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Hello and welcome to the Explorers Podcast. Today is part two in our series on English Explorers James Cook. In this episode we are going to begin Cook's first voyage of exploration, which will take him to the South Pacific and eventually around the world. You can see a map of Cook's Root on our website, Explorers Podcast.com.

Before we start, I want to talk about our source material. On all of Cook's voyages, he kept a detailed journal. Some of the other men on this ship kept journals as well, including Naturalist Joseph Banks. These are all incredible sources for scholars and myself. All of this material is, however, not without issues. For Cook's first voyage, the initial publication of his journal was combined with notes from Banks and others.

Essentially all the information was given to one man, John Hawksworth, who wrote up his own narrative. This did not thrill Cook and it led to an uneven publication.

There were other books published about Cook's life, but it wasn't until 1955 that Cook's full journals were actually published by New Zealand historian John Beagle-Hull.

The journals were released in four volumes and consist of more than 3,300 pages. It was quite the effort by Beagle-Hull, who also wrote a biography of Cook.

However, Beagle-Hull and many others who have written about Cook, idolizes his subject and glosses over the darker parts of Cook's voyages. But we have other sources to draw on as well to balance our view of Cook, which is pretty much what we do with any of our explorers.

In the end, I have a lot of great material to draw on for this podcast, but know that some stuff can be contradictory. Also, there's a lot of detail, and I mean a lot, that I don't share.

Anyhow, none of this is a problem, just standard operating procedure for the show. I'll share what I think is relevant for the series and try to present the narrative in the most accurate and interesting way possible.

Alrighty, let's get started.

It was the summer of 1768, 39-year-old James Cook had recently been appointed commander of the Endeavor and gotten a promotion to first Lieutenant as well.

Which the British I am told pronounced left-handed. Anyhow, Cook's published mission was to sail the Endeavor to Tahiti and let the science team observe the transit of Venus, the rarest of predictable astronomical phenomena. This was a great opportunity to advance the world's scientific knowledge.

But Cook had two other jobs as well, both labeled Secret by the British Admiralty.

First, after the transit of Venus was observed, Cook was to head south and search for Terra-Australis, the continent that many people believe existed nearer to the southern pole.

After determining the existence or not of the southern continent, Cook was then to go to New Zealand and map that area. It was also to explore any new islands or lands that he encountered in his travels.

Any other orders he had were off the book. One area not mentioned in Cook's orders was Easter in Australia, which was unvisited to date by Europeans. But the Admiralty likely told Cook to poke around there if the opportunity arose.

Anyhow, Cook's job in the summer of 1768 was to get the Endeavor ready to depart for the expedition.

The Endeavor, nearly 100 feet long and 30 feet wide, was a sturdy vessel whose characteristics were familiar to Cook as she was similar in build to the transports that Cook worked on before joining the Royal Navy.

These ships, called Cats, were built to withstand the violent waters of the North Sea. They were made to take abuse. Plus, they had a lot of cargo space, although this made the Endeavor a perfect vessel for the upcoming voyage.

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