The Pacific In The Wake of Captain Cook

I'm off on the greatest journey of my life.

Some 250 years ago, a little-known British naval lieutenant, James Cook,

was doing something similar, sailing into the vast Pacific Ocean.

10 years later, he's Captain James Cook

and is known for what many believe

are among the three greatest sea voyages of all time.

I am following in his wake.

I'm fascinated by Cook. I want to know him better.

I want to see what Cook saw, go where he was forbidden.

And I want to meet the people of the Pacific,

whose lives, for better or worse, were changed forever

because Cook was there.

And here a disclaimer. Look, I'm not an historian.

I'm not a navigator. I'm not a sailor.

I'm not an expert at anything, really. I'm just an actor.

But I am vitally interested, and I hope that you will be too,

and I hope that you will follow me as I follow Cook.

When I was a boy, there was a huge old map on the wall of the classroom.

It was a map of the world, and most of the world was coloured pink,

which meant it was British, it was the old British Empire,

which was supposedly a very good thing,

because it brought order and enlightenment and, above all, cricket

to the darkest corners of the world.

After Cook, there were barely any places in the Pacific

that weren't pink.

And here he is.

Cook went to the trouble of sitting for this portrait between voyages,

and we're told by one of his officers, Samwell,

that this is a good likeness,

and he certainly looks the part -

rugged, resolute, a visionary.

But who was James Cook really?

For those already in the Pacific,

Cook's adventure might be seen more as a misadventure,

one that might bring disease, dispossession and death.

Not such a happy story at all.

So I want to see Cook's adventure, Cook's story,

from both sides of the beach.

This story starts in 1769.

Eight months after having left England

in an old Whitby collier, renamed the Endeavour,

Cook was close to Tahiti...

..an island conquered and claimed two years earlier for the British Crown

by another naval officer, Samuel Wallis.

Wallis extinguished any resistance by the overwhelming use of firepower.

As they entered the Pacific,

Cook's crew remembered Wallis's sailors' accounts

of the fleshy delights to be found in the South Seas.

Now they were desperate to get ashore.

Cook, fully aware of their expectations,

made a speech before anchoring.

Rules - number one,

do not ever trade for sex.

Well, that was never going to fly.

Cook dropped anchor here on April 13, 1769.

To his lice-infested, half-starved crew,

after eight months of tedium and hardship at sea,

this didn't just look like paradise,

it WAS paradise.

Wallis had made Tahitians nervous of visitors with cannons.

Perhaps as a result,

this time, the British received an energetic welcome.

I'm at the annual Heiva festival.

It's a joyous celebration of Tahitian culture

that runs for a riotous fortnight.

Dance, music, many competitions, and even a beauty contest.

That's Miss Tahiti.

Always strong, like Superman.

Thank you.

That's my kind of music.

Today's Heiva is a reimagining of old traditions, lost since Cook,

but now revived by passionate enthusiasts.

One of the most popular is dance.

This is the largest Heiva dance competition in Polynesia.

We living today with the blood of our ancestor.

Let's talk about just dance for a minute.

Recovering dance.

The dance for me, the Ori Tahiti,

it's an expression of our happiness.

You shaking all your body from the head to your feet

and your... and your hips and everything,

for love, for making love, for... for the beautiful flowers,

for the beautiful fish, many fish.

Everything. Wow.

When Cook was first confronted by a dancing Tahitian,

he described it as "a very indecent dance".

We're shaking our body.

Don't means every time, "Oh, we want to jump on somebody."

No!

We're shaking our body because we're so happy.

That time when they arrived, Wallis, Cook, our men,

they just cover here, back,

and our woman live with... with...

..with their titty out.

It's so nice.

Sure!

Well, I'm quite overwhelmed, to be honest,

and for the British back then,

Tahiti must have been as nothing they'd ever experienced before,

quite astonishing.

When the British arrived,

they were definitely seduced by this way of life.

Here, they had a beautiful landscape, honestly, objectively.

Yeah.

You have water everywhere.

They had been drinking stale water for months...

Disgusting. ..stinking biscuits.

And they had scurvy and they had lice.

And so of course when they arrived here and they saw those people,

they were clean and always wearing scented flowers,

and they were impressed, because people would bathe twice a day.

Of course!

Who wouldn't have been attracted? Yeah.

Of course, with all these things on offer

and no common currency, what to do?

C'est taro? No. (SPEAKS FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

Turnip.

Turnip? Yes.

Ah. Where's the taro? Madame?

C'est taro? Yeah. Taro. Yellow.

Yellow taro?

Soon, people learnt to trade.

There... there were only two things the British wanted -

pua'a and vahine - pigs and women.

And... Terrible when you say it like that.

Yeah.

The visit of the Dolphin under Wallis established a precedent.

The British had one thing above all the Tahitians desired -

the humble nail.

The British, of course, desired the women.

The trade was brisk, and over time, the women demanded more nails

and then longer nails.

The men of the Dolphin resorted to pulling nails out of their ship,

which was close to sinking.

So, something like this. Yes.

Extremely valuable for a Tahitian. Why?

Because you can do so many things with a nail.

You can go fishing. You can make hooks.

Yeah. You can engrave.

You can use it as a drill.

It seems such a humble thing to... Yes.

..that was so... that could be so valuable.

Yeah. It's just a matter of perception.

And it bought so much. (LAUGHS) Yeah, but it's the way it was.

So... Right.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

And speaking of cost,

the voyage's botanist, Joseph Banks, paid to go on the voyage.

Handsome, isn't he?

Joseph Banks, a man of wealth and taste.

Banks was not an aristocrat,

but he came from a background of wealth and privilege.

So privileged, in fact, he paid £10,000

to take him and his retinue on this voyage.

This at a time when an average sailor would expect a salary of £14 a year.

Cook added to Banks's duties,

making the wealthy botanist responsible for trade.

And every morning, he negotiated the day's prices

in his tent on the beach.

But, clearly, he had had other things on his mind.

He was, let's face it, an energetic and lusty young man.

He described a time when two women offering Tahitian mats

undressed fully in front of him.

Banks clearly interpreted there was more on offer than just mats.

He writes, "To both of them, I made presents

"but could not prevail upon them to stay more than an hour."

Banks got it wrong.

In Tahitian culture, disrobing was a mark of respect and not a come-on.

Banks had a classical education, and he considered Tahiti as Arcadia,

an ancient Greek ideal of universal innocence.

He soon found a flower to assist his fantasy.

This is a plantation of tiare, the snow-white symbol of Tahiti,

and this beautiful fragrance when mixed with coconut oil

was liberally applied to the English sailors prior to sex

in order to mask the stench of the English.

So, for the British, the Tahitians had everything that they wanted.

I mean, it was perfect.

Except when the Tahitians started stealing.

Right.

To the British, it looked like stealing.

Mmm.

To the Tahitians, something different.

Yes, definitely, because they didn't have

the same sense of property.

The English saw that as stealing,

but they didn't see that THEY were stealing the fruit.

They came here and cut down trees. Yes.

They just couldn't imagine that trees

were not supposed to be cut like that.

They were fishing in the lagoon,

ignoring the fact that, no, you can't fish...

Ah. ..anywhere.

So they didn't see that they were thieves too.

Oh, right.

The bittersweet reality is that ultimately,

more than resources would be stolen.

A whole way of life would be lost,

a lifestyle brilliantly captured in these drawings by Sydney Parkinson.

Banks's artist, barely 23 years old,