimate to talk about his treatment of native people. and where he succeeded and where he failed in part because cook himself was deeply concerned about it he was very self-reflective he often wrote and talked about his relationship with the natives what went well what went wrong what he could have done better

So that was something that he himself talked a lot about. So it's obviously not like a weird point of inquiry to ask, you know, what could have gone better. So for example. This is someone he never had sexual relations with any of the native islanders anywhere that he went. As far as I know, he never had sexual relations with anyone except for his wife. I was very faithful in that way. But. And he strongly discouraged his men.

from doing the same, from having relationships and contact with these women on these islands. However, he wasn't always successful. And when he visited these islands, inevitably through sexual contact with these sailors. venereal diseases were introduced to these islands for the first time. And so I get how you might have complicated feelings if you're a Polynesian of like, well, yeah, James Cook himself, not a bad guy, open, tolerant.

uh very understanding brilliant you know great man but what he represented what he brought with him was destructive in some ways and so you might not want to celebrate that but you know setting all that aside Just looking at James Cook, the man, he's an extraordinary man. Brilliant, daring, the things that he accomplished, the life that he lived was extremely exciting. So I'm excited to take a look at his life and what we can learn from it.

So let's jump into it. This is the life of James Cook. First, a brief word about Van Man. I love this company. I love this brand. They make all natural products. They make. lotion, deodorant, lip balm. I use a bunch of it. Like the thing I love about it is I've got right here. I'm not going to show you the brand, but I've got a lotion and it says it's natural. It's all natural. So, you know, you gotta love that.

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uh it's called martin it's in yorkshire in northeastern england his father is scottish so he's kind of half scottish half english he's born to a peasant family he does not come from means not aristocratic at all his dad is pretty smart And they live on the estate of a man who's a Quaker. OK, so Quakers are a religious minority in England and.

They're very interesting. The main thing to know about Quakers is they're very egalitarian and very liberal. And so this particular Quaker, his name is Thomas Scotto. And he's always looking for ways to kind of... raise up and educate the laborers, farm workers on his land. And so he identifies James Cook's father as a...

talented man who can use more opportunities. And pretty early on, he recognized that James Cook is a bright young boy. And so he gives him some basic schooling. And then when he is 16. He, you know, Mr. Scottow goes out of his way to get him an apprenticeship a few miles away in a seaside village where he works for a grocer and learns some basic accounting and is able to kind of learn business a little bit.

And so it's a nice advancement for for James Cook. He's like learning a trade, but he finds it lonely and dull. It's just him. He's the one tending the shop most of the time, no one his age. And so at nights, he starts wandering out from the shop and exploring the town a little bit. And again, it's a seaside town. It's got a little port and some ships. And so he starts striking up some friendships with the local sailors.

And this is the first time that James Cook hears the call of the sea. Eventually, you know, he makes friends with these sailors and they start liking him and he makes some acquaintances and friendships and he's able to get another apprenticeship, this time as a seaman. And so he enrolls in a local merchant Navy school where he once again excels in things like algebra, trigonometry, geometry, and navigation.

When he's on land, he's studying at this little naval school. And then most of the time he is going out to sea as a little teenage sailor. He's taking these coal ships from this little town. Because northern England is kind of coal country. And so he takes coal ships from this little town down to London. And his trips to London must have been his first glimpse at the wider world. Coming from these really small towns.

you go to london and you see goods and people from all over the world you know and you meet all these sailors right you're just coming from northern england but lots of sailors are coming from India and the Americas and the West Indies and the East Indies and Africa and all over. And they're telling him all these stories. And so he's getting this curiosity and this thirst to see the world and explore.

One of the things that distinguishes him both when he's a teenager and throughout his life are his curiosity. He's always pestering his master. He's an apprentice, right? So he's got this master and most apprentices. And most kind of teenage sailors, they're just trying to do their job, right? But not James Cook. He's always pestering his master, asking him questions, you know, oh.

What are you doing over here? Why are you doing it this way? So that he can learn more and really become a master of his craft at sailing. So that's probably the first defining attribute of James Cook is his curiosity. He's a very curious person. Over the coming years, he completes his journey to be an able seaman. So that just means he's not an apprentice anymore. He's a fully capable sailor who can work independently. And he starts making journeys on trade ships to mainland Europe.

And so at age 27, you know, he's got this curious mind. He's learning so fast that he advances really quickly. And at 27, he's offered command of his own trade chip, which is a very young age. to be commanding your own ship, 27. But like I said, he has this thirst to see the world and explore. And so he takes a major demotion in order to serve in the Royal Navy.

Now, remember, Cook does not have an aristocratic background. Far from it. So he's not an officer. He's just a seaman, a sailor, and he doesn't have the ability to become an officer. However. Sailors are a raucous, rowdy crowd. They're not really known for their intellectual capabilities and so he is able to quickly distinguish himself as someone who is is quick is smart is industrious is hard-working like

You don't get a lot of those types, frankly, amongst a crowd of sailors. And so he's quickly able to rise through the ranks in the Royal Navy. the british are at war with the french at this time and so james cook sees some combat against a few french ships engagements which his ship wins and in which cook distinguishes himself for his calm and efficient command again he's not an officer

But he's sort of a NCO, non-commissioned officer. Like he does have command over other sailors, but he does not have any command over any other officers. And so with this kind of command over other sailors, he distinguishes himself as someone who is... cool under pressure and carries things out very efficiently, competently, like does the job right. So, you know, he's patrolling in the Atlantic.

going down to France, fighting friendships. He eventually gets sent to Canada where the British are invading the French province of Quebec. And he serves a capable but secondary role in the invasion, helping to plan some landings against the French fort there. The British take the fort and then they winter there. And so there's not much to do.

During the winter, no one really wants to fight. So all these sailors are just living on their ships, coming ashore sometimes. Most of the sailors, frankly, are drinking to pass the winter and visiting prostitutes on land. But James Cook is finding more beneficial uses for his time. So he finds a young junior officer named Holland who is preparing for further action in the spring.

by systematically charting the coasts and shoals and reefs of this area of Quebec. And he's doing this using new state of the art equipment, surveying technology and. This sort of surveying technology had long been used on land, but no one had tried to use it from ships yet. And so you have very accurate maps on the land, but not so much on sea. So he's trying to remedy that.

Get very accurate measurements of what these coasts actually look like. And that's going to be very useful for knowing, you know, where ships can go, how deep is... is the ocean, these various places, you know, which ships can get where this kind of stuff is gonna be very helpful in an invasion. And James Cook recognizes this immediately and is very attracted to this. And so he starts working with this guy, Holland.

to survey and map out these coasts. So he's doing very valuable work, maybe not the most glamorous work. However, he does get one... moment of glamour and heroism, which is he's on this surveying boat. So it's kind of out ahead of the other ships going forward. and mapping stuff out before the other ships come down river uh they're going down a river in quebec and um the french send some fire boats so these are just boats

That's exactly what it sounds like, right? They drench them in flammable material and liquids, and then they light them on fire and just kind of shove them. towards the British fleet, hoping that they will crash into British ships and and catch them on fire. And so, you know, as the surveying boat, he's in charge of these surveying boats. Again, he's not an officer, but.

They're just little serving boats. So he's in charge and he's able to use these little serving boats, not not ships of war to divert the fire ships. And so he receives some recognition for that. He's kind of a war hero for his job in diverting these fire ships. So he does this for a few seasons in Canada.

He goes back to England a few times during one of those times he gets married. And then on another trip back home, he's showing people at the Admiralty, you know, basically naval command for the British Navy. hey, look at these maps I've made and look how useful they are. Look what we're doing with them. And they're very impressed. And so I say, okay, well, you know, we really need to enable this guy to do even more. And so they outfit him with a ship, an actual ship.

a frigate instead of just these little boats that he had been using before. And so, yeah, they, they commissioned him. He has made the captain of a ship again. A very rare honor, right? He's not a gentleman. He's not supposed to be eligible to even be an officer, let alone a captain. I guess technically he's not a captain. He is a lieutenant, but he's essentially acting like a captain. He is given full command. of a ship so this is a huge promotion it would have been a scandal if it wasn't

James Cook, you know, he's he's making a reputation for himself as someone very innovative and and very smart. Again, this is a very, you know, extremely rare honor. for a non-gentleman to be able to become an officer. He only gets this opportunity because he's doing this different thing of surveying these coasts. And so it goes to this point of you want to be different. You want to be unique. Yes.

If you're talented and you want to rise quickly, it's better to be in charge of a small team where you can demonstrate real results rather than just to be a cog. Even if it's in maybe a more prestigious organization within your company, right? This goes back to Horatio Nelson, another great British sailor. He used this to great effect. So...

Rather than taking subordinate positions on bigger ships, which is what everyone did, right? It's like, oh, if you can get on a first rate ship, then that's exactly what you want to do. But he took positions on smaller ships, on little frigates. Because he would rather be in charge and be able to show what he can do and demonstrate his value as someone who's actually in charge and has an opportunity to demonstrate results rather than just being a part of a bigger machine. So anyways.

If you want to rise quickly, that's what you want to do. Find those places where you can actually be in charge, demonstrate results. So he does this for a few years. And during one of those years. He is a scientifically minded, quantitative person, and he observes an eclipse. And so he takes careful notes and observations and writes down notes on this eclipse.

And these notes make their way back to the Admiralty, back to scientific circles in England. And so people say, okay, this is someone who is very smart and capable and is scientific minded and is... oriented towards discoveries okay why is that important because there is a plan by the royal society which is a preeminent scientific organization of the time and there is a plan to send a ship to tahiti

in the Pacific Ocean to observe the transit of Venus. That is, you know, Venus, they can tell that Venus during this time on this particular day is going to cross in front of the sun. So the transit of Venus means. And so what they want to do is send different scientists to different parts of the world to observe the transit of Venus from different vantage points.

for all of them to carefully note down where exactly it crosses the sun and when exactly it does. And that's going to enable them to calculate the exact distance. that venus is from the earth and therefore the exact distance that the sun is from the earth so this is a collaborative effort between the royal society and the royal navy and so a deal is struck

that this voyage to observe the transit of Venus will also explore the South Pacific. In particular, they're going to look for the continent of Terra Australis. So that is this assumption. If you look at the northern hemisphere, you've got this huge mega continent, right, which is Europe, Asia and Africa. They're all connected. And Africa is mostly in the northern hemisphere.

Only a little bit of southern hemisphere. Same is true of Asia. Vast majority of it is in the northern hemisphere. And so by the thinking of the time, they think. Well, then the same must be true of. Like there must be an equivalently large continent in the southern hemisphere to balance it out. And we know that's not South America. South America is pretty small. It's not even as big as North America. And so they're looking for this giant southern continent.

And they think, you know, it's probably rich and there's lots of opportunities there. So they want to combine these missions. Okay, we'll send someone to Tahiti to observe. The transit of Venus and at the same time they can explore the Pacific Ocean and look for this this lost continent Terra Australis and so as they are looking for the right person to lead this mission. James Cook is the obvious man for the job because he's very capable. He's got a proven track record of charting.

foreign territory that he's done in Canada and of making scientific observations. So he combines all the things that they need into one person. So he's given a ship. It's called the Endeavor and he's outfitted with a crew. both a sailing crew from the Royal Navy, as well as a scientific crew from the Royal Society. The chief scientist was named Joseph Banks. And Joseph Banks is sort of the opposite of Captain Cook in many ways.

Cook was kind of unassuming, gangly. He was plain, you know, not the most handsome guy. He was temperate and methodical, right? Very calm, you know. X, Y, Z, A, B, C, go through all the steps. Not like a... A romantic figure, which is exactly what Joseph Banks was. He was aristocratic. He was handsome. He was daring. He was a womanizer.

He was, you know, the things they had in common, they were both very tall and they were both extremely intelligent. You know, Banks is this really brilliant scientist. But, you know, when they go to these islands, as I mentioned previously, Cook will never sleep with the women. banks has has no compunctions you know he is there

For scientific inquiry, yes, he loves science. He loves learning new things. He loves discovery, but he also loves new experiences and having a good time. So they're very different people, but it would be. this remarkable partnership of opposites combining to accomplish unbelievable things together. Before we keep going, I want to talk about this. If you're not watching YouTube, this is...

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Okay, so on this first journey, again, they're going to Tahiti. So they set off, they stop briefly in Madeira, just some islands out in the Atlantic, and then they start going westward. It's interesting, one of the first things you read about James Cook. is that he takes Machiavelli's advice and he punishes very severely very early to establish that he's in command, he has expectations that must be met, and that keeps him from needing to punish very often.

going forward so from the book discoveries by nicholas thomas he writes if he had a problem One of his solutions was to make his command visible. He made discipline tangible by flogging men. The report is pretty bald. On the fourth day, he punished Henry Stephen Seaman and Thos Dunster Marine with 12 lashes each.

for refusing to take their allowance of fresh beef. Thomas goes on later to say how the Endeavour seamen and officers regarded their captain at this particular time is something that can only be guessed at. The very sparse indications and the lack of any suggestion in various logs that the commander was harsh or overbearing make it seem that if Cook was a literal man and one legally obliged to be an autocrat, he saw the need to be a benign one. Okay, so.

He punishes pretty harshly at the beginning, but not extravagantly so. He's not going out of his way. He's just saying, I'm going to enforce the rules as they are. There's not going to be any leniency, especially not early on. So this isn't abnormal. on a British ship, and it's not a big deal. Cook is stern and exacting, but he's not like a glutton for punishment. So after this minor incident, they continue west. They round Cape Horn.

go around the southern tip of South America. They stopped briefly at that very southern tip in Tierra del Fuego. So that is the islands right off the southern tip of Argentina. And this is their first moment of exploration. the natives of these islands in Tierra del Fuego had never encountered Europeans before. And so they come ashore, they meet these people, they make some friendly contact. Joseph Banks, again, that's the head scientist. He sets off inland.

for a bit to explore and try to learn more about these people. And when he and the people he brings with him, which is not the whole ship, it's just a small group. When they go to do this, they get caught by a sudden surprise snowstorm. And a couple of people actually tragically die. So, you know, that's not a great way to start the journey, but.

I mean, if you're thinking about this like Star Trek, right? If we're in the James Cook movie, this is great. I mean, they're already exploring new lands. Going places that no one from Europe has ever gone before. And they're meeting these new people. And yes, it's dangerous. People are already dead. But it must have been incredibly exciting at the same time. Here is how Cook.

describes these people who have never been encountered by Europeans before. Quote, they are something above the middle size of a dark copper color with long black hair. They paint their bodies in streaks, mostly red and black. Their clothing consists wholly. of a guanacoa skin or that of a seal in the same form as it came from the animal's back.

And women wear a piece of skin over their privy parts, but the men observe no such decency. Their huts are made like a beehive and open on one side where they have their fire. They have no boats that we saw where anything goes upon the water. The number does not exceed 50 to 60 young and old. And there are fewer women than men. Um, so anyway, like, I don't know. It's just, it's just so fun and exciting to think about.

meeting new people for the first time and cataloging, okay, what do they eat? What do they wear? How many of them are there? What do they look like? What's their hair color? What's their skin color? Like, I don't know. I just...

It seems very exciting. There's one other incident that I think demonstrates kind of what this would have been like for him and uh they have these three hosh men that's the name of the local tribe these people they're encountering the hosh and so they get these three hosh men and they bring them on board the ship they're not just

trying to observe but they're like hey you know this is this cool moment of cultural contact and they say do you want to like check out our thing you want to see our ship and these guys come on board and here's uh here's a report This is again from the same biography quote. Banks notes that one of the three men who came on board the ship seemed to be a priest or conjurer.

Or at least we thought him to be one by the noises he made, possibly exercising every part of the ship he came into. For when anything new caught his attention, he shouted as loud as he could for some minutes, without directing his speech either to us or to any one of his countrymen. Modern knowledge of the varied activities of the several kinds of Haas shamans is limited.

but it is entirely possible that ritual formulae were being pronounced and that some pollution or spiritual threat was being dispelled. Banks registers, however superficially and hesitantly, something that was real and dynamic in an indigenous cosmology. All right. So again, like, I don't know. Just imagine what that's like. New area, new territory, new people. And now they're coming on board.

And one of them is a shaman and he is like casting out spirits from every part of your ship. Again, it just must have been incredibly cool and exciting to witness if you remember of this expedition. So they stop in Tierra del Fuego in mid-January. They leave on January 17th and they sail for a few months and then make it to Tahiti on April 13th. Tahiti is not unknown.

They've had some limited contact with Europeans, so the Endeavor knows what to expect a little bit, a very little bit, and the Teetians know what to expect a little bit from Europeans. So... They arrive. And again, like if you go to Tahiti now, it feels like a paradise. You know, if you go to Hawaii or if you've been to any Polynesian island, you know what that feels like. And it's incredible.

Can you imagine what it must have felt like in the mid 1700s? These guys are from England and they show up and it's warm. The landscape is picturesque. A party goes ashore. And the local Tahitians give them banana or plantain leaves as an emblem of peace. And they give them gifts of beads to the Tahitians. And, you know, immediately the relations are relatively friendly.

between the tahitians and the endeavor so like man again like these places are paradises now but if you think about them back then when it's totally unexplored not totally again tahiti not totally unexplored but um Certainly like only maybe a couple dozen people from Europe have ever seen this place. And it just must have been even more of a paradise. Again.

Establish friendly relations. Banks writes that quote, in short, the scene we saw was the truest picture of an Arcadia of which we were going to be kings that the imagination can form. Okay. So these people are just like. This place is perfect. Arcadia means just like a primitive utopia, right? Completely unspoiled by anyone else. And you hear in there, he says, we're going to be kings of this place.

They can already sense that, yeah, this is a place that they're really going to be able to enjoy. Part of the allure, again, was sexual, sexual contact between sailors and native women. was, well, quickly would become quite common. It proved to be an enduring problem for Cook. Always trying to tamp down on it. But...

he's unsuccessful in that for a number of reasons. One is, I mean, people are attracted to exoticism and that goes both ways, you know? So these sailors are into these native women. A lot of the native women are into the sailors, you know? These are people from a new cool land, and that goes both ways. There's also a lot of prostitution, especially eventually. Why? Well, essentially...

these, you're, well, both, both people, the Europeans have a lot that is very valuable to, uh, to the Tahitians because they have metal, which the Haitians don't have. And. Even very small amounts of metal can be very valuable to a society that doesn't have it. And they've got guns. I mean, they don't trade guns so much, but they've got...

various provisions and materials and technology that decisions don't have. And, um, and so often they will trade that for sex. So it's very hard to stop this from happening. And cook is not very successful in stopping it from happening. Sexual contact and venereal disease is not the only problem. Again, I mentioned that the Europeans have all this valuable stuff. And basically from the first moments they arrive, the Tahitians begin stealing from the endeavor.

And this creates conflict. Captain Cook, you can't just let this happen. He doesn't want to antagonize the Tahitians. It's very... complex, right? How do we stop this from happening without antagonizing them? Especially because like

There's nothing you can do to totally cut it out. When you have something that close that's that valuable to that many people, like, yeah, they're just going to keep trying to steal it. And they do. Every Polynesian island they go to, basically, the entire time they're there, people are trying to steal from them. So at one point, this constant looting leads to an incident where a native Tahitian knocks over a sentry who's standing guard and grabs his musket. Again, imagine for a society...

frequently has conflicts and wars, how valuable a musket must be. So he grabs this musket, and the officer in charge orders the other guards, the other sentries, to fire, and they shoot and kill this Tahitian man. And they wound a couple of others. And so they killed this guy, but they want to explain that like, shoot, we didn't we didn't want to do this. Like, we're not mad at you guys now. They want to smooth things over.

And so they basically kidnap a few Tahitians. That's their answer for how to smooth things over. Bring them on board because these decisions are scared now. They're running away like you guys are killing us. They grab a few, bring them on board and sit them down and really try and explain. No, you know, we want to be friends. Quote, that the man who suffered was guilty of a crime deserving of death, for so we were forced to make it. We retired to the ship.

not well pleased with the day's expedition, guilty, no doubt, in some measure of the death of a man who the most severe laws of equity would not have condemned to so severe a punishment. So that's a quote from James Cook. And he's basically saying like,

We have to explain this to these people, but we know that like really no laws would have condemned this man to death. So we know this wasn't really a just killing. This is what I'm talking about. James Cook is thinking about this stuff and it's complex for him. So anyways. They have these incidents. A few people do die. This guy's not the only one. But overall, relations with the Tahitians are pretty good. By the way, just one other incident that I think illustrates an important element.

of Captain Cook's character. I'll just read this one again. Quote, the ship's butcher, Henry Jeffs, violently threatened a woman called Tomio or Tomayo, a relative by marriage.

of that's that's a chieftain after she refused to give him a stone axe for a nail her husband complained to banks banks promised that the man would be flogged as he indeed was on cook's instructions on april 29th before the offended people okay so this butcher offends this woman and captain cook has him flogged so that's you know whipped essentially in front of these tahitians

who he has offended. The Tahitians, I'm quoting again, the Tahitians were horrified by the procedure. Jess was stripped, bound to the rigging, and then lashed and interceded for the man as soon as it had begun. But Cook insisted on completing the punishment. it was not his style to do things by halves okay i really like that last line it was not his style

to do things by halves. It reminds me of the line from Machiavelli who wrote, the Romans always avoided a middle course of action and turned to extreme measures. Weak states are always ambiguous in their decisions. Okay, so Cook was more like the Romans. He always avoided that middle course of action and turned to extreme measures. And he was never ambiguous in his decisions. He never did things by halves. And once he started something.

He always saw it through to the very end. Okay. So this is the general picture of things on Tahiti. One moment, it's incredibly warm. The next, it can be... hostile and marked by mutual suspicion, misunderstandings. That's just to be expected, right? With two completely new peoples who are trying to figure each other out. I think, you know, they have things to do and they're doing them, but also.

There's a lot of downtime and these European sailors, these British sailors on the Endeavour are really enjoying themselves. They even get to, for the first time, Europeans witness people surfing. which they can't believe. They're totally in awe. Joseph Banks writes about this incident where they first see Tahitian surfing, quote, we stood admiring this very wonderful scene for full half an hour. So for just half an hour.

They're distracted from their work and they are just watching these people surf. On June 3rd, so they've been there for a couple months, the fateful day comes of the transit of Venus. Remember, this is the reason that they're there. And so they choose a location to observe the transit of Venus. And it's a good day for it. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. Just a perfect clear day for observation. Nevertheless, like it seems like based on the weather, it should be good observation, but it's not.

Cook writes, quote, there was an atmosphere or dusky shade around the body of the planet that very much disturbed the times of the contrast, particularly the two internal ones. Dr. Solender observed as well as Mr. Green and myself, and we differed from one another in observing the times of the contacts much more than could be expected. All right. So...

It's not a clear observation for whatever reason. And this would turn out to be the case all over the world. In fact, these observations of the transit of Venus rendered no usable data whatsoever on the distance of Venus from the Earth and therefore on the distance of the sun. So. We don't know what Cook was feeling. He doesn't write it down. I imagine he must have at least been somewhat disappointed. But, you know, his journal barely mentions it. So I think on some level.

Maybe he was excited that it was just over because now this means that he can continue on his voyage and explore, which I think was his primary passion. The reason he did all this is to explore new territories, go where no man has gone before. But before moving on from Tahiti, they do take a little more time to really chart it out, sail around the island, and carefully map.

the islands and their coasts and all that, which is what Cook does, right? He's a real pro at that. And then they also do a little bit more anthropology of exploring Tahitian culture. They're able to participate in some ceremonies. For example, Joseph Banks participates in a funeral and he strips down to a loincloth. Again, this is an English aristocrat and he's.

wearing nothing but a loincloth. He has his body covered in ashes and he walks with a morning party. And the way they mourn is they follow this path and anyone they come upon, you know, they're mad, they're mourning. They take clubs and sticks and they chase away anyone who they happen upon. And they're not like really hurting anyone, but they might whack you a couple of times. Say, get away from this funeral. You know, I don't know. But.

Again, this is just this amazing scene to me of this proper English gentleman, basically naked, painted in ash, and chasing native Polynesians around. With this this unary group like he's a member of the group like it's an amazing moment of cross-cultural understanding and And yeah, just like

What a cool experience that he was able to have. I just, I would have loved to trade places with him and be experiencing this for the first time. You know, one of the other things that people comment on is especially Cook and Banks is.

the quality of Polynesian canoes. And they're called, we call them canoes, but that's maybe a little bit of a misnomer because for larger trading ships, Polynesia still had contact with other islands. And so these... canoes are capable of going hundreds of miles from island to island and they are quite technologically sophisticated yes polynesia was a stone age civilization so

No metal, no gunpowder, no mathematics, no written language. But at least in terms of navigation and in terms of boat construction, these are. are very well crafted and someone like banks someone like cook is able to appreciate them as such okay the last incident they have in tahiti and this is an important one is

They're getting ready to leave. They've made all their observations. They've made all their measurements. They're now ready to go. Let's go find Tara Australis. Let's leave Tahiti. Okay. Cook is... You know, going through the manifest and checking that everyone's on board and they realize that they are missing two sailors and the two sailors have deserted. They have taken Tahitian wives and they're like.

Have you seen Tahiti? We're not leaving Tahiti. We're staying. We've got our Tahitian wives. They're super hot. The climate is great. This place is beautiful. We're never leaving. And Cook needs the men. Both because... He can't lose these two sailors like he needs his crew. But also, I mean, these are not the only guys to realize that this is paradise. And so if these two sailors are able to leave and desert and stay here.

then how many are going to desert at the next island, right? You can't set this precedent. And so Cook says, okay, we have to find a way to get these guys back. This is disastrous if we let them stay. So here is the plan that Captain Cook arrives at. Maybe not the best plan, but well, okay. So they have a fort. They're not just all staying on the Endeavor. They had built this fort.

and they have not completely taken down the fort they're getting ready to leave they haven't left yet and in this fort there are a number of tahitians who are there to talk and to trade and whatever there's a lot of contact between the two peoples right and so um Captain Cook takes a half dozen. I think it's actually eight. Yeah, it's eight nobles who happened to be in the fort at that time. And he kidnaps him. He takes him prisoner.

And he says to the Tahitians, I'm not releasing these people until you return my sailors to me. The sailors say, okay. Well, two can play this game and they take a bunch of prisoners and say, we won't release them until Captain Cook releases his prisoners. Anyways, so eventually the situation is diffused.

And Cook gets his men back. These two sailors, they have to come back on board the Endeavor. It's greatly damaging to relations with the Tahitians, which Banks laments. He's like, I can't believe you did this. These people are never going to trust us again. But Cook basically takes the attitude, this was completely necessary. This got us our sailors back. I don't know there's any other way that we would have got them back.

And who knows how many people deserted the whole mission might have failed if I didn't get these people back. So, you know, bad move, good move. I mean, who knows? It worked and it was cook style to. you know he he actually he really respected the natives he he tried to not interfere with them whenever possible but if anything endangered the mission he was going to go to extreme measures do whatever it took to make sure that that mission was accomplished

That's what he does here. Okay. So with these two guys now back on board, they set off again. And by the way, they not only get their sailors back, but they have actually picked up a new crew member. He's a Tahitian nobleman named Tupaya. And he would render really crucial service in navigation, translation. You know, this is someone who has navigated these Polynesian islands before and knows where to go, how to get there.

the best way to navigate. And he speaks the language and he knows Polynesian culture, religion, politics. He's going to help them avoid a lot of the pitfalls of the things they might do that would offend the locals, things like that. So they're setting off for New Zealand, which is already known to exist. And they do, they make it to New Zealand and their reception there is very different from Tahiti. The locals there are called the Maori.

And the Maori are immediately hostile. When they see the Endeavor land, they run off and then they come back and attack the landing party. And one Maori is shot and killed. So. They're very, they have a very martial society. They're very aggressive. But relations do eventually improve somewhat in large part, thanks to Tupaya.

who is able to make himself understood quite easily. So actually, luckily, Maori and Tahitian are two of the languages in the Polynesian family that are most closely related. And so they're mutually intelligible. in a lot of ways. And that's because the Maori had alive arrived in New Zealand relatively recently, only in the year 1300, and they had come directly from the area around Tahiti.

That's why the languages are so closely related. And Toupe is able to make himself understood quite easily. I still think actually it's not really remarked upon because no one else was able to appreciate it. But he must have been doing some... Clever translating at the same time, like the languages are closely related, but they're not the same. And so the fact that he's able to communicate so well to me shows that he must have been quite clever to be able to in real time figure out.

these linguistic differences and make himself understood. Anyways, Toupe is able to help and yeah, and they established good relations with the Maori. A lot of the same stuff as Tahiti, sexual contact. trade conflict understanding alliances violence the whole the whole thing kind of uh kind of replace they also you know one of the things that they do kind of everywhere they go which is interesting is that

Their mission is sort of colonize. They're not actually trying to set up colonies. But what they are trying to do is get ahead of any other European claims. on any of these islands. And so what they do, it's interesting, they try and make some friendships, they make some friendships, they find a local king who they can get along with and they'll just set up a British flag, plant it in the ground, make sure it's somewhere high and visible.

and then say hey can you do us a favor and just make sure we'll pay a little bit money make sure that no one ever takes down this flag and so they say all right and um and cook admits that like They're kind of claiming the land, but no one really knows of the locals that they're claiming the land. And, you know, it's not a claim that's going to be able to stand or have any validity. Like if they had returned and said.

we own this land the maori would have been like huh what we never agreed to that and cook knows that he's not trying to claim more than is real, but he is trying to get ahead of other European claims by setting up these flags. Okay, so they have set up claims in Tahiti, now in New Zealand. The main purpose in New Zealand is to find out, is this...

Terra Australis is a vast continent or is this an island? So they sail around the island and they prove that New Zealand is actually two islands and not a continent. Okay. So they prove that it's an island. Then they go south. And on March 31st, 1770, he writes that he, quote, must be allowed to have set aside the most, if not all.

the arguments and proofs that have been advanced by different authors to prove that there must be a southern continent. I mean to the northward of 40 degrees south, for what may lie to the southward of that latitude I know not. So in other words, A. I can prove there's no vast continent north of 40 degrees south. Down in the ice, like who knows, but it doesn't really matter, right? There's not anything we'd be able to do with it anyways. So he feels like he's proven to satisfaction.

that there's not a vast continent in this area. So they explore, they prove New Zealand is just islands. Then they set off west again, where they run into Australia. At the time, it was called New Holland. It was already known to exist. Europeans had explored the western side and the northern side of Australia, but the eastern side, which is the most populous side now.

where you have all the major Australian cities, was not explored. And so they go up the coast of Australia and explore it and chart it out and find the harbors. make contact with the locals to them the most unique interesting thing is in both tahiti and new zealand when locals saw their their ship they were very curious about it

You know, some of them were scared, some more aggressive, but all of them had a reaction in Australia. The natives just ignore it like they can see these people not very far away on on the shore and they're hunting. They're doing various things and they just take no notice. They don't care about the ship. When they do actually land, the people are extremely frightened. They think that they are dead ancestors.

they've never seen people with skin this white um or dressed in the way the way they are with with the technology and tools they have they just find them Very odd and strange. And yeah, they assume that they are dead ancestors. They're ghosts. And so they threaten them with spears and flee inland whenever the crew of the Endeavor approached them.

They go so far as to abandon villages. This is how badly they don't want to encounter these ghosts. But they observe. They stay just on the edge observing these Europeans, kind of looking from the bushes with their spears. They don't engage them. They don't attack them. Anytime the Europeans come close to them... They retreat, they run away. So the Endeavor lands at what is now called Botany Bay for a week.

And in this entire time, they're never able to establish steady contact with the aboriginals. They maybe exchange a few words, talk to a couple kids, but they can't get regular contact like they do in Polynesia. But they do explore the area. They take some local samples of plants and animals. They make observations. They collect water, wood, and other supplies. And this is in the area, Botany Bay, where they are, is in Sydney, Australia.

Now, so one of the richest, most fertile, most ideal places in Australia. So they stay there for a week and then they continue on. They continue exploring the Australian coast. And then eventually. They are sailing in what they think is deep water when they encounter every sailor's worst nightmare. Okay, reading now from the Nicholas Thomas biography. Cook did not know it. but he was well inside the Great Barrier Reef, in effect, in a potentially fatal maze.

As it approached 11 p.m. on the evening of Monday, June 11th, the ship was moving slowly through water that seemed to be nearly two fathoms deep, and the man responsible for sounding was about to cast his lead in line again when the endeavor struck and stuck fast. Banks was just getting warm in his bed when he heard the news, implying that he had not felt it, that the initial impact cannot have been palpable, though moments later he was convinced he says,

by the ship beating very violently against the rocks. The situation was terrifying because, as Banks correctly presumed, we were upon sunken coral rocks, the most dreadful of all others. on account of their sharp points and grinding quality, which cut through a ship's bottom almost immediately. What made matters worse was they had been sailing away from the shore for some hours. Where the ship lost, reaching the land in small boats would take many long hours.

It was dark, though not so dark that boards broken away from the hole could not be seen, floating thick around the ship, which was repeatedly lifted and dropped and smashed against the reef. Banks found it hard to keep his footing on the quarter deck and was in a state of great alarm, thinking not just of the ship breaking up, of water in his lungs and death by drowning, but of the bloody loss, the loss of his specimens and curiosities.

of a greater haul of new plants, birds, fish, and Indian things than any other mortal had had chance to acquire. He might have thought too of the loss to Europe of Tahiti as a place and culture known a lot better. of the loss of the measurements of the transit of Venus, of the loss of lists of Maori words and drawings of Maori canoes.

If men work now to save their lives a great deal more than men would have gone down with the endeavor. A set of findings would have been unfound. A set of histories that for better or worse were just beginning would have come to a premature conclusion. Okay. Luckily, they are able to save the ship. They have to bail water and use an innovative new technique to temporarily plug the leak. And then they limp to the Australian coast where they're delayed for seven weeks while they repair the ship.

During the seven week stay, they finally are able to make enough contact to actually get to know the Aboriginal Australians and learn a few words, including kangaroo. There is this rumor that you might have heard. That kangaroo means, what did you say? So the legend is that Captain Cook lands and they're trying to talk with the aboriginals.

And they say, what is this thing? And Aboriginals don't hear them clearly and say, kangaroo, what did you say? And so the word for what did you say becomes kangaroo. Okay, that's the legend anyways. It's not true. Actually, they got the word quite correctly. Kangaroo is quite close to the Aboriginal word for kangaroo. And to me, that demonstrates like people want to.

cast doubt on these early explorers and make them seem so primitive compared to our own day. But you know what? Their science was pretty good. And they were men of rigor. They were intelligent men who were doing a pretty good job.

And in fact, they get a list of about 60 or 70 Aboriginal words before they move on. And now is the passing of time. Of course, we have a much better understanding of... aboriginal language and those words are all quite accurate so they did a a good job of of understanding their language in a very short amount of time anyway

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making more important observations and measurements. For example, they demonstrate that New Guinea, this big island, is not connected to Australia. It's important geographic discovery for Europe. Almost everywhere they go, Cook makes important geographic discoveries and measurements almost as like a matter of habit. He can't help himself. He's just constantly observing, putting things together, making maps.

taking measurements everywhere he goes. It reminds me of a Paul Graham essay. Paul Graham is this great venture capitalist, early figure in Silicon Valley. He wrote an essay called Start. And he's writing about rules for starting a startup. And he talks about who you should hire. And he writes, one of the best tricks I learned during our startup was a rule for deciding who to hire. Could you describe the person as an animal?

It might be hard to translate that into another language, but I think everyone in the US knows what it means. It means someone who takes their work a little too seriously. Someone who does what they do so well that they pass right through professional and cross over into obsessive.

If you think about people you know, you'll find the animal test is easy to apply. Call the person's image to your mind and imagine the sentence, so-and-so is an animal. If you laugh, they're not. You don't need or perhaps even want this quality in big companies. but you need it in a startup. Okay. So I like that, right? Could you describe this person as an animal? And I would just add one corollary. Okay. One slight modification, which is, um,

I wouldn't say that you would apply the word animal to James Cook. But what I would say you could call him is he's a machine. I think that's another good question. Can you describe this person as a machine?

without laughing. And absolutely, you can describe James Cook as a machine, right? The force of habit, the consistency, the single-mindedness. When it came to making discoveries at sea, Captain Cook was absolutely... machine let me just imagine you have done this year-long grueling journey exploring all these foreign lands a half dozen people have died

Your ship was recently carved up by a coral reef. You're just limping along. Provisions are low. And now for the first time, you are entering more or less what is the known world to Europeans. Okay. There are especially Dutch trading posts in New Guinea. And so for the first time, like maybe if you want to, you could let your hair down a little bit. You could relax. The hard stuff is over.

But no, James Cook is charting the southern coast of New Guinea. He is just reflexively measuring, charting, making more discoveries, making more observations. So he's a machine. And that's a good piece of advice. Be a machine. Find something that you can do so habitually, so reflexively that no one else can compete. It reminds me, I think I've told this story before, but it reminds me of Brandon Flowers of The Killers.

The Killers, one of the greatest rock bands of the 21st century. And there's this book called Meet Me in the Bathroom, Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City, 2001 to 2011. And they talk about all these bands. that came through New York city and revived the rock scene in the early two thousands. And the killers were kind of the greatest, at least the biggest of those bands. And so in this book, they're talking about the killers and how the killers didn't really party.

Like other bands did. And this artist, Harmar Superstar, says, that's why they're bigger than all of us who enthusiastically enjoyed the spoils of war. Okay? They said, we enjoyed the spoils of war. And they didn't. They just... They worked. That's why they're bigger than all of us. And then producer Sarah Lewitton goes on, quote, Brandon's, that's Brandon Flowers, lead singer of The Killers. Brandon's drug is music. Pure obsession. Brandon wanted it.

I don't think he ever knew the difference between being in a tiny little band playing to five people and being David Bowie. All right. I love that. Like his drug was music. Everyone else is doing drugs, but Brandon's drug is music. Pure obsession. And I know it's an awkward comparison between rock and roll and coastal surveys, but the point is that no one can keep up with Brandon Flowers or Captain James Cook because both of them are...

machines. They, they love what they do. They do it reflexively. They can't be stopped from doing it. And so, yeah, if you're not a machine, you're just never going to keep up with someone who is. Okay. So. Where are we at? They left for this journey in February of 1768. It is now late 1770. And remarkably, no one has died from scurvy. In fact.

Few have even suffered any ill effects from it. And that was very rare for the time. Okay. Scurvy is a disease that used to regularly affect sailors. It's pretty horrible. You get very tired. You feel joint pain. Your hair starts falling out. And then the most well-known symptom is your gums start bleeding and your teeth start falling out. And sailors had been suffering from scurvy since forever.

But it really started taking off in the age of exploration when you have these long voyages away from land. And then it just becomes more and more common. And in the 1700s. Scurvy killed more British sailors than enemy arms did. That is how big of a problem it was. And what scurvy is caused by is a radical deficiency in vitamin C. So as you're away from land.

for longer periods of time. You don't get as many fresh fruits and vegetables. You don't have enough vitamin C. You start suffering from scurvy. But the cause was not known. People hadn't discovered vitamin C yet. It's the mid 1700s. And so it seemed like this kind of mysterious disease, right? That's just like seasickness. If you're at sea for too long, you're going to start feeling it. Okay. And this is one of the...

the very first journeys of this duration and type to not lose anyone to scurvy. And that is because James Cook experiments with a number of interventions. So, you know, he doesn't know that it's vitamin C, so he's doing a few things. He emphasizes cleanliness and daily exercise. And then he tries a bunch of different foods. One is called wort, and that's kind of like...

Proto beer. It's something you use to make beer. And then malt. And then sauerkraut is one that he really emphasizes. He doesn't know this, but sauerkraut is extremely high in vitamin C. And initially his men won't touch the stuff. They think they're unfamiliar with sauerkraut. They're not interested in it at all. And he says, that's fine. It's actually only for officers. You guys can't have it anyway. And so the officers all start eating sauerkraut at every meal. And what do you know?

once the common sailors can't have it, now all of a sudden they want it. And in fact, they want it so bad that they actually have to ration it out. So James Cook is actually not sure why. people aren't catching scurvy. He doesn't know if it's the exercise or the cleanliness or the diet. It turns out it is the sauerkraut. But, you know, he knows that at least one of these interventions is working. It's very remarkable.

I wouldn't say that James Cook is sort of the, he didn't discover a cure for scurvy. In fact, he wasn't the one to come up with sauerkraut. He adopted this, I think from German sailors, right? but what I would say is that he's a key early adopter and innovator in the space. Again, he is the first person to conduct a voyage this long and not have anyone die from scurvy. Anyway, so he's got this amazing run.

without any scurvy deaths and with very few deaths kind of to other diseases as well because of the general cleanliness of the ship. But then they stop in the Dutch East Indies in the city that is now called Jakarta. And. There they encounter European civilization for the first time in two years. It's very exciting. They're meeting all these Dutchmen.

And, uh, and talking with them, the Dutch are very helpful and actually insist on doing the cleaning and repairs of the endeavor, uh, themselves, but. The caveat is in this crowded urban city, in this tropical climate, the crew is absolutely decimated by disease, mostly malaria, a little bit of dysentery as well. And basically everyone catches something to pay.

that great Tahitian leader who was helping them translate, navigate, he dies, as do six others. And they lose more people to disease in this short state. They're only refitting. um, for a few weeks with the Dutch, but they lose more people to disease in those few weeks than they do on the whole rest of, of the voyage. So this is tragic. Um, they stayed for a few weeks.

And they actually were supposed to stay longer. But Captain Cook is like, we got to get out of here. We can't have more people catching malaria. So now they're in the known world. They just have to get home. No more navigating. No more charting. This is all known. People know Asia, right? And Africa. And so they sail straight for the Cape of Good Hope, southern tip of Africa, where they stop and resupply in Cape Town and then briefly stop at St. Helena in the mid-Atlantic.

before finally sailing home to England. So again, they left in August of 1768 and they return in July of 1771. So they've been gone for almost exactly three years. The journey had taken so long that the newspapers had all taken to reporting that the Endeavour was lost at sea. Everyone thinks they're dead. So their return was a pleasant surprise and a very exciting one. Naturally, the tales told begin to grow in the telling. And look.

Even if you weren't trying to exaggerate, imagine telling people just the truth, right? So for example, we didn't talk about this, but the Maori, they practice cannibalism, not as like a general. dietary staple, but as a ceremony over defeated enemies, they eat their enemies. So, you know, imagine telling people about these people with face tattoos who eat their fallen enemies.

Or imagine telling people about kangaroos, right? These giant animals that hop around on two feet. So even when not exaggerating, the details are extravagant, but of course people do exaggerate. Uh, what happened and the tales of Tahiti and, and other Pacific islands take on this very idealized Arcadian tone. And begin to be very romanticized. Rightly. I mean, again, I've been to Hawaii. And even now, even now in the 21st century.

You show up in Hawaii and within an hour, at first you're like, okay, what is this place? Oh, this is pretty cool. Then you feel the weather and you see how beautiful it is. Within an hour, there's a little voice in the back of your head that just says, You should never leave here. You should stay here forever. I can only imagine how much that voice must have been in the 1760s and 70s when these people are coming from England. Okay.

So they start spreading these tales of Polynesia and New Zealand and Australia and all these amazing discoveries. And it's very romantic. But Captain Cook is not the celebrity of... the voyage that is joseph banks uh joseph banks becomes wildly famous cook himself does not um which on the one hand he's not worried about you know

James Cook is not the type of person who would want to be a celebrity. On the other hand, he does going forward, keep more detailed observations. He becomes more literary. And that would be to be able to give his own narrative of his voyages. So he does take some note of what is happening to Joseph Banks. And it should be said.

that cook certainly does gain esteem in certain circles within the navy he's a very respected figure and that esteem actually gets him an audience with the king where he gives a first-hand account of his journeys not bad for a peasant boy essentially who grew up in Northern England. Okay. So it's not long before James Cook is commissioned to do a second expedition.

This time, the goal is to shore up British colonial claims in the Pacific and make further explorations for Terra Australis. Basically, they had mostly ruled it out. um in the first journey at least of it being a giant productive continent somewhere but people are intrigued by well could it be a big snowy continent somewhere further south so they want to explore that So this time they get two ships, the Resolution and the Adventure.

Cook is home for less than 10 weeks before this new plan is decided upon. You know, he is home for about a year before he leaves again. This time, Joseph Banks doesn't come. They have a falling out. Just banks wants to add all this construction so they can have nicer quarters and ends up making the ship to top heavy. And he's like, I don't have to put up with this.

He storms off. They get a new chief scientist. His name is Johan Reinhold Forster. Totally brilliant. Probably a little autistic. Really hard to get along with. He's right about everything because he's super smart. but he insists on being right about everything and he's not well liked. Okay. So he's home for basically exactly a year, a year and a day. And on July 13th, 1772. He departs on his next expedition. They go back. This time they go east. So they go south around Africa.

go back to Australia, stop in New Zealand, where this time the people are a little more used to them, so they get a slightly warmer welcome. One thing that does change about Cook is his relationship with the natives. The arrival of the endeavor had changed things. They struck up real relationships, real, real friendships. And that was true of the sailors. That was true of Cook in particular. You know, these kings, these chieftains.

They were often as curious as Cook was. They're intelligent. They're outward looking. They're excited to meet new people. And so here comes this guy, Captain Cook, who can teach them things about the larger world, who brings them. new technology, new learning, new ways of doing things. And yes, he brings them things that often enrich them and give them a leg up over their neighbors. But also...

Of course, you're going to feel like a natural affection for someone who can teach you all this stuff, right? I think those two things are kind of wrapped up in each other. you're more likely to strike up a genuine friendship with someone who can do things for you, who has something to offer, right? So these leaders are happy to see Cook on a professional level, but also on a personal one.

And so these genuine friendships and this admiration they have for Captain Cook, it changes something in him. Nicholas Thomas writes, what is striking over these few days, however, is not this collision of personalities, but a certain waywardness in Cook. The navigator appears emotionally transported by encounters with prominent men whom he has met before.

Men who are on their part affected at any rate, pleased to see him again. He writes as lyrically as he ever does about their civility and generosity. He scarcely wants to know of the proliferation of petty thefts that are perpetrated against his men.

which he for the most part neglects to record and refrains from punishing. Whatever this friendship meant for the chiefs had come to mean something to Cook, something more important than the trifling misdeeds of their subjects or the annoying grievances of his gentlemen. He was no longer just Cook. but a compound self. Okay. So I think what's happening here is, you know, something's changing. He's starting to take the side of the natives much more often.

And I think that's actually very understandable. If you think about it in England, James Cook has the respect of the admiralty. Yes, he's met with the king. Yes. However, he is still the son of a peasant. Yes, he's the captain of a ship now. He's an officer. He's done well for himself, but he's still socially capped. He's an interloper in this aristocratic society. But in Polynesia, he is a nobleman. Kings treat him.

As an equal, they bring him into their ceremonies. They're friends with him. There's one account from New Zealand where they arrive and there's this elaborate ceremony. They send out five boats, all containing different things. to represent different emblems of peace and friendship with cook. And then cook writes in one version of his journal quote, I wanted to go to the king, but was told that he would come to me, which he accordingly did.

This being done, Ori, that's the name of the king, rose up and came and fell upon my neck and embraced me. This was by no means ceremonious. The tears which trickled down plentifully down his cheeks sufficiently spoke the feelings of his heart. Okay. So like, yeah, I mean, this king is emotionally affected as he cooks and greets him as a friend and cries and embraces him. Okay. So you can see how that kind of affection and respect.

would attract a man and maybe make him feel more at home in this place where he is a peer of kings than in his his home where he's not. You know, I don't want to exaggerate here. Obviously, he's kind of a man caught between two worlds. He's not fully going native or anything like that. And he does still punish natives when they steal at times. He can be incredibly harsh sometimes, but his perspective is definitely changing. So, okay.

They leave England, they go under Africa, come to New Zealand, and make their stops there. He has these experiences with these kings, and then they go south once again. And they're continually going south, kind of traveling around to see if there's anywhere where they can make it past the ice in order to get at what they hope is a southern icy continent. But they can't do it.

And so finally, Cook decides, all right, I've gone as far as anyone can go. He writes, I can be bold to say that no man will ever venture farther than I have done. and that the lands which may lie to the south will never be explored. And he was sort of right, which is in his own time. No one could go further given the limitations of naval technology. It would be more than 50 years until men would set foot on Antarctica, in which time there's a large amount of.

of technological development that allowed that, right? So he contends himself, look, if there is a Southern continent, I can't get to it. Mission accomplished. And so, OK, well, we're here and they go on and they explore more of Polynesia and the South Pacific. And so, you know, as I said before, as with the first journey, it's very romantic, very exciting discovering these new peoples.

But at the same time, it's very methodical. There's a great quote about this from the biography by Thomas. It says, Cook's navigation was indeed characterized by methodical rigor. He saw that there were blank spaces on a chart and he worked out a track that crisscrossed them. Once he had laid down that course, he followed it single-mindedly with no more variation or compromises than he could avoid. Okay, again.

Captain James Cook, the machine, right? Very methodical. He goes on. He made his predecessors look like naive amateurs so far as the business of maritime investigation was concerned. And then this passage I absolutely loved here. here's why you listen to how to take over the world right okay if you listened to my episode a few episodes back about 10 lessons from 100 episodes you heard me say that i thought the two most important aspects of leadership were vision

and holding people to a high standard. Okay. That was my theory. That's what I concluded from a hundred episodes that I think of the world. Okay. We'll listen to what are the two most important aspects of cook's leadership. Okay. Again, this is from Nicholas Thomas biography quote. He had not only what 20th century management speak called vision. Dally Rample called it more appealingly sublimity of conception, but also the ability to make a plan work.

which was the ability to push his crew hard without pushing them over the brink. I am sure that Cook thought about all of this. He knew that his voyage had established more in two years than a score of predecessors had over the past two centuries. His maps were the measure of his accomplishment. Okay, so there you go.

That's perhaps a bit more poetic. Sublimity of conception is a good phrase for vision. But then for holding people to a standard, he says, making a plan work. The ability to push his crew hard without pushing them over the brink. I like that. But that's exactly what leadership is. They call out those same two things, his vision and his ability to make a plan work, to push people hard, to hold them to a standard. And Captain Cook had that in spades. So anyway.

In exploring the South Pacific, they meet the inhabitants of more than 20 islands in just seven months. It's incredibly exciting. Again, the only dampener on the success of the second journey is that, as I said, there were two ships, right? And the second ship, the adventure gets separated in a fog and they go to the rendezvous spot in New Zealand and they have some run-ins with the locals, with the Maori who end up killing a few of them and cannibalizing them, eating them.

And that's obviously going to be a scandal back home. So Cook's ship actually runs into a Dutch merchant ship. They say, have you heard the news? He goes, no, what news? Your other ship. Some guys got cannibalized back in New Zealand. They break the news to him. And OK, so that's that's the one dampener on this second journey. When he gets home, he's committed to seeing through how the public receives the message of this journey.

And so he turns to more literary accomplishments and he starts publishing his memoirs, which, you know, he didn't want to be a celebrity. He's not trying to be a hero, but he did. want to control how the public heard and understood what he had done because. You know, he's seeing from what gets published from his first journey that a lot of it is exaggerated. A lot of it is not true. A lot of it is distorted.

And so he wants the truth to get out and he wants to be able to tell his own story. And so he does much more of that. He writes his memoirs, which he's been keeping in journals the entire time through his second journey. So that raises his public profile quite a bit. So he's home again for a year and another voyage is planned. And this time they say, all right, we can't ask you to lead a third voyage, but will you help us plan it?

right and so they bring him in to help plan this voyage and they just keep shaking their heads they're saying man james you know of course i know you've been away from home for five of the last six years there's no way we could ask you to do this again But who could we find that would be just as good of a captain as you? You know, even better. Let's find someone who's even better than captain than you. That can do this journey that you just did. Do it even better than you did.

where can we find someone like that of course like his bed of juices get going he's like no one there's no one who's better than me i'm the man no one can do this like i did it and so he talks himself into going on a third journey a third voyage This one, the main point is not to look for the southern continent, but to look for a northwest passage. The northwest passage is...

They're looking for a route over North America. And it turns out such a route does exist, but it's completely covered in ice. So for their intents and purposes, it doesn't exist. There was no way to find this Northwest Passage. The elusive Northwest Passage was really desirable to find because if you could find it, then that might be a quicker route to Asia, a great trade route. So they're very invested. The English are very invested in finding a Northwest Passage.

That is what Captain Cook is going to look for. This time they're going to look for the Northwest Passage from the west. Okay, so they're going to explore the northern Pacific, all those islands up there. And then... Come where we know Canada and Alaska, where that is, and see if they can find a route, a Northwest Passage from that side. Okay, so...

They essentially do for the North Pacific what Captain Cook had already done for the South Pacific. They go to all these islands, including Tonga and Hawaii, and they explore them, chart them, and... Yeah, just just generally figure out what's going on there, where the islands are. And then they go to the Pacific Northwest, kind of Washington, Canada, Alaska and chart that. And then they go.

up alaska they turn the corner and uh i can see okay this is as far north as it goes and they get stopped by the ice they poke around for a while they do everything they can to try and find this northwest passage before um captain cook concludes okay it just doesn't exist and they turn around they go back to hawaii where they had been well received and they leave hawaii to to continue on their journey

when they encounter a big storm and it breaks a mast and they have to go back to Hawaii. Okay. So when they go back to Hawaii, uh, the second time the native Hawaiians steal a boat. Okay. And again, Captain Cook was always trying to figure out like, how do I deal with these thefts? But a boat is a big thing to steal. And so he goes back to a tactic he had used before. Remember when he kidnapped all those people. And so once again.

He tries to kidnap some prominent people, some chieftains, and this time it goes horribly wrong when he tries to kidnap them. The Hawaiians realize what he is doing. And they grab some spears and they attack to stop him from doing so. There's a moment of mutual suspicion. And, you know, some Marines want to...

that are with Captain Cook want to shoot at them. And he says, no, no, no, no, don't shoot. Don't shoot. Just shoot a warning shot. Remember that was his thing. He liked to do warning shots. They shoot a warning shot and he starts scolding the Hawaiians on what they're doing and that provokes them. And so they do end up attacking. And they end up killing Captain Cook as well as the Marines that are with him.

So it's a complicated death for a man with a complicated legacy. It's really got everything there, right? You got his, his restraint and his love for the Islanders, but also his imperiousness and his assumed superiority that he can just take these people hostage to get his stuff back. you have the cultural misunderstanding the theft but also the cross-cultural love and affection you know the islanders start mourning for cook as soon as they realize that they have killed him

And they give him funerary rights as if he had been a high ranking Hawaiian chieftain. So yeah, that's it. They basically don't continue the journey. They don't really any more exploration once he's dead. The ship just goes home back to England after the death of Captain Cook. And posthumously, he becomes a great hero in England and especially in England's colonies. He's kind of known as a father of...

New Zealand and Australia, especially. So that's it. So ends the life of one of the greatest explorers of all time. So what do we learn? What can we take away from this remarkable life? I want to go through some takeaways. I don't have a ton of end notes, no paid section this time. I basically said most of what I want to say. So let me just recap. Here are my takeaways from the life of Captain James Cook. First.

Be a machine. Okay. Cook's navigation was characterized by methodical rigor. That's an understatement. Exploration was his drug, right? Kind of paraphrasing that quote about Brandon Flowers. Music was his drug. Exploration was Captain Cook's drug. All his men got so excited by the trading and getting rich and the sex. But Cook didn't need any of that because.

Exploration was his drug. That was the thing that got him high. That was the thing that excited him. And so you have to find that for yourself. And when you do, you'll be able to say, like Captain Cook, he made his predecessors look like naive.

amateurs. And I guess that's the corollary to this is yes, he was a machine, but he was a machine because he was filled with passion for what he did he genuinely loved it there's one passage he has that i like he says were it not for the pleasure which naturally results to a man from being the first discoverer even were it nothing more than sands and shoals

This service would be unsupportable. Okay. This is a time when they've been through shipwrecks and, um, and just a lot of difficulties and storms and stuff. He's like, this would be impossible. There's no way I would do it if it weren't for quote. The pleasure which naturally results from a man being the first discoverer. Okay, he loved that. He was filled with passion for it. Okay. Next, great leadership comes down to vision and holding people to a standard.

Okay. We've seen that from countless entrepreneurs, conquerors, explorers, artists, like that really captures the essential elements of leadership, vision. and holding people to a standard. James Cook did that extraordinarily well. Next takeaway, it was not his style to do things by halves, okay? Remember that quote from Machiavelli, you don't want to take the middle course.

You want to take extreme measures. Can your decisions be described as extreme? If not, you might want to rethink them. And that was Captain Cook as well. My next takeaway, be a professional, do your job, master the details. Like, yes, Captain Cook was a great explorer, but what enabled this great exploration was that he was a master surveyor. He had.

the nuts and bolts down of surveying. It's the same way that like Napoleon was a great artillery officer. He really knew artillery. John D. Rockefeller was a great accountant. Okay. He could read through an account book like no one else and spot errors like no one else, even the most minute of errors. Okay. He was a professional. He knew how to do his job. And so if you want the big.

sexy, uh, grand, you know, you want to be the explorer, you want to be the founder, you want to be, you know, the leader, you want to be the man that you got to master the details first. Captain Cook did that. Okay. And those are my main takeaways. And then I want to answer that question that I asked at the beginning, which is, what does it mean to live a life of adventure now?

If you listen to the life of Captain Cook and you think, okay, man, what a life. You know, he's exploring all these new places, meeting these new people, seeing these new areas. How do I live a life like that? What does that look like? Okay. So I tried to break it down into, okay, well, what makes it so appealing? And the first is discovery. The first thing is discovery, finding something new. Okay.

There's just something very exciting about finding something new or realizing something new. And that's, this is true of sea exploration or space exploration as it is of science or technology, right? Finding out something new is inherently exciting. So that's the first thing. Then the second thing is experiencing something new. Okay. How do I differentiate that? So like discovery is exciting, even if you're discovering Antarctica.

There's not a lot waiting for you to Antarctica, but just being the first one there is exciting. But then experiencing something new is, yeah, but then there's something about discovering Hawaii and Tahiti. and Tonga that makes it more exciting than Antarctica. It's these experiences, these new cultures, these new ceremonies, these new rituals, these new religions and languages, okay?

So discovering something new, experiencing something new. And then the third thing is just winning, right? Being able to say that you were the best, you were the first. And he combines all these three things. I think that's what makes the life of an explorer. So exciting. It is discovery, it's experience, and it is being the first and the glory that comes with that. All right. So where can you find all three of these things?

It's not an easy question because there's no frontier anymore. There's no ocean or country or land that you can go to to see something that no one has ever seen before. It's just... The world is mapped. So let's start off by talking about things that come close. OK, so one is scientific discovery. OK.

Scientific discovery, yes, you get the discovery aspect of it. And if you're the best, then you're the best. So you can get that aspect of it as well. What you don't get is the experience, right? You don't get that rich experience of new cultures and cool things. Okay.

Space exploration, I think, is the same as well. Space exploration, yes, you get to discover. And if you're an astronaut, like obviously you're the man. It's really difficult to be an astronaut. But you also don't get that experience, right? um that's what my captain cook was able to get what about entrepreneurship entrepreneurship is another one that comes close i actually think um the the people who have been able to get the closest to something like captain cook

are specifically technology entrepreneurs or technological innovators. Even here, I feel like the window is closing on that. But I mean, think about it. If you're Thomas Edison. You get that feeling of discovery. You do get the feeling of experience because you get to be the first person to experience the light bulb.

You get to be the first person to experience recorded sound, all these inventions. Okay, you do have that. And you're winning because you're an entrepreneur, you're an innovator, you're an inventor, and that gives you glory and prestige. Okay. So, you know. Yeah, I do think the life specifically of a technology innovator does give you those three things. Yeah, obviously, I don't think you're getting all the same things if your startup is in B2B SaaS or e-com.

And like no shots at anyone who is doing that. I'm not saying that any of these things are not worthwhile. They all are. You know, I'm talking about space exploration, talking about scientific discovery, talking about entrepreneurship. Like all these things are great. I'm just talking about. Can we get that full adventurous experience that someone like James Cook was able to have? And in that regard, they do fall short of that. The one thing I think that that matches is.

technological entrepreneurship a la Thomas Edison or someone like Henry Ford. I mean, think about, right? Being someone who is making money, discovering building automobiles for the first time, going fast, right? So. You know, thinking about things that you could do nowadays that might accomplish that. I'm very impressed with what the guys at Boom Supersonic are doing, which are doing supersonic airplanes. Like, yeah, that feeling of...

A flight. So you get that experience as well as discovery because you're inventing something new and the money and prestige and glory that you get from being a successful entrepreneur. Maybe virtual reality.

doing something there that might give you that element of experience as well. So that's one way that you could try and capture something like the the life of a naval explorer like james cook you know there are other things that you can do of course that would get at other elements of that right um art

And of course, there's traveling and partying is like a way to experience some of that. But like none of it captures the full picture. You know, the real way that I think the only way to capture that sort of adventure and excitement. It's not to discover a new world because there are no islands left to be discovered, no new peoples. But what we have to do is create a new world, create new peoples, create new ways of life. And how do we do that?

It's going to be through a religious movement is what I think. I think of the quote about the life of Rasputin when one of his contemporaries said, we have all cooled down and then suddenly a burning torch appears. what sort of spirit he had, what sort of quality, we did not want to know, nor could we have discovered for we lacked the necessary knowledge. But the magnificence of this new comet quite naturally attracted attention. And I think that...

Someone who had that burning fire and passion and showed a new way of life and really started a movement. Something akin to, I mean, I think you have to go back to like the early Muslim conquests and what Mohammed did or to the crusades to find the sort of passion that you would need to create. a new way of life, a new world, just a movement that could take over the world. That's the kind of thing, you know, again, there is no new world to be discovered. We have to create a new world.

And it's religion that moves men with enough passion to create something like that. You know, what does it take to create a religion like that? I don't know. There's no one that knows. It hasn't been done in hundreds of years. But I do know this, that I don't think it can be contrived. I don't think you can set out to say, I want to create a new religion. You have to be struck.

with real passion and then create a religion around it after that strikes you so you know i think this is what is necessary i'm not going to cynically go therefore i'm going to create a religion here's how i'm going to try and mastermind it no no no It's going to take a real prophet who is genuinely moved by God or... Or some spirit or something. It's going to take some supernatural, extraordinary inspiration in order to make something like this happen. If you want.

a vision of what that could look like. You know, people like Buddha and Jesus and Muhammad are so far from us. I think it's difficult to capture, but there's three pieces of fiction that I think are good reference points that might give you some ideas. One is Fight Club.

The other is Dune and what Paul Atreides does with his jihad. And then the third, if you want an example of how you might kind of resurrect and inject new life into an existing religion, watch a TV series called The Young Pope. It's extraordinary. Favorite TV show of all time. Anyway, I know that's kind of an odd answer, but I really think that a movement of that level of passion is the only way.

to rediscover the level of adventure and excitement that someone like Joseph Banks and James Cook was able to feel in their lifetime. It has no relevance for 99% of us. Again, I don't think you can will your way into being a profit. You have to be sincere. It has to come to you. But I guess for the rest of us who maybe don't hear the voice of God calling us to be a prophet, the relevance is watch and wait. And.

If something like that comes along, then seize on it. You know, when you see that burning torch, as that woman said about Rasputin, go to it. So that's it. That's all I got. Hopefully that's not too esoteric, but I think that's the answer. I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. I hope you enjoyed learning about James Cook as much as I did. Until next time, thank you for listening to How to Take Over the World.

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