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400 years ago, a trio of tiny kingdoms were perched on some damp islands off the coast of Europe.

Within three short centuries these islands would become the centre of an empire which ruled a quarter of the globe and on which the sun never set.

I'm Samuel Hume, a historian of the British Empire, and my podcast Pax Britannica follows the people and events that built that empire into a global superpower.

Learn the history of the British Empire by listening to Pax Britannica every way you find your podcasts or go to pod.linkslashpax.

Hello and welcome to the Explorers Podcast.

Today is Part 3 in our series on James Cook. Just a reminder to check out Explorers Podcasts.com if you want to see maps of Cook's voyages. Otherwise, one note for this episode.

Today's show is going to focus around Tahiti. When dealing with the Tahiti people, Cook and his team often used a mix of native names, plus names placed on the locals by the British, oftentimes because a person's name was difficult to pronounce, or because they wrote out an English pronunciation of the person's name and just butchered it in the process.

This means a person or place often has multiple names or spellings. It can be confusing, especially when reading through all the source materials.

Know that I will try and use the local names, but if you read books about Cook or his journals, you'll find all sorts of alternatives. It just goes with the territory.

Know that I will try to be as consistent as possible throughout the narrative. That is it for notes. Let's get on with the show.

We left Cook and the Endeavour arriving in Tahiti on April 12, 1769. The ship had sailed into Matavai Bay, where they were greeted by thousands.

Today we are going to cover Cook's time in Tahiti, including the observation of the transit of Venus and then his exploration of the surrounding islands. We will then take him on his search for Terra Australis.

So Cook and the Endeavour had reached Tahiti in good order. A few men had been lost due to accidents, but that was typical for a long ocean voyage.

The good news, no one had caught scurvy. A big reason for this was Cook's strict rules about clumbling this on the ship and the crew's diet. Cook's insistence on the men eating certain foods to combat scurvy, such as fresh meat and sauerkraut, had paid off.

In this time, Cook's personality had emerged and it very much reflected his early experiences of his time in Canada during and after the Seven Years War.

Cook was sober, orderly and meticulous. He prided himself in having good common sense. His ship and crew were a reflection of this. Things were well run, strict, but fair.

The crew respected their captain and perhaps his background helped him. We can't forget that Cook was a commoner who had worked his way up to the rank of commander. That was a rare thing.

I don't doubt the men felt a certain kinship to him and pride because of their shared background and what he had accomplished.

And so as the crew of Endeavor sailed into Maderville Bay and got their first look at the Polynesian Paradise, they found it was everything they had been told.

There were picturesque mountains and rivers, black volcanic sand beaches, crystal clear waters, thick green forests, and friendly people, which included beautiful women.

And so, after instructing his men how they were engaged with the islanders, Cook went about his business. He had to build an observatory so the science guides could record the transit of Venus, which we talked about in our first episode.

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