This is CBS Eye on the World. Here's John Batchelor.

This is CBS, I on the World. I'm John Batchelor. Spending time with Captain Cook, thanks to the extremely careful work and very clear writing of Hampton's Sides,

the book is the Wide Wide Sea.

This is imperial ambition, the contest with Spain, with France, with other powers in Europe,

claiming the vast Pacific and a search for the Northwest Passage that will give an enormous commercial

advantage to the nation that finds it and uses it. Captain Cook's third voyage now has left Tahiti,

well, part of Tahiti, the main island, the King George III Island, and they're stopping

at a part of the Society Islands called Moraya. It is still 1777,

and late 1777, October. And the crew, especially the officers, have observed that this isn't

the James Cook of the first two voyages, 1768 to 71 and 71 to 75, 72, 75.

Man has changed. He's older. He's impatient. He's imperial. And yet, Hampton, James Cook, at this point, is keen on on retaining all the pieces of his ship and the natives that he finds, the indigenous peoples, steal because their understanding of property is not anywhere close to what Europeans regard as property.

Also, they're without iron. We've noticed

that the Tahitians are fascinated with red feathers. Everybody else is fascinated with iron,

and also anything they can find that moves, they can steal. And we're on Morea. This is October

of 77. 1777. Cook is alarmed at a report that the Spanish have been here or might be coming back.

And then a goat goes missing.

What does the goat?

What does it mean to Cook?

We're looking at his personality now and how tired he was.

What did he do about the goat? So Captain Cook had a number

of animals on board his ships and he had these goats that had never, you know, ghosts had never been

seen before by by the people of the Tahitian Islands. And one of these goats, a nanny goat that was

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