All language subtitles for Captain Cook： The Man Behind the Legend

In the late 18th century, three great voyages of discovery were made, which would push the

borders of the British Empire to the ends of the Earth.

They were led by Captain James Cook.

In just over a decade, his genius as a navigator and chart maker would add a third to the map

of the known world.

For many, he was the greatest explorer in history.

For others, a ruthless conqueror.

While Cook is famous for what he did, we know much less about who he really was.

I'm off on my own voyage of discovery to search for Cook the Man.

Traveling in his footsteps, I want to uncover the forces that drove him to success, and

ultimately to his death.

Between 1768 and 1775, James Cook, the obsessive discovering genius, had crossed oceans, charted

new lands and discovered new peoples.

He had secured his place in history.

Like many people, I'd learned about James Cook at school.

At first, I really didn't think he was for me.

It was just more propaganda for an outmoded empire, the noble hero who discovered Australia

and New Zealand, and put a lot of the Pacific on the map.

But while researching for my book, I learned more about the woman behind the imperial icon,

his wife, Elizabeth.

In 16 years of marriage, Elizabeth and James spent a total of just four years together.

They had six children, and Elizabeth buried all six alone.

She survived James by 56 years, but just before she died, age 93, she did something curious.

She burned every single letter he'd ever written her.

The inner world of James Cook went up in smoke, a hidden world I wanted to explore.

My search for James Cook starts here at Whitby on the Yorkshire coast.

Here the 18-year-old former farm boy began his naval career as an apprentice to a Quaker

ship owner called John Walker.

Starting Cook Society's Cliff Thalton is bringing me to John Walker's house, now the Cook Museum.

Here 18-year-old James undertook not to play dice, cards or bowls or commit fornication

nor contract matrimony.

In return, John Walker agreed to find and provide meat and drink, washing and lodging,

and to teach his apprentice the trade, mystery and occupation of a mariner.

Now tell me about the Walker family, who were they?

Well first and foremost they were a Quaker family.

There was quite a large congregation within Whitby at that time.

So that meant that their approach to life was very sober, very industrious.

They believed in moderation.

So these traits then were Quaker traits.

But these surely were also the traits that were imbued in James Cook during his time here,

do you think?

Many captains were sailing into foreign lands, blasting away with the cannons to say we are

masked.

Cook was going very peaceably and trying to establish friends and trade with the peoples.

And I think you can trace some of those origins back to his time here.

James Cook learnt to sail in the North Sea, some of the most treacherous waters in the

world.

The ships he learned on will Whitby cats the cold hankers of their day.

He'll eventually take these strong versatile ships to the end of the Earth.

In June 1755, after nine years learning his trade, Cook joined the Royal Navy.

Within two years he was promoted to Ship's Master, responsible for navigation.

So as Ship's Master in the mid-18th century, what does Cook have to work with?

Well, maps or charts will start.

But the thing we have to understand is that the maps back then were not the more scientific

documents we have today.

Take a look at this.

It's a Newfoundland map that was drawn in 1698.

It looks like an OK map, doesn't it?

Now compare it with a satellite image and you can see it's hopelessly inaccurate.

But soon accurate maps would be in huge demand.

In 1756, Britain and France began the Seven Years' War.

Two years later, 29-year-old Cook was sent to New France as part of a combined army and

navy force.

Its goal was to make North America British.

The French first line of defence was here at Louisburg Fortress.

The British made a surprise landing on nearby Kennington Beach and won the Battle of Louisburg.

But for Cook, the victory was almost a side issue.

The day after the Fortress fell, Cook was walking on this little beach where he met a

young man named Samuel Holland who was using a strange kind of instrument.

As it would turn out, it was called the Plain Table.

The Plain Table was a revelation to James Cook.

He quickly grasped that it could be used to transform the accuracy of naval charts.

Let's suppose we place the Plain Table here.

This is a stone that represents the object we're taking a bearing on.

Well, if you take a bearing with the Plain Table on that object, then you measure off

a known distance here and take another bearing on the object.

As you know this distance by geometry, you can calculate what these two distances are.

So Cook, Holland, or if anyone could take what they saw before them in the landscape

and translate that onto paper.

In other words, they could make themselves a map or an accurate chart.

James Cook had found his calling.

Until now, sailors like him had been reliant on local knowledge, crude sketches and written

lists of sailing directions.

Now as a map maker, he would draw scientific charts, bringing precision with a had-been

none.

We can still see the first chart he ever drew.

It's kept here.

This is the hydrographic office in Taunton in Somerset in England, and it contains charts

for every scrap of coastline on Earth.

But more importantly, it contains one of the most significant documents for me anywhere

in the world.

It's kept in the protection of the curator of maps, Philip, Clayton, Gore.

Right, so it's in here, is it?

Wow, isn't that just beautiful?

It's extraordinary.

This is the result of James Cook's meeting with Samuel Holland on that Canadian beach.

This is James Cook's first chart, a draft of the Bayon Harbour at Gasby on the St Lawrence

River, 1758.

Cook's maps from Canada were so outstanding that he was appointed King Surveyor of Newfoundland.

But what I'm beginning to see is how it suited his perfectionist nature and his passion

for accuracy.

He stands alone for his thoroughness and for his dedication of the application of this

emerging science of hydrography.

He's unremitting in his labour.

He's almost voting on the obsessional.

Now here's the map Cook was given in 1762, the year he started charting the territory.

If we compare it with the satellite image, it still doesn't match up with reality.

OK, here's what Cook produced five years later.

Now this really is a map.

Just look at this detail.

And when you put it up against a modern satellite image, you can see just how precise it is.

So precise, in fact, it was still being used well into the 20th century.

Perhaps as he entered his mid-30s, this down-to-earth Yorkshire farm boy had travelled further than

the New World.

His charting ability made him invaluable to an ever-expanding empire.

But it also meant he could start climbing Britain's rigid social hierarchy.

And there's a clue that he knew it.

Take a look at his signature.

It's changing.

He's adding elaborate flourishes.

I think it's the signature of a man growing in confidence, preparing himself for better things.

By 1767, James Cook was 39 years old, married with a growing family.

His wife Elizabeth was 27, young James 4, Nathaniel 3, and little Elizabeth 18 months.

Life for the cooks had settled into a pattern.

James spent summers surveying Newfoundland, winters back in London, finishing his charts.

Then one day Cook was called to the Admiralty, the headquarters of the Royal Navy.

The Admiralty wanted Cook to lead Britain's first scientific voyage of discovery.

He was to set sail for the very edge of the known world and then go beyond to discover a new and fabled land of riches and claim it for Britain.

In the 18th century, at least a third of the earth was still a mystery.

Nobody in Europe knew what was in the blank space to the south.

But there was a legend that waiting to be discovered was a great, southern continent.

There was always the hope of finding another America.

The America had made such an impact on European consciousness.

And there was the hope that it would bring with it the riches that America had brought to Europe.

So why did the power brokers at the Admiralty choose James Cook, who on paper was just a ship's master?

Well, it would take a brilliant navigator to find it and a superb map maker to chart it accurately.

If it existed, they knew Cook would bring back the information they needed to claim the prized land.

The Navy had already chosen his ship.

Ironically, she was a wit-weat, the very type of ship on which Cook had learnt his trade.

Her name was the Earl of Pembroke, but it was changed to Endeavour.

If you're looking for James Cook, this is probably the best place to find him. This is his ship.

This replica of Endeavour was launched in 1993.

Hi there. Hi, Penny.

How are you going?

Good. Thank you.

OK, so a bit of a squeeze.

I'll dump my bag up there.

Second officer aboard the Endeavour replica is Penny Keeley.

She takes me below decks to the claustrophobic world of the earth.

The world of the 18th century Navy.

Captain Cook's lobby and he's Kevin from the yink.

Now I can imagine there's a few banged heads in here.

James Cook was over six foot tall, about six foot two.

He had to spend three years cramped in this quarter.

After months of painstaking preparation, everything was finally in place.

August 26, 1768.

At 2pm, good on the sail and put to sea, having on board 94 persons, including officers,

seamen, gentlemen, and their servants.

It was the biggest moment of James Cook's life.

If successful, this voyage would propel him towards naval stardom.

The day after Endeavour left, Elizabeth gave birth to her fourth child, a boy, Joseph.

But within a month, baby Joseph would be dead.

It would be three years before James Cook found out.

After five months at sea, Endeavour rounded the tip of South America and entered the waters

that would make Cook famous, the vast and mysterious Pacific Ocean.

Three months later, Cook and his crew arrived at the island of Tahiti.

Their intention was to observe a rare astronomical event, the transit of Venus, across the face of the sun.

But it wasn't this that caught the crew's attention.

It's heaven on earth.

That's the best posting you've ever got in a brutal navy.

Nations were friendly, food was good, native women were even friendlier than the native men,

and you could have a night of pleasure for the price of an iron nail.

So this was just mind blowing.

But for Cook's most eminent travelling companion, Tahiti provided something much more significant.

Joseph Banks is a wealthy aristocrat with a passion for natural history.

He's paid £10,000 to come on this voyage.

But he's really entered into the spirit of things.

He's collected hundreds of natural history specimens.

And now he collects one more, a young Tahitian named Tupaya.

Tupaya was a Tahitian priest.

Banks saw him as an exotic souvenir to show off back in London.

But here we can get a fascinating insight into the way Cook's mind worked.

Tupaya was a navigator, and Cook wanted to tap into his incredible knowledge,

knowledge of the mysterious waters of the Pacific.

Cook respected his geographical knowledge, his navigational skills,

and he was an invaluable translator for them all around Polynesia.

But Cook draws upon local experience whenever he can.

And I think perhaps that sets him apart again from other officers in the period,

his willingness to learn from local knowledge, to deal with indigenous peoples.

After leaving Tahiti, Tupaya drew Cook a map.

Two men, one guardian of the Polynesian world and its geography,

the other, an officer in his majesty's navy.

And the common language they shared was that of navigation.

Tupaya's knowledge was that of the amazing Polynesian people,

the most widely travelled people on Earth.

Tupaya's map stretches across some 2,200 kilometres of ocean.

But on it, there was no sign of the Great Southern Continent.

We cannot find that Tupaya either knows of or is ever heard of a continent or large tract of land.

I have no reason to doubt his information.

But as instructed, Cook sailed to 40 degrees south and found nothing.

No sign of the Southern Land.

So he went back to his secret orders which said,

not having discovered the Great Southern Continent,

you are to proceed in search of it to the westward until you discover it,

or fall in with the land discovered by Tasman.

In 1769, that land looks like this on maps.

The Dutch explorer Abel Tasman had named it,

Statenland, in 1642.

It was widely believed to be the west coast of the Great Southern Continent.

And oh!

All Cook knew was that he was looking at the east coast of an unidentified land.

The quickest way to find out if this was the Great Continent was to ask the people who clearly lived here,

people who were about to make a profound impact on James Cook.

This mystery coast is in fact the home of Maori.

They call it Ea Tea Roa, the land of the long white cloud.

We know it today as New Zealand.

Endeavour dropped anchor at what's now Gisborne, about halfway up the North Island.

Watching Endeavour arrive was Timaro.

Timaro was leader of the Inate Oni Oni tribe.

He'd never meet Cook, because when a landing party was sent ashore from Endeavour,

Timaro was shot dead.

Hi, Barney. Nice to meet you.

Barney Tupera is Timaro's descendant.

How do my cute horse, buddy? Come on inside.

Thank you very much.

Barney and the Maori have not forgotten their meeting with Cook.

The next day Cook comes ashore and he writes that he saw an assembling of natives with

flushing weapons above their heads and doing what seemed to be a war dance.

It wasn't just a war dance, it was a kappa haka.

Cook was probably the first Englishman to witness a Maori haka.

The haka that Cook saw would have been an expression of aggression.

It would have been an expression of celebration, but also of prowess and strength.

Cook had no idea how to respond to this Maori haka, but what happened next was remarkable.

Tearako, who was the leader of the kappa haka that came down onto the beach that day,

would have then gone forward to meet him.

What the Hongy is, it's a way that we as Maori greet people, irrespective of whether we like them or not.

It's quite an intimate, but very gentle and friendly way of greeting another person.

Cook's instinctive response brought the dangerous situation under control,

but that bridging of two diverse cultures was all too brief and things soon began to go wrong.

For a reason unclear, Tearako grabbed Cook's sword.

And then of course as we know he was shot.

From the British accounts, there is the story that Cook placed a red coat from one of the Marines

over Tearako's body. Is that something that is picked up in your oral history?

As perhaps a gesture of reconciliation?

To some extent it's probably fair to say that with the laying of the red coat,

there was a desire to accept that maybe what happened shouldn't have happened

in Cook taking responsibility.

I am aware that most humane men who have not experienced things of this nature

will center my conduct in firing upon the people.

But I was not to stand still and suffer either myself or those that were with me to be knocked on the edge.

James Cook knew that his time here had been a disaster. He called it poverty bay.

I think he named this place as much for his own sense of failure.

It's for only failure in getting provisions.

Cook sailed north looking for supplies and safe anchorage.

He had to find a way to communicate with the inhabitants to get what he needed

and to find out if this was the Great Southern continent.

But he knew he must tread carefully. So next time they went ashore, he sent in to Pia for Polynesia Navigator.

They set in at a place called Tologa Bay.

End of Anka just over there. Then Cook rode around this headland and came into this cove here to get wood and water.

After his disturbing first few days in New Zealand, he's learning that respect goes a long way with Maury.

During our stay in this bay, we had everyday traffic with the natives.

I suffered everyone to purchase whatever they pleased without limitation,

but by this means I knew that the natives would not only sell, but also get a good price for everything they brought.

We know from his journals that Cook was deeply worried about the effects his contact would have on the indigenous people in the Pacific.

What seems to be happening here is much more than just an explorer plotting a stretch of coastline on the map.

What we're seeing are the moral coordinates in the growing map of Cook the Man.

Cook suspected that this was an island and not the Great continent.

For the next six months, he minutely chartered what turned out to be the two islands that we now know make up New Zealand.

And he claimed them for Britain. His final map is a masterpiece.

This is just the most brilliant piece of hydrographic work ever undertaken.

It's pioneering, it's on the grander scale, it's done in the shorter space of time, and it's remarkably accurate.

Nobody had ever done anything like this before.

By April 1770, Cook hadn't seen his family in over 18 months.

He'd missed James's seventh birthday, Nathaniel's sixth, and little Elizabeth's third.

He thought he'd missed baby Joseph's first birthday.

He had no way of knowing that Joseph had died a month after he'd left England,

and it would be another 15 months before he got home and found out.

For the moment though, James Cook had a more immediate family to look after. His crew.

The Great

Pappered throughout the journals of James Cook, a constant reference to feeding his men.

He was obsessive about their diet and small wonder.

The biggest threat to their health on board was Skirvy.

Skirvy killed more sailors in the 18th century than war, accidents and shipwrecks combined.

Skirvy's a horrible condition caused by lack of vitamin C.

Nobody knows this yet, not even James Cook, but he does know his men need to eat fresh food,

something impossible on long voyages.

So instead, he places his faith in a substitute.

Soundcrout, a pickled cabbage.

Trouble is, his men refuse to eat it, and frankly, I don't blame them, it smells disgusting.

But here we see something quite remarkable.

James Cook could order his men to eat it. He could threaten to flog them.

But instead, he chooses a different tactic. Psychology.

The sauerkraut, the men at first, would not eat, until I put in practice a method I never once knew to fail.

This was to have some of it dressed every day for the cabin table.

The moment they see their superior set of value upon it, it becomes the finest stuff in the world.

In all his voyages, Cook, the humanitarian, would not lose a single man to Skirvy.

But this voyage wasn't over yet, there were more discoveries ahead.

On April 19, 1770, Cook cited the land which would forge his name in history, New Holland.

He guided Endeavour into a beautiful bay.

You still arrive in New Holland at that ferry bay, it's the site of Sydney Airport.

Today, New Holland is Australia.

James Cook, Endeavour, just out there.

As he's being rode to shore, he clearly has a sense of occasion.

He knows the first man to step ashore will be remembered.

So he turns to his wife's cousin, 17-year-old Mitch Shipman, Isaac Smith, and says,

Isaac, you should go first.

New Holland was mind-blowing for Joseph Banks and his fellow naturalist, Dr. Solander.

Everything there was so different from any other place on earth.

The scientists collected samples of 130 unknown species of plant,

including one named after Banks himself, Banksier.

James Cook had already named this place Stingray Harbour, but he went back to his journal

and changed it to one that would become the most famous name in the land, Botany Bay.

But one thing mystified Cook.

There were few signs of the local inhabitants.

Unlike the Tahitians or Mari, the residents of New Holland made it clear.

They wanted nothing to do with these white visitors.

They wanted them to go away.

On May the 6th, 1770, his work done at Botany Bay,

Cook began working his way up the east coast of New Holland.

For three months, he methodically and meticulously charted this unknown land.

Cook had no way of knowing, but as he pushed up the east coast of New Holland,

he was putting the entire voyage at risk.

He was sailing in Devon straight into a trap, the Great Barrier Reef.

A marine minefield of treacherous coral outcrops over 1200 miles long,

the same distance as London to Moscow.

James Cook drove his ship onwards.

On June 11th, 1770,

Endeavour smashed onto the reef.

There were 100 men on board in Devon, the charts of New Zealand and the east coast of New Holland.

This was a priceless treasure ship.

Water gushed in.

The men threw stores, cannon overboard, anything to lighten the ship.

There were 20 miles from land, their lives hanging in the balance.

After more than 23 terrifying hours, they managed to float her off the reef.

Endeavour limped for three days towards the coastline.

James Cook watched plumes of smoke rising from the land.

Smoke meant people.

People only settled, where they could find fresh water.

James Cook pulled Endeavour in right here.

By now, the place was deserted, wherever it lit those fires was long gone.

We know from his records that he beat the ship right here in this exact spot,

and then pulled her up onto the mud, pushed her over to repair the hole in her side.

Sydney Parkinson, the ship's artist, then rode out roughly to where those boats are out there,

turned around and drew the scene.

What is so surprising about Cook is that he's managed all the rest of the voyage without doing this.

He's managed to avoid running a ground to heaty all the way around New Zealand,

most the way up the east coast of Australia, in and out of the barrier reef, remarkable.

He's making the charts as he goes, and he manages to run a ground just once.

That's absolutely stunning.

After seven weeks, Cook navigated the patched-up Endeavour out through the maze of the Great Barrier Reef.

18 days later, on 22 August 1770, Cook performed one of the most controversial acts of the whole voyage.

He claimed the entire east coast of New Holland for Britain.

It was an act which even today some regard as the illegal theft of a continent from its indigenous people.

The next day, Cook sailed north into open water and back onto the map.

Endeavour had finally rejoined the known world and now headed for the Dutch port of Batavia, modern Jakarta.

Endeavour was still in bad need of repair. Not long after they arrived, they took on water.

But that water was infected and disease struck.

It was James Cook's worst nightmare.

As they sailed for home, men he'd kept alive for two and a half years began to die.

March 13, 1771, South Africa.

By now, Cook had lost over a third of his men.

There were barely enough left to sail the ship into port.

So close to home, having taken his crew around the world without losing a single man to disease.

This was a tragedy for the man who cared so greatly for his men and devastating for someone who needed to be in control.

July 12, 1771, after two years and 11 months at sea, Endeavour cited the white cliffs of Dover.

Britain's great scientific voyage of discovery was finally over and it was time for Cook to leave his wooden world on board Endeavour.

James Cook headed home to Elizabeth and the family. He was expecting four children. But there were only two young James and Nathaniel.

Baby Joseph had died while Cook was away, and so too had his only daughter.

I've got children of my own, so the thought of Elizabeth mourning her little ones by herself really tugs at my heart.

She buried two of them here at St. Dunstan's church, not far from the family home at my land.

Baby Joseph and her namesake, the infant Elizabeth.

Canne and Pragmatic, she was raised in an ale house near the Thames, so knew what she was in for, marrying a sailor.

But James Cook was no ordinary sailor. In 16 years of marriage, they spent just four years together.

If James Cook was exceptional, he needed a wife who was every bit as tough and determined to hold their family together.

There really was a partnership despite the long years of separation. In her own way, she was just as remarkable as him.

On June 16th, 1772, Elizabeth gave birth to George, their fifth child.

Just five days later, James Cook said goodbye to Elizabeth and the children.

He was going to the other side of the world, and he might never return.

The admiralty still believed there were huge areas in the Southern Ocean where a vast landmass might be found.

But Cook had a second personal agenda, to chart the Southern Oceans and rid them of uncertainty.

Now he's on a voyage that he says will make his previous discoveries more perfect and complete, more perfect and complete.

That choice of words is really interesting. It gives us a valuable insight into his determination and his obsession.

On 13th July 1772, Cook and his new ship Resolution and the Adventure sailed from Plymouth.

It would take over three months to reach Table Bay at the Southern tip of Africa.

From here, they headed south towards Antarctica, where the ships entered a strange world of ice.

The first is occasioned by the beautifulness of the picture and the latter by the danger,

and can only be described by the end of an able painter.

The able painter was 29-year-old ship's artist, William Hodges.

He would show the world wonders, like these, the very first images of the Antarctic.

At 14 past 11 o'clock, we passed the Antarctic Circle and are undoubtedly the first and only ship that ever crossed that line.

James Cook continued his sweep of the Southern Ocean.

He'd been at sea for over four months and travelled over 10,000 miles without ever sighting land.

But something was happening to Cook, the man who always wanted to be in control, began to show glimpses that all wasn't well.

He was suffering so greatly from his stomach that he was in a great sweat and could hardly stand.

He was indeed hardly remarkable that, after so great a responsibility and so prodigious a strain on both his mental and physical capacities, he should be completely exhausted.

And a Sparman, HMS Resolution.

Cook recovered and the vast blank which was the Pacific Ocean was now being meticulously filled in by the hand of this master chart maker.

Yet the growing sense of order on the chart contrasted with the growing disorder in his temper.

Increasingly unpredictable, the new Cook was at times a far cry from the controlled man his crew was used to.

On this voyage, Cook had achieved his ambition, to go as far as it was possible for a man to go.

But had he pushed himself too far?

Physically and mentally, flaws are beginning to show in this discovering genius.

Flaws that will ultimately lead to his death.

The summer of 1776 finds James Cook here, in Skanstik Greenwich Hospital, a retirement home for sailors.

Cook was bored and restless. At 48 he was the most celebrated sailor of his age.

He had completed two extraordinary voyages of discovery and he was about to be called out of retirement to start a third.

Cook had been asked to dinner with the three most important men in the British Navy.

They wanted him to lead one final voyage of exploration. They wanted him to find the fabled North West Passage.

And the reason was Britain's love of tea, most of which came from Asia.

The main trade route to the riches of Asia was around the bottom of Africa and across the Indian Ocean.

But the Portuguese had controlled that for almost 300 years.

The answer was to go the other way round, over the top of the world.

A passage northwest from Britain up to the Arctic down into the Pacific and round to China, cutting the distance almost by half.

Like the great southern unknowns, the Northwest Passage was one of those great cartographic mysteries.

What happened in the northern coastline of Canada? What was there at the North Pole?

From the very start of this voyage, James Cook was under enormous pressure.

He only had a few months to prepare. He scoured the existing charts and accounts of previous voyages, but most of them were useless fantasies.

Look at the quality of information he has to deal with. This Russian map purports to be a very accurate little map, but just look here.

Alaska is shown as an island. This strait doesn't even exist, yet Cook's been sent north to sell through it and find the Northwest Passage.

But there were other worrying signs that James Cook's third great voyage would have its problems.

One thing he wasn't doing, something he'd always done, was to check personally the ship, the supplies and the equipment for the voyage.

He's neglecting the very thing that ensured his success on his other voyages.

He said farewell to Elizabeth. She knew she faced years of separation, but even she couldn't guess it would be 56 years of being alone.

They would never see each other again.

In June 1776, the expedition set sail. Cook used two ships, resolution which he'd command, and discovery.

Once again he would travel around Africa and enter the Pacific from the east, before heading north to the Canadian coast in his search for the Northwest Passage.

For some of his loyal crew, this would be their third voyage with Cook.

One newcomer is ship's master, the brilliant but prickly William Blythe.

He'll become notorious for the mutiny on the bounty, but for now he wants to sail with Cook, the great navigator.

But as the voyage progressed, Cook, the cool humane captain underwent a dramatic disturbing change.

He loses temporary. He starts to shout and yell at the officers and men. He starts to lose control of his emotions.

There's a tragic inevitability that it's not going to end well.

If his behaviour was growing erratic towards the end of the second voyage, on the third it was getting worse.

Heaver, the name of the dances of the southern islanders, which bore so great a resemblance to the violent motions and stampings on the deck of Captain Cook.

It was a common saying among both officers and people. The old boy has been tipping a heaver.

James Trevennan, midshipman, HMS resolution.

James Cook did have big problems. He was battling the wind and supplies were stretched to the limit. He'd also missed the northern summer, which meant extending the trip by another year.

The Cook of Old would have maintained his composure. This new cook has a mean streak and he takes it out on others.

The first to feel this was the island of Maria near Tahiti. When the locals stole the ship's goat, Cook got so angry he set fire to their boat and village in revenge.

Thus this troublesome and rather unfortunate affair ended, which could not be more regretted on the part of the natives than it was on mine.

The once peaceful James Cook was now becoming increasingly ruthless with the indigenous people he met and his crew began to notice the change.

Captain Cook punished in a manner rather unbecoming of a European by cutting off their ears, firing at them with small shot as they were swimming or having to show them, beating them with the oars and sticking them boat or interlant.

George Gilbert, midshipman, HMS resolution.

Cook was aware of his changing behaviour, but it seems he was unable to control it.

Actually, I sometimes wonder if he just wasn't a little bit depressed because depression wasn't a condition that one admitted to or diagnosed back in the 1700s.

Another more simple explanation might be that he just wore the burden of command for too long. He was worn down by continual responsibility.

Cook had been away for over 18 months when he sailed up towards the North American continent. It was from here, new Albion, that he began his search for the Northwest Passage.

New Albion included what we now call Canada. Here James Cook met the Maochat, the people of the deer. Cook's crew were the first white men they'd ever seen.

In James Cook arrived in these waters. It's said that the people who came out to meet him directed into a village. And that's it over there. The village of Yukot.

James Cook's ship resolution is really falling apart. Sloppy defence contractors aren't just a modern problem. The ship rights back home have done a terrible job. And he now needs to chop down these trees to replace masts and make new timbers. All work that should have been overseen by Cook in London, not thousands of kilometres away here.

After a month in Nutka, James Cook sailed off in search of the Northwest Passage. It was the start of his last great quest.

Cook's ships crawled along the tortuous Alaskan coastline. Every bay and inlet was methodically checked. Any of them might have revealed the elusive route back to Britain. Weeks and months drifted by. There was no sign of cooking.

Cook's prize, no sign of a quick route home.

Cook should have been in his element. On previous journeys, his obsession with meticulous charting of unfamiliar coastlines had driven his crew to distraction. But now it was doing the same to him.

One huge bay alone took 16 days to explore to his satisfaction. Could it be he was starting to doubt himself? What if the Northwest Passage didn't really exist?

What if this last great voyage was a waste of time?

In August 1778, resolution and discovery entered the Arctic Ocean. The two ships beat drums and fired guns to keep track of each other. Here, James Cook entered a world shrouded in fog.

The Russian maps he'd gathered in London were useless.

What could induce him to publish so erroneous a map? But the most illiterate of his illiterate seafaring men would have been ashamed to put his name to her.

James Cook's behaviours beginning to horrify his men. He runs with the wind in fog so thick they can barely see the length of the ship. Suddenly he hears the sound of crashing surf and orders the ship halted.

When the fog clears, they realise they've hurtled through a gap in the rocks a little wider than the ship herself.

Providence had conducted us through these rocks where I should not have ventured on a clear day. And to such an anchor in place I could not have chosen better.

Desperate for fresh meat, James Cook had some walrus butchered and orders his men to eat it. They found walrus disgusting and refused. In a fit of peak, he cut their rations.

That's completely out of character for him and shows just how badly he was losing the control, the respect of his crew. That's something that's never happened before.

I now take the extraordinary step of writing him a letter of complaint.

This is a very mutinous proceeding. Every innovation of mine, sauerkraut all of them, have been designed by me to keep my people free from the dreadful distemper scurvy.

James Cook's world was spiralling out of control. A ship that was falling apart maps that were useless fantasies. He'd been at sea for a year and after just three weeks in the Arctic Ocean, he'd hit a wall of ice. And it was not even winter yet.

Now even the world's greatest explorer had to admit defeat.

James Cook probably would have seen it as a failure of science. But perhaps it was a failure of the man. Perhaps he shouldn't have agreed to leave this voyage. He was almost 50. He'd spent most of the last ten years at sea under the sort of pressure that most captains never experienced.

When he was younger, he seemed to thrive on this. But now it was taking its toll. Where once he led solely by example, now he would sometimes resort to using fear and threats.

He was losing the respect of his crew and officers and the people he met in these new lands.

With the northern winter looming, it would be months before he could search again for the Northwest Passage. He desperately needed somewhere warm to rest and resupply. So he took his two ships back to the Pacific to a place that he discovered on his journey north, the Samwaj islands. Today we know them as Hawaii.

Amazingly Cook sailed around them for six weeks without landing. His crew thought their commander was out of his mind. They certainly were watching the land pass by day after day. Cook offered no explanation and they didn't dare ask.

Finally, resolution and discovery entered a wide bay and dropped anchor.

You still enter Kailakakua Bay, the way James Cook saw it, but the reception he received was astonishing. So many people came out and clambered aboard resolution and discovery that both ships started to list.

I had nowhere. In the course of me voyages, it seems so numerous a body of people assembled at one place. Besides those in canoes, all the shore were covered in spectators and many hundreds were swimming about the ships like shores of fish.

After almost three weeks, resolution and discovery resupply and leave.

James Cook's going back again to hammer away at the ice at the Northwest Passage.

But just a few days out of here, resolution breaks a mast. It's that shoddy working ship he never oversaw in London, coming back to haunt him.

The ships have to return.

This time, there was no big welcome. The Hawaiians had already given James Cook everything they had and were far from happy to see the ships return.

The Hawaiians make it very plain that their patience is more thin. The level of thefts goes up very considerably. And this is a sign that the chiefs no longer are protecting him.

He'd outstate his welcome. He was no longer an honoured guest. He was no damn nuisance. And relations change.

It's the 14th of February, 1779. James Cook awakes to learn that during the night, one of his ships boats has been stolen. The events of the day now move very fast.

He orders the bay to be blockaded, discovery on that side of the bay, sealing it, resolution sealing the other side.

James Cook has decided to pick a fight.

James Cook arrives on this beach, he's armed with nine marines. They head up towards a large village here called Ka'aviloa, is perhaps the most sacred site on the island.

He marches into this sacred village, goes straight to the chief's house and seizes him.

Cook intends to keep him hostage until he gets his boat back.

James Cook brings the chief down here to the water's edge and made a gathering crowd of Hawaiians. Hundreds on this beach are more lining the rocks. To their eyes, James Cook's behaviour is a huge insult.

On the other side of the bay, William Bly ever aggressive, orders his men to open fire on a canoe trying to breach the blockade. They kill a high ranking warrior, a tidal wave of anger and sweeps along the shoreline. The beach erupts into a volley of stones.

James Cook himself fires the first shot, killing a man. Then the Hawaiians attack.

James Cook died right here. The sailors watching helplessly, his body has hacked to pieces.

But what actually killed Cook wasn't daggers or stones or drowning. It was the belief that he could control every situation. That's the tragedy of his death.

In his three epic voyages, James Cook had proved himself one of the greatest explorers this world has ever seen. The empire would make him a hero, but the truth about Cook the man was washed away.

I think the real Cook was more complex, more fascinating and that his personal journey was perhaps the most dramatic of the war.

What I found is perhaps an unpalatable truth. The ambitious, decent man who saw the human in everyone, that man lost himself along the way. So a genius, yes, but a flawed and lonely genius.

And perhaps that's the real reason why his wife Elizabeth burned those letters, to try to keep Captain Cook the man for herself, so that only the legend remained.

We're spending a night amongst the animals here on BBC4 Tomorrow. Join us for a sleepover at the zoo at 9.

Next tonight, there is our world movie premiere, conspiracy and clandestine surveillance in 80s East Germany. Drama coming up in Barbara.