[rousing music] ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): Extraordinary, iconic, lethal.

These incredible ships have told our story for the past 400 years and defined what it means to be part of our island nation.

♪ ♪ I'm Rob Bell.

And in this series, I'll be exploring Britain's greatest ships.

In this episode, I discover the amazing story of HMB Endeavour, a humble coal barge from Yorkshire that transformed our understanding of the world.

PETER MOORE: They were going to places that people hadn't been to before, and there was always a sense that something exciting was going to turn up.

ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): With her famous captain, James Cook, she sailed to the edge of the Earth to reveal a world of mystery and wonder.

Endeavour was a ship like no other.

So how did she end up in a watery grave off the East Coast of America?

[waves crashing] ♪ ♪ In the 18th century, Britain was competing with her European rivals to claim as much of the world as possible, and Britain was surging ahead.

Of all the famous ships associated with exploration and empire building, few are more revered than Endeavour.

ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): A ship that changed the world.

[grand music] ROB BELL: She was sent to the other side of the globe on two missions for king and country, one of them top secret.

They would make the ship and her captain, James Cook, the stuff of legend.

♪ ♪ ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): His first mission was to sail to a remote island in the South Pacific and take a vital astronomical reading of a phenomenon that wouldn't happen again for more than a hundred years.

But if this wasn't a big enough deal as it was, it was Cook's other top secret mission that would see him sail his trusty ship into the pages of history.

There had been voyages which went across the Pacific, but generally they went across a narrow belt right in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

So to the north of that, to the south of that, people weren't really sure what was there.

♪ ♪ ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): The South Pacific was the last ocean to remain largely unexplored.

And Britain wanted to be the first European power to find and exploit its riches.

The admiralty knew that for a very special mission, they'd need a very special ship.

So what would they choose to take on the unknown dangers on the other side of the world, a mighty galleon, or a speedy naval frigate perhaps?

Nope.

They chose a coal ship.

[rousing music] ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): This is a full-sized replica of Endeavour, whose story started here in Whitby, as a bark carrying coal from Tyneside to London.

♪ ♪ You can see from the shape that it's all about carrying large loads.

It's a strong, wide ship with this blunt bow and a broad rear end.

And with only three masts, her rigging was light compared to a long-distance cruiser.

Let's face it, she's no ocean going swan.

But to the admiralty and to Cook, she had hidden charms.

Now, don't take this the wrong way, but she was shallow, with a flat bottom.

♪ ♪ ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): This made her much more versatile than many of the navy's other vessels.

♪ ♪ A battleship like HMS Victory had a massive keel, which stopped her from capsizing during a storm.

But she couldn't be landed on a beach or tipped onto her side and repaired, all of which you can do with a flat-bottomed boat.

♪ ♪ ROB BELL: The admiralty was clearly expecting Endeavour to come in for a bit of rough treatment, and in the 18th century, if you needed a tough vessel for a tough job, you'd be well-advised to put a ship made in Whitby at the top of your list.

They had a reputation for being exceptionally strong.

ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): Even then, the admiralty spent nearly 6,000 pounds upgrading her for the mission ahead, almost three times as much as it had cost to build her.

A false keel was added and extra planks nailed to the hull to protect against tropical sea worm eating away at the wood.

This was then covered in copper sheeting to prevent barnacles and seaweed growing on the hull that would cause drag in the water.

Finally, six 4-pounder cannons were added on deck, with four more below.

Endeavour was ready for action.

♪ ♪ The ship wasn't the only unusual choice for this top-level mission for king and country.

The captain himself would be plucked from relative obscurity.

ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): James Cook was the son of a farm laborer.

He moved to Whitby when he was just 17 to become a ship's apprentice.

The house he lived in is now a museum, and this attic is where he used to sleep.

It feels like we're right in the middle of the harbor here because there's a lot of noise.

Can I have a quick look to see, get my bearings a little bit?

- Yes.

- So let's have a look.

[laughs] We are right in the heart of all the action here in Whitby.

There was no escaping it.

Yes, there were shipyards, dry docks, rope walks, provisioning merchants, carpenters, you name it, all the way up both sides of the river.

ROB BELL: As well as all those merchant ships in and out all the time.

Yes.

At the time that Cook came here, there were at least 250 ships owned by Whitby men.

ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): Many were colliers carrying coal and timber along the East Coast, and to ports as far afield as St.

Petersburg.

It was on boats like these that Cook would spend the next nine years learning how to navigate and handle a ship in the tricky North Sea.

These were all skills which gave him an advantage when he joined the Royal Navy, and he rose quickly through its ranks.

♪ ♪ Writing in his journal as a junior navy officer, Cook stated his ambition-- to go further than any man had gone before.

There's no doubt that Cook was a master of the art of sailing.

And if he ever had any doubts about the success of his missions or the ship he was given, he never showed them.

But as a captain, would he be able to sail a coal ship off the map to the other side of the world?

♪ ♪ In August 1768, Cook set sail from Plymouth for the other side of the world, in a packed ship.

The Navy's choice of vessel for the mission, a coal bark, worked on paper.

It was strong, could carry lots, and it could be beached without a port.

But with her new adventures as Endeavour, she would carry a very different type of burden.

♪ ♪ ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): This model of a coal bark shows how tricky it would be to cram in over 90 men into a space that's little more than a hundred feet long.

There were officers and able-bodied seaman on board, as well as a carpenter, a sailmaker, a surgeon, and a gunner.

Stuffed into the hold was enough food for 18 months-- flour, beer, salt beef, and sauerkraut, along with two dozen chickens and a herd of sheep.

PETER MOORE: So if you think about how small that ship is, it's really like the size of a small village packed all together.

ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): But despite all these men and animals living in such close proximity, it worked surprisingly well.

PETER MOORE: One of the things that Cook was really good at, he was quite a good manager of people, so they used to think of ships as being either happy ships or unhappy ships.

And I think Endeavour was generally quite a happy ship.

ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): What set Endeavour apart were the 11 men on board who weren't sailors, but scientists and artists who were there to record the natural world.

The best known was Joseph Banks, one of the wealthiest men in England.

He was a botanist and always up for an adventure.

They were going to places that people haven't really been to before.

And there was always a sense that something exciting was going to turn up, that they might see something like they did when they got to Australia, when they saw the kangaroo, or when they were coming to New Zealand and they saw these strange birds that they'd never seen or heard before.

So they had the scientists.

They had the sailors.

You had Cook managing it.

But it functioned surprisingly well.

ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): Looking after his men was only one of the challenges Cook faced.

He first had to find his way across the world's largest and deepest ocean.

It would all be down to his highly skilled navigation to ensure that Endeavour stayed on course and stayed afloat.

So how do you navigate a vast open ocean like the Pacific when the landmarks, if there are any, haven't been drawn onto a map yet?

One of the key bits of navigation equipment in the 18th century was something called a sextant, and it would look something like this.

Its basic principle is that it allows you to measure the angle between two fixed points in the sky.

So that could be between the horizon and the sun, or the horizon and the North Star.

So if I try and measure the angle here between the horizon and the sun at the moment-- I'm gonna look through here.

First, I'm gonna try and find the sun through the clouds.

And I gotta try and keep myself steady on a heaving ship.

Easier said than done.

Line up, line up.

So now if I try and hold that there-- right, about there-- this allows me to measure that angle.

So I've got about 48 degrees there.

I then compare 48 degrees and find that on charts of data.

And that would give me my latitude, my position around the globe in a north-south direction.

ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): It took three weeks to reach Madeira, where Cook would restock before crossing the Atlantic.

But even on such a routine stop, anything could go wrong.

As they were lowering the anchor, a sailor became entangled with the rope.

He was dragged overboard and drowned.

Cook couldn't afford to sail into the unknown without a full crew, but most sailors would have been quite wary about signing up to a mission that might have been dangerous.

Back in the 18th century, though, there was a simple solution to this kind of problem.

♪ ♪ Cook and his men identified a likely looking American sailor on the dockside, kidnapped him, and then set sail immediately so he had no chance to escape.

It's a practice known as "Shanghaiing," so-called because Shanghai is where many of these abducted sailors ended up.

ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): Being forced to join a ship was just one of the many occupational hazards for a sailor during the 18th century.

If the sea didn't kill you, disease often did.

And one of the biggest killers was a lack of vitamin C, which caused scurvy.

PETER MOORE: It was a terrible disease, not just the fact that it had physically.

We know about people's teeth falling out and their gums swelling up and becoming kind of physically weakened and dying.

The other thing is its psychological effects on the human brain, which is almost a bit like a psychedelic trip, in a way.

So you'll get these really strange stories of sailors seeing blood red sea or scaring with fright at the smell of some flowers, or seeing things in intense greens.

And this, again, is a scurvied mind trying to interpret reality.

ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): It caused so many deaths that captains often sailed with twice as many men as they needed, because they expected to lose half their crew ROB BELL: With the Pacific being so far away, was scurvy a kind of barrier to exploring the unknown?

Yeah, absolutely, because of just the sheer size of it.

Once you're at sea, the longer you're away from a port, the more likely you are to suffer from scurvy.

[suspenseful music] ♪ ♪ ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): It took eight long weeks to cross the Atlantic, but when Cook arrived at Rio de Janeiro for much needed supplies, the Portuguese viceroy refused to let him dock.

Endeavour looked like a cargo ship, and the viceroy suspected Cook of being either a smuggler or a spy.

This was serious.

If Cook couldn't replenish his stocks, they wouldn't be able to go any further.

And as they waited, another sailor fell overboard and drowned.

It took the Portuguese more than three weeks to let Cook buy what he needed.

And then, as Endeavour finally got underway, a cannon was fired across its bow, delaying them for another two days.

ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): On the 7th of December, Endeavour finally left Portuguese waters and headed towards the tip of South America.

♪ ♪ Now, Cook faced the biggest challenge of his voyage so far-- Cape Horn.

Today it's known as the Everest of sailing and it's no exaggeration.

Three mighty oceans-- the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Antarctic-- all coming together at the tip of South America, creating powerful currents, unpredictable winds, and huge waves.

[waves roaring] ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): Cook had deliberately chosen a vessel with a shallow keel, but a deep keel is exactly what's needed to keep a ship on course in high seas.

There were still miles of the Pacific to cross to get to Tahiti for the astronomical survey.

Cook must have wondered if the choice of ship would deal a fatal blow to his mission after all.

ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): After Cook rounded the Cape, the winds pushed him further and further south into rain, mists, and squalling seas.

The only signs of life were the albatrosses.

All he could do was wait until the winds changed and pushed his ship northwards towards Tahiti.

ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): On the 13th of April, 1769, Endeavour finally reached its shores.

After a grueling eight months at sea, it must have seemed like paradise.

[soft symphony music] ♪ ♪ Endeavour was only the second British ship to reach Tahiti.

HMS Dolphin had landed there the year before and it hadn't gone well.

The Tahitians were terrified at the sight of their first European ship and threw stones at it.

The British retaliated by firing cannons back at them.

[cannon blast] Cook was determined to avoid a repeat of this first awful encounter.

ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): This time, good relations with the Tahitians were vital.

Nothing could be allowed to interfere with the mission, to try and understand the workings of the solar system.

Scientists from all over Europe would be stationed in far flung parts of the world to witness this rare astronomical event.

ROB BELL: What is the transit of Venus?

In simplest terms, it's when the planet Venus passes across the face of the sun.

By getting a good observation of this, and not just one observation but lots of observations from different dispersed places on the planet, they would be able to solve one of the greatest problems in astronomy at the time, which is the exact mathematical understanding of the dimensions of the solar system-- how far away are we from the sun?

Now, for the enlightened mind, that was a centrally important question.

ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): If they didn't succeed, it would be over a hundred years before they could try again.

Cook built an observation site on the north of the island.

But when it came to calculating how long it took for Venus to cross the sun, an optical illusion meant that Cook missed the first contact.

Neither he nor the other observers were able to measure the transit with any accuracy.

It was always going to be imperfect just because of the technology they had at the time.

And Cook, with his mania for precision, you can imagine how this ate away at him.

Cook and his men had sailed for eight months around the globe, surviving malnutrition, some of the roughest seas in the world, and dodging armed conflicts at foreign ports, only to be thwarted by atmospheric conditions at their once-in-a-century opportunity.

Cook and his astronomers must have felt crushed by defeat at this prospect of returning home empty-handed.

ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): But Cook had another mission.

This one was entirely British.

And for this, they literally had to sail into the unknown.

[dramatic music] It wasn't until Endeavour was on the other side of the world that Cook locked his cabin door and opened an envelope that he'd been carrying in secret for over a year.

It contained orders, not from the royal society but from the admiralty, a mission from King George III himself.

Cook was to continue deep into the uncharted South Pacific to look for a fabled land they called Terra Australis Incognita, "the unknown southern land."

ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): Cook had to tell his men that they weren't going home.

And from now on, there wasn't even an accurate map.

For Cook, this would be a challenge like no other.

He would be sailing southwest towards Australia.

And at the time, people only had a very hazy idea of what Australia actually was.

Dutch explorers had traveled its northern and western edges, but they lost interest when they didn't find any women or spices.

As for New Zealand, they thought it was part of the unknown southern land.

Up until that point, European ships had only ever approached from the west.

Cook would be sailing from the east, and nobody had ever done that before.

ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): Among the maps at the Captain Cook Memorial Museum is one from 1753, which Cook may have taken with him.

ROB BELL: So this is pretty much what he had to go on, is it?

SOPHIE FORGAN: That's what he had to go on, yes.

When you see it like this and you think about this is what they had to navigate with, it's a bit scary, actually, I think.

I think you had to be very confident of your abilities as a seaman and a navigator.

ROB BELL: And then how powerful would it be to have the knowledge of what this coastline actually looked like for-- possibly for opening up future trade?

And it puts in perspective the level of knowledge that there was about the world.

You can understand that desire and the drive they would have been for that enlightenment.

ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): But it was a journey fraught with difficulty.

The society islands were surrounded by jagged coral shoals on which it would be all too easy to run aground.

Fortunately, Cook had a navigator on board who knew these islands intimately, a man he'd met in Tahiti called Tupaia.

He's a political refugee from one of the neighboring society islands.

And he's there, he's a man of status, great status in the caste system in the Polynesian islands there.

And he's got immense knowledge of things like navigation and voyaging.

So for a few weeks in the middle of 1769, you have this Whitby Cole Collier in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, being navigated by a Polynesian star navigator.

ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): We're only just beginning to understand how skilled these early Polynesian sailors were.

Hundreds of years earlier, they'd sailed east across the vast emptiness of the Pacific to colonize land as far afield as Hawaii, New Zealand, and Easter Island.

And really, if you look at the map, how did people with their canoes and paddles and not the advantages of technology, manage to do that?

ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): Tupaia navigated from one island to the other through close observation of the natural world.

He read the wind and bird movements and followed the stars, knowledge which had been passed down through the generations.

His drawing of the society islands is the first ever known Polynesian map of the area.

But soon, even Tupaia's knowledge was stretched beyond its limits.

[suspenseful music] ♪ ♪ Cook was about to plunge into a part of the world where few had ever ventured.

The admiralty believed that this mysterious Southern continent lay directly South of the society islands, at a latitude of 40 degrees.

But when they got there, there was no sign of land, only, as Cook wrote in his journal, high seas.

So he turned his ship northwest and headed towards New Zealand.

[tranquil music] ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): Cook and his men had now been at sea for 14 long months.

And when they arrived at Poverty Bay, it must have reminded them of England.

But they were soon to discover that New Zealand was nothing like the land they'd left behind.

The day after they arrived, Cook, Banks, and some of his crew sailed to shore.

They could see some of the Maori with long pikes in their hands.

Then they did something that Cook had never seen before, an aggressive tribal ritual that Cook described as a "dancing war song."

This was the first haka ever witnessed by a British crew.

But this encounter with the Maori didn't end well.

When one of them stole a sword, he was shot dead, and relations with the Maori never really improved for the whole time Cook was in New Zealand.

ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): The Maori were doing what they could to protect their land.

And to Cook and his crew, they must have looked formidable.

Even their appearance seemed designed to inspire fear, in part because of their tattoos.

Cook had come across them before, but never like this.

Andy, do we know much about those early tattoos that were found on the South Pacific Islanders?

I mean, do we know if they had any meaning or what they stood for?

We know quite a bit, yeah.

We know that, like most primitive art, they stood for the things that surrounded the islanders.

So, for example, turtles were a large part of the islanders life.

They also depict waves.

They depict the plants that were around them, but crafted in such a way over thousands and thousands of years so it's developed into its own unique form of art.

When Cook and his crew landed, they saw all these painted people, these huge guys who were tattooed head to foot.

And when they're tattooed, they have three or four guys holding them down.

If you show any sign of weakness whatsoever, it's the highest form of dishonor.

So these sailors, they were rough, tough guys.

I think they said to themselves, we can do that.

And so not just a badge of "we've done this," but a badge of "I've been through that."

Yeah, I've been through-- I've been through the pain and got my tattoo.

Absolutely.

ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): But there's no time today for a full-blown tattoo, so I'm going for a stencil.

Let's just pop this on you.

It's not going to hurt at all.

- Ah.

- [laughs] I am intrigued as to how much it hurts, but-- ANDY BROADHEAD: It doesn't.

That's your stencil.

That's on.

So the anchor would signify that I'd-- ANDY BROADHEAD: That you've crossed over the Atlantic.

I've crossed over the Atlantic.

ANDY BROADHEAD: You've crossed over the Atlantic.

Well, I have crossed over the Atlantic, but not in a ship.

ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): Now, I'm curious to see what the needle actually feels like.

Is that it?

ANDY BROADHEAD: There you go.

Is that it?

ANDY BROADHEAD: And it is literally as simple and easy as that.

Oh, well, I don't know what the fuss is about.

[laughs] There you go.

I didn't need anybody holding me back there.

I was-- - Well, this is it.

- I'm obviously-- You'd have made a fine sailor.

I'm obviously tougher than some of those sailors that went around the world with Cook.

ANDY BROADHEAD: Absolutely, absolutely.

It's a doddle.

ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): Cook had plenty of opportunities to study the Maori as he sailed around New Zealand.

He was the first European to realize that it was two separate islands.

It took him six months to draw the first ever map, six months of measuring angles and meticulously mapping every inch of coastline.

It was a particular skill of his and one he'd learned in Newfoundland soon after he joined the Navy.

Well, you can see just how difficult it is.

I mean, look at all these inlets and, what, fjords here and-- SOPHIE FORGAN: Well, fjords or river bases.

If you look at there, it says "rocks above water" and "rocks under water."

ROB BELL: Oh, wow.

So this creates, shall we say, the safest possible guide to navigation on a coastline that is shrouded in fog or rain for many months of the year.

ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): Cook was an early pioneer of measuring both on and off shore to give the most accurate results.

He's constantly getting off the ship and taking a small ship around and landing and doing the surveying from on land.

It's amazing.

Was this then almost the start of Cook's fearsome reputation as this navigator extreme, who was probably better than most, if not anybody knew within the Navy at the time?

It certainly underlies his later, if you like, fearsome reputation.

And it's one of the reasons why he was selected to captain Endeavour.

ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): As Cook was mapping New Zealand, Joseph Banks and the other scientists on board were cataloging the plant and animal life they found on the islands.

They were collecting insects and fish and birds.

They took nets with them, fishing hooks, all sorts of things.

This was the best equipped scientific voyage that had ever taken place.

ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): But there was also a more mercenary reason for their investigations.

Cook had been asked to find suitable places to build British ports.

And a port needs three things-- a natural harbor, wood to repair ships, and fibrous plants to make rope.

This, they found in abundance.

So what we have here is-- the large plants are phormium, or New Zealand flax.

It was used by Indigenous people for things like rope-making, nets, baskets, weaving, all those sorts of things, a really, really versatile and useful plant.

Nobody had ever seen it in this country.

That's the amazing thing about it.

Banks didn't just collect plants because they looked pretty.

Banks was interested in how Indigenous peoples use those plants.

He took his time to record all of the things that they were being used for.

So he knew how useful these plants were, and he brought back that knowledge with him.

So here we have another plant that's caught Joseph Banks' attention.

This is a plant from New Zealand.

It's called bushman's toilet paper, and obviously had a use.

The Indigenous peoples took an extract from it and used it as a gum as to make your breath smell cleaner, but I don't think we'll try that today.

ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): By the end of March 1770, it had been 19 months since they'd left England, and it was time to go home.

Cook had three options-- travel back the way they'd come, head south around Tasmania, or west towards Australia and up its East Coast.

Along almost 2,000 miles of uncharted coastline, this was the route Cook chose.

When Cook arrived at Botany Bay, he was the first known European ever to land on Australia's Eastern Seaboard, and it wasn't a particularly auspicious occasion.

You can only imagine the horror of the Aboriginal people at the site of Endeavour, of men fully clothed, carrying weapons they weren't afraid of using.

Their spears were no match for the British musket.

But Cook had no idea that disaster was waiting, and that it would mean almost the end of Endeavour and her entire crew.

[suspenseful music] After 22 months at sea, Endeavour was finally on her way home.

As Cook hugged the shoreline of Australia's Eastern Seaboard, he had no idea he was sailing so close to one of the world's greatest natural barriers until he crashed into it.

ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): The Great Barrier Reef stretches for over 1,600 miles.

At a few minutes before 11:00 PM-- [wood creaking, snapping] --Endeavor collided with the reef.

The ship stuck fast, water leaked into the hull, and they were eight miles from the nearest land.

Cook would later name this place "Cape Tribulation."

After taking the agonizing decision to dump valuable cargo, such as cannon and drinking water, overboard, at the next high tide, Endeavour was finally hauled off the reef and floated free, together with a lump of coral the size of a man's fist, still plugging the hole.

There was no way of telling how long they'd last navigating their way out of the dangers on the reef.

But one of the crewmen, Jonathan Monkhouse, had an ingenious suggestion, to pull a damaged sail packed with old rope under the hull of the ship, a technique known as fothering.

ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): It might sound straightforward, but it's a lot harder to do underwater.

To start off, they needed to create some kind of wadding to pack out the holes.

And they'd do that by using anything they had on ship.

Rope was normally pretty handy if you tuft it all out and broke it down into its fibers here.

They also had animals on board, so things like sheep's wool would have been added into that as well.

There we go.

Just make a bit of a mess really here, something you could pack into a hole.

That'll do for now.

Then, to bind all these fibers together, they needed something that was sticky, sap from trees nearby maybe, or resin that had come out of the fibers on the ship.

Failing that, though, there were animals on board, you could always opt for old faithful-- a bit of animal dung.

Got some of that here.

Look.

So mash all that up together.

Once you had all of this mixture, though, grabbing maybe a damaged sail, they'd pack all of this fibrous, sticky, gunky mixture into the sail.

And then using ropes, they'd haul it right underneath the hull of the ship, something like this.

So that's right under there.

So then, because of the water pressure pushing up onto the sail, this sticky gunk would be pushed and squeezed into the gaps, filling those holes.

It's a technique that's still used today.

ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): Their improvised patch kept her afloat for six days until they were able to land her on a riverbank and tip her onto her side, which wouldn't have been possible if she'd had a deeper keel.

Once again, the choice of ship in Endeavour was to save the day.

ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): When she was on dry land, Cook was able to examine her wrecked hull.

The razor-edged coral had sliced through four planks of wood and damaged another three.

It would take seven weeks to repair.

Cook sent some of his men off to hunt.

When they came back, they told him about an animal they'd seen that was mouse colored and swift of foot.

They'd just seen their first kangaroo.

Soon afterwards, in the great spirit of 18th century colonial exploration, they shot one and brought it back.

Cook noted in his journal that it had excellent meat.

ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): Once Endeavour was seaworthy again, Cook continued northwards.

As he rounded the tip of Australia, he claimed the entire East Coast for Britain.

18 years later, it became the country's first penal colony after 11 ships, all carrying convicts, landed at Sydney.

Life for the Aboriginal people would never be the same again.

[moderate music] ♪ ♪ ROB BELL: When Endeavour limped into Jakarta, she was leaking badly, and substantial repairs were required before the long journey home.

Up until that point, Cook had managed to keep his men healthy, but then it all went horribly wrong.

Jakarta was rife with disease and the crew fell ill with dysentery and malaria.

By the time Endeavour left port, seven of Cook's men had died.

ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): One of those men was Tupaia, the Polynesian star navigator who'd done so much to guide Cook on his journey across the South Pacific.

Ahead of them lay a terrifying eight-month journey across some of the world's roughest oceans.

[dramatic music] [thunder rolling] ♪ ♪ [waves crashing] ♪ ♪ ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): On the 13th of July, 1771, Endeavour dropped anchor off the Coast of Kent.

She'd been away for almost three years.

Her hold was filled with paintings, animals, and objects from the places they'd visited, along with over 30,000 plant specimens.

In all, Banks had discovered 1,400 new species and increased the number known to science by a massive 10%.

As for Cook, he'd charted 8,000 miles of coastline and single-handedly filled in almost all the blanks in the map of the world.

[moderate music] ♪ ♪ ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): The admiralty wanted to keep their exploits secret, but it wasn't long before news of their adventures leaked out and Cook and Banks were celebrated everywhere.

♪ ♪ Captain James Cook paved the way for the expansion of the British Empire, although he would never again sail in the ship that had made it possible.

♪ ♪ Endeavour was sold in 1775 and renamed Lord Sandwich 2.

The following year, she made her final transatlantic voyage, transporting British troops to the East Coast of America during the War of Independence.

And in the shallow waters of a Rhode Island harbor, she was unceremoniously sunk to block advancing French ships whos were coming to help the Americans.

And she's still there today, slowly rotting away beneath the waves.

[waves crashing] Captain Cook's luck ran out on his third and final voyage.

While he's in Hawaii, relations with the Islanders soured after the theft of a ship's boat.

A scuffle broke out when Cook tried to take the local leader hostage.

Cook was stabbed and killed.

♪ ♪ ROB BELL (VOICEOVER): But his legacy seems destined to go on forever.

In homage to his incredible mission, a timber fragment thought to be from Endeavour was placed on board the last NASA shuttle to be sent into space.

The name of that space shuttle was, of course, the Endeavour.

It is a phenomenal testament to a Yorkshire farm boy who rose through the ranks to pull off one of the most wildly ambitious scientific explorations in history.

And he couldn't have done it without a humble coal freighter whose very name has become a byword for bold exploration-- Endeavour.

[rousing music] ♪ ♪ [theme music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪