SAM NEILL: Tonga, in the South Pacific.
I'm about to do something
the great explorer Cook and his crew would never contemplate.
Yet today, it's one of the Pacific's rarest pleasures.
In Cook's time, these seas were heaving with whales.
But their terrible fate subsequently is well known.
But now they are back.
I'm wondering whether the resurgence of these giant creatures
might be a metaphor for the whole Pacific.
And in following Cook's second epic voyage,
I'm curious to see how this vast ocean is faring
after two and a half centuries.
Just how resilient are its people and its islands?
(VOLCANO ERUPTS)
Can something on the brink ever fully recover?
Most amazing experience.
That creature is three times the size of this boat.
And he's just...
..revolving and looking me in the eye. (LAUGHS)
Beautiful thing.
Cook's orders for his second voyage are, to say the least, ambitious.
He's instructed to search a full third of the globe
between the equator and the frozen south
to find the great southern continent.
For it was simply inconceivable to the geographers of the day
that the Pacific could be mainly just ocean.
So, what exactly was the great southern continent?
This had been an extremely potent idea
since the time of the ancient Greeks.
It was almost a given that there must be an enormous landmass
somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere to balance all that in the north.
Someone just had to find it.
It was just a year since Cook had ended his first journey.
And for his troubles, Cook's chief scientist, Joseph Banks,
took all the credit and the glory.
Bloody Banks.
This is really as close as I want to get to the Southern Ocean,
the most ferocious seas on the planet.
Cook, however, had no such qualms.
This is Cape Bruny. It's almost the southernmost tip of Tasmania.
And that is the Great Southern Ocean,
but for Cook, it was the great unknown.
There had to be something out there.
Cook had a fresh new ship, another Whitby collier, the Resolution,
and this time, a support vessel, the HMS Adventure.
You do not want to travel alone where he's going.
Well, you've got a lot of dangers down there if you're sailing.
You have mountainous sea,
big seas, 40, 50 feet, dwarfing the vessel.
You don't know where you are
because you can't navigate.
You can't navigate? You can't see anything celestial.
Yep. Stars, moon, sun.
You have no means of establishing where you are.
That's frightening.
Particularly for a navigator like Cook, who always knew where he was.
That's right.
The second vessel was, in effect, a lifeboat,
giving Cook the confidence to push closer than anyone ever
to the South Pole.
He was conscious of the fact that there was something there.
The icebergs you get carve off the land, and they're large.
They're not just sea ice freezing.
They've got to have come from some land-based source.
And he was conscious there must be something.
He knows they're freshwater? He knows they're freshwater.
And that kept him pushing further and further and further south.
And he has three cracks at it.
Well, I mean, you know, the motivations for people like them
back in the old days were, you know, find a mineral resource,
a people that you can conquer.
When you see an endless expanse of ice extending into the distance,
that doesn't represent a good prospect.
It's unlikely that a penguin will convert to Christianity.
Not the ones I've seen. Yeah.
Although if you can get one, the rest would follow.
(LAUGHS)
Cook became the first to cross the Antarctic Circle,
but still no sign of land, his passage blocked by ice.
After four months in appalling conditions,
Cook and his crew were now alone,
the Adventure lost in the fog.
He heads north to refuge, in New Zealand's South Island
and a place he'd bypassed in the Endeavour,
Dusky Sound.
I've been here before, and these fiords are one of those places
that simply take your breath away.
G'day, Pete.
Chris. G'day, Sam.
Welcome aboard.
Dusky Sound was a welcome sanctuary.
The vessel was in poor shape and so was the crew.
They were exhausted. Some were feeling the effects of scurvy.
All they needed was shelter, a stream and some greens.
And there it was.
Here, about as far away from his home as you can possibly imagine,
you can not only feel Cook's presence
but you can see visual evidence of his having been here.
They cut down about 300 trees here to clear an acre for an observatory,
and everywhere, there are stumps.
Stumps.
This is Astronomer's Point,
and the ship's astronomer, one William Wales,
was here to measure the accuracy of the newly invented chronometer
against celestial navigation,
vital for longitude.
While the astronomers did their duty, the artists did theirs.
Any expedition worth its salt
needed to return with a comprehensive visual record.
On board was the artist William Hodges,
and he made this beautiful little painting on the spot,
not exactly on this spot but just around the corner.
And while it's not the first painting of New Zealand,
it's certainly the first painting made in New Zealand,
and it was painted on wood provided by the Resolution's carpenter.
And this prop is actually on a piece of wood provided by...
..some carpenter in China, I imagine.
But it's beautiful anyway, isn't it?
(WATER RUNS)
Cascade Falls. Not much of a cascade today.
But, then, really hasn't rained here for about four or five months.
And when it rains here, believe me, it buckets down.
They average something like 10 metres of rain a year.
So when Hodges saw it,
it really would have looked something like this.
(WATER SURGES)
And over there is Indian Island,
where Hodges sketched the Maori elder the kaumatua
from a family that they befriended here.
After six weeks in Dusky Sound, it was time to move on.
Cook had set Queen Charlotte Sound, at the top of the South Island,
as the rendezvous point with HMS Adventure.
On arrival, he fired a cannon...
(CANNON FIRES)
..and the Adventure volleyed in response.
(CANNON FIRES)
Reunited again.
And Cook himself was reunited with a place he knew well.
The Maori that Cook met here on his second voyage
were not the same as the ones he'd met on the first,
they were different people, but to Cook's surprise,
they were keen to hear about Tupaia,
the great Tahitian priest and navigator
that had joined Cook's crew on that first voyage.
The news that Tupaia had died grieved them deeply.
But there were also rumours about the Maori from the first voyage
which the crew, chief among them First Lieutenant Richard Pickersgill,
were anxious to test.
Cook's crew had seen some indications of cannibalism on the first voyage,
but now they decided to prove it once and for all.
Pickersgill came across a war party dismembering a victim
and for some reason decided to buy the head,
which he brought back to the ship.
Second Lieutenant Clerke, who fancied himself as something of a joker,
sliced off some of the cheek and barbecued it.
He then offered it to one of several Maori on board,
who consumed it with relish.
When Cook returned, he asked for a repeat performance.
Some of the crew threw up, others laughed,
but Cook stayed remarkably cool.
This was a macabre experiment, hardly scientific,
but was taken as empirical proof
that the Maori were cannibals.
And if anything, to my way of thinking,
Clerke's barbecuing of a man's head
is clear evidence of British barbarity.
Nonetheless, this bizarre incident
must have given the crew a sense of unease and apprehension
about what would come next
as they sailed further into the unknown Pacific.
Suitably recharged,
the search for the great southern continent begins anew.
Cook is systematic in his approach,
planning giant loops into uncharted waters...
..and on the first loop visits old friends in Tahiti,
much to the delight of his crew.
Then he heads west and finds Tonga.
Cook knew of Tonga, for Tasman had charted there 100 years before.
Tonga was once the centre of a great Pacific empire,
and it was still a feudal state.
I've been granted an audience with royalty,
so I'm thinking a change of wardrobe is in order.
Good afternoon.
Thank you very much.
Cook was clearly impressed with Tonga, writing,
"Nature, assisted by a little art,
"nowhere appears in a more flourishing state than at this isle."
He was also impressed with its people.
What do you think about Captain Cook?
Was it a good thing that Cook turned up here?
I mean, eventually, somebody would turn up,
and I'd rather have Cook than somebody come with a gun
and, you know, take us by force.
So, yes, I would say it was a good thing.
Tell me about
this remarkably old-looking creature.
It was brought over by Captain Cook.
It ended up with the king.
I grew up seeing it outside.
You grew up with this tortoise? Yes.
A tortoise that... that was brought here by Captain Cook?
Yes. That's really remarkable, isn't it?
And it was put out when Queen Elizabeth came over one time,
and it was presented to her.
So...
..Captain Cook's tortoise met the Queen.
Yes.
And... (LAUGHS) ..but obv...
This is blowing my mind now.
(LAUGHS)
And...
..and he's obviously had a few adventures too, because...
He's been through a fire...
Yes. ..kicked by a horse. (LAUGHS)
But you... you think he was probably
wandering around the palace here for years going,
"I'd like to go home.
"When's Cook coming back"?
Yes.
(BELLS TOLL)
Tonga prides itself on never having been colonised by the West.
Nevertheless, it enthusiastically adopted one of its instruments,
Christianity, so much so
that it's actually enshrined in the constitution,
and in Tonga, it's illegal on Sundays to work, to shop, to do chores,
to play sport, swim and even fly.
There are no flights in and out on a Sunday.
So, what to do on a Sunday?
Go to church.
(CONGREGATION SINGS)
Like Cook, I'm not a religious man,
but there's nothing that can more readily bring a tear to my eye
than a good choir.
Everywhere in the Pacific, people sing in delightful harmony,
but it's astounding to me that harmony was actually an innovation
brought by the Europeans, by the missionaries.
Well, that's one good thing they did.
We went to church today,
and I don't think I've ever been anywhere
where Christianity is so...
..intrinsically part of society as it is here.
Today, it's Sunday, and the only noise out there is a chicken.
(BOTH LAUGH) That's why we're so unique.
Where in the world would you have, you know, don't hear any noise?
All you hear in the morning is the church bells.
(PEOPLE CHANT)
On Mondays, however, all hell breaks loose.
One of the things I've always loved about Polynesia is tapa cloth.
I've no idea how they make it,
but it's obviously communal and very... very noisy.
Cook would have seen this being made in exactly the same way in his day.
He wasn't much interested in souvenirs,
even though he was offered many things, including a young woman,
here in Tonga, which he graciously declined.
But we do know he took home some tapa cloth, for his wife.
What is tapa?
WOMAN: Tapa is made from the mulberry tree.
It grows abundantly here in Tonga.
And why is it important?
In the Tongan society, tapa is used in all occasions, in all purposes.
It is used for weddings, to make the bedding of a newly wedded couple.
It wraps up the deceased when they... when they pass away.
It is used as offering for cultural activities.
It is used as a carpet for royalty.
As you can see, they are produced only by women.
So tapa is important because it signifies the work of women.
It portrays their strength, their skills and their pride.
But most importantly, it shows there
the value of women in Tongan society.
The status of women in Tonga utterly confused Cook.
Power was transferred through the men,
something that Cook's naval background was familiar with,
but spiritual power was passed through the maternal line,
allowing women tremendous influence.
Cook chose to take tapa home to his wife, Elizabeth,
something quintessentially Pacific.
(LAUGHS)
After a noisy day - well, many, many noisy days - here it is.
Stunning.
(PEAKIN BY SKRIPTURE PLAYS)
♪ Uh
♪ Brother, I'm peakin' I been going blind and you... ♪
There's actually more to Tongan society
than just a rigid class system.
The Seleka Club is a place for young Tongans
who don't fit into the system - outsiders.
♪ If you follow him, then I'll chief him
♪ Son him like he came from my...
♪ Peakin'
♪ Yeah, that's the reason brothers be peakin'. ♪
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE) (CALLS OUT)
MAN: Welcome.
Taniela. Yeah, Taniela. Come have a seat.
Cook was often asked to celebrations in Tonga...
Thank you very much. You're welcome.
..and undoubtedly would have taken part
in the distinctly Pacific ritual of drinking kava.
Oh. What do I say now?
Malo. That's all?
Yeah. Not 'cheers' or anything like that?
No. OK. Malo.
You have to finish it. (LAUGHTER)
After weeks of lapping up the hospitality,
Cook was pleased to name Tonga the Friendly Isles,
but duty called.
The Resolution and the Adventure set off
for another plunge into the deep south.
(THUNDER RUMBLES)
But soon a terrible storm separated the ships.
They will never meet again.
Cook crisscrosses the lower Pacific,
down to 71 degrees south,
declaring it "as far as any man could go".
His sweeps of the ocean's vast space
brought no sign of the elusive continent.
Meanwhile, the Adventure limped back into Queen Charlotte Sound,
and here the worst happens.
An altercation with a Maori tribe ends with 10 men killed and eaten.
This will come to haunt Cook in the future.
But for now, Cook was blissfully unaware of these gruesome events.
His focus was on carving up the Pacific in search of the continent.
The only respite, after 103 days at sea, was Easter Island,
beautifully captured in paint by Hodges.
Cook by this time was very ill, near death according to some in the crew,
with what we now think was a gall bladder infection.
Mind you, he still managed to chart the island.
In desperate need of fresh meat,
naturalist Johann Forster offered up his favourite dog as soup,
and Cook was cured.
Convinced the vast Pacific would yield no giant continent,
Cook decided to push west, past Tonga,
to an island archipelago we now know as Vanuatu.
Pity his hapless crew.
They had little choice but to follow his meanderings,
fearful of starvation, fearful of the unknown,
fearful that every new island brought aggression and violence.
By now, on board, they were anxious for food and in particular water,
they really needed to land,
and two attempts were made to land on these islands.
Both were failures.
(GUNSHOTS)
They were met with stiff resistance,
and that resistance was met with musket fire,
leaving islanders wounded, some fatally.
Cook realised straightaway that he had to tread carefully here.
These people didn't look or speak Polynesian, and they weren't smiling.
So when Captain Cook first landed here, they saw the boat,
and so people are coming, you know, but very afraid,
standing all around here, the bushes, and looking,
"Oh! Who's that guy? It's a... it's a white man.
"Oh, must be the nice meat for us for this afternoon, for dinner."
So they came with bows and arrows, you know, trying to attack captain.
And then, as so often for Cook, his luck changed.
Here on this beach, he was greeted by a vast silent crowd of men.
And his luck changed for two reasons.
Once again, he was fulfilling a prophecy.
And second, there was a little old man
who paddled out to the Resolution bearing gifts of yams and coconuts.
And this man's name was Paowang.
That was your great-great-grandfather?
Yeah. Yeah. OK. So he was the peacemaker?
Yeah. Yeah.
Yes.
His great-great-grandfather said, "Maybe he's got good news.
"We try to invite him to come and talk to us.
"Maybe he's got something to tell us. Maybe it's good news."
The prophecy said all good things come from the east,
and in sailed Cook from the east.
With tribesmen still brandishing spears,
Cook tentatively landed on the beach,
and he began the usual procedure,
and always first on his list was to give the place a name.
Suddenly, the captain hop in the boat, the dinghy,
and Cook pick up the sand, was doing this,
"What's... what... what do we call this?"
And they said, "Tanna! Tanna! Tanna!"
So Cook first put a footprint and said, "The island is called Tanna."
Cook offered trinkets for trade, gladly accepted.
Meanwhile, his crew returned to their usual form,
sounding out the women for close encounters of the sexual kind.
Imagine their disappointment when the Vanuatu men closed ranks
and declared their womenfolk off limits.
And they weren't all that was off limits.
(DISTANT RUMBLING)
Right behind you there is the volcano.
Mm-hm.
It was the volcano that attracted him here, wasn't it?
He saw the flame, he saw the lava,
at night when he was coming inside the bay.
He did saw this.
Why do you think those people didn't want Cook to go there?
Why did they stop him?
Was there something sacred about the mountain or...?
They won't let Cook to go there because it's very dangerous
because of the tribal war.
These people, they protected Cook not to go there,
because if he goes there, they will kill him and they will...
..they will, like, send his body to an... the tribal to eat it.
So your people stopped him going... Yeah.
..because they knew those people would eat him.
Yeah. Yeah. That's right.
It's a pretty good reason. Yeah.
Pretty sensible. (LAUGHS) (LAUGHS)
We talk all things Cook, and Chief Sam Eskar has a suggestion,
and I think a really good one, given my personal quest -
why don't I climb the volcano on behalf of Cook?
I've always been completely fascinated by volcanoes.
They're elemental, beautiful and completely terrifying.
And here I'm in the middle of one vast crater.
And Mount Yasur behind me is...
(VOLCANO ERUPTS)
And there it is. It's erupting as I speak.
Mount Yasur behind me is, of course, just its latest eruption.
This simply exhausting mountain slope is my own metaphor for Cook.
How did he keep going?
Can ambition drive a man so hard, he nearly kills himself and his crew
just to say he's been there and done that?
It seems... yes.
Explorers push harder than most. That's what makes them unique.
(LAUGHS)
I'm actually here at the rim of the crater,
and every couple of minutes, there's a massive explosion.
I'm a little bit frightened. I'm finding it hard to breathe.
I'm a little bit overexcited as well. Forgive me.
There are four separate vents here.
Each one makes a completely distinct sound.
Each one has a different action.
Each one has a different voice...
(VOLCANO ERUPTS) ..altogether.
(LAUGHS)
(VOLCANO ERUPTS)
Cook called Mount Yasur the Lighthouse of the Pacific.
He would have loved this view.
(VOLCANO ERUPTS)
A local tip - watch for lava bombs in the air.
Stand still unless you see bombs that are not moving
left/right or up/down,
because these are moving right towards you,
in which case you're well advised to get the hell out of there.
Vanuatu now is probably closer in social structure
to what Cook encountered than any other time since his visit.
After being plundered for sandalwood shortly after Cook charted it,
the islands were bizarrely colonised jointly
by the English and the French in 1906.
But in 1980, Vanuatu regained independence
and began reclaiming many of the old ways
beaten out of it by overzealous missionaries,
with one tribe in particular a stark example.
Thanks for taking me, JJ.
You're most welcome.
Giving and receiving gifts is traditionally vital.
Reciprocation is everything.
Cook never understood this,
and neither did the missionaries that followed him.
This and so many other traditional practices,
they did all they could to suppress.
But in World War II, when planeloads of food and supplies arrived,
courtesy of the US armed forces,
tribal leaders interpreted this as a welcome return to gift giving
and a rejection of Christianity.
The size of the gift signifies your status.
I've arrived bearing rice and kava root,
and in return, I've been given
this rather uncomfortable-looking penis sheath.
Thank you very much.
(SPEAKS FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
"I'm glad that you're here. I accept you."
Thank you so much.
What should I do with my...?
You can just keep it in your hand. It's fine.
OK. (SPEAKS FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
This tribe has returned to custom
and has firmly rejected all things Western,
with one startling exception,
for they revere, of all people, Prince Philip.
I'm very happy to be here, because...
..I've heard of the movement for many, many years,
but it's a puzzle to us - why Prince Philip?
During the time of the early Christianity,
when Christianity arrives on this island,
many people who were converted into Christians...
..started... create a law that... forbidding people,
our elders, not to perform customary rituals,
not to wear the penis sheath, dressed in costume,
not to make custom ceremonies like circumcisions or dance.
Why the Duke of Edinburgh?
According to the tribe, Prince Philip is actually a Tanna man
who magically travelled to England, his colour fading over the distance,
and married then Princess, now Queen, Elizabeth,
head of the Church of England.
They maintain that Prince Philip's
been faithfully looking after their interests ever since
and, more importantly, making sure that missionaries do not return.
The Prince Philip Movement, in a way, is resisting Christianity.
Mm-hm.
It's a resistance movement as much as anything.
Yes. Yeah.
And... and... and a way of retaining pride in... in your own culture,
Yep. Which is a very old culture.
It's much older than Christianity. Mm-hm.
That's why we think... we see this movement as very important,
and we should keep it through the future generations.
Yes.
Because it makes us feel who we are, as custom people.
Yes. We are smiling people.
We are happy people.
Prince Philip has made a lasting impression here,
as indeed did Cook when he came centuries ago.
One family was so taken with Captain Cook,
they have since studiously named every man and boy after him
and still do.
And, with spectacular good fortune, I'm with a group of captains,
and, believe it or not, they're all Captain Cook.
This is Captain Cook Sr.
His three sons are all called Captain Cook, and his three grandsons.
These are eighth-generation Captain Cooks.
(SPEAKS FOREIGN LANGUAGE) (SPEAKS FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
Cook. Captain Cook.
(SPEAKS FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
Captain Cook. Captain Cook.
(SPEAKS FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
Captain Cook?
Tell me you're Captain Cook. (LAUGHS)
(SPEAKS FOREIGN LANGUAGE) Captain Cook.
(SPEAKS FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
Captain Cook. Captain Cook.
(SPEAKS FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
Captain Cook. Captain Cook.
How fantastic.
(PEOPLE SING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
The beauty here is self-evident,
but what impresses me most here
is how these people insist on being themselves.
They've wrenched back the past into the present.
They've taken back everything that the West took away from them.
They've decolonised themselves.
And they believe they've done that
through the spirits inherent in their land.
Look, I'm normally sceptical at best about religions,
and I'd be less than honest if I didn't say that the idea of...
..a belief system that found Prince Philip sacred
was anything other than amusing.
But having been here, I'd have to say that I'm rather humbled by this
and a belief system that's never done any harm in its name
and, on the contrary,
has only brought peace and happiness to its people,
who can argue with that?
The two weeks in Tanna were an agreeable time for the Resolution,
until Cook's men cut down a large tree for ship repairs
and in the consternation that followed,
a Tannese threatened with a bow and arrow,
a marine overreacted, shot and killed him.
Retribution was in the air. It was time to leave.
Things did not end well on Tanna.
After flirting with death in Vanuatu,
Cook travelled south-west and stumbled across a tiny island.
Curiously, as a result, decades later,
this same island would propel
an ancestor of mine
into the history books.
In October 1774, Cook landed right here
in this bay on Norfolk Island.
He found it very beautiful,
and it was exceptional in that it was uninhabited.
So did Cook actually discover Norfolk Island?
Well, no.
We now have archaeological evidence of earlier Polynesian settlement.
They abandoned it long before Cook was ever here,
for reasons that we will never know.
Cook thought the place would have great value for the Royal Navy.
First of all, there's plenty of flax for the making of ropes
and lots of splendid straight timber for the construction of masts.
It turned out that the island
would have a very different purpose altogether.
Now, while Cook was discovering what was mostly already discovered,
back in London, Joseph Banks was busy touting the new lands Down Under
as a great place to banish the criminal classes.
Petty crims and murderers alike were packed up and shipped to Botany Bay,
and the really bad ones came to Norfolk.
My great-great-grandfather, Foster Fyans, an officer and a gentleman,
arrived on this fatal shore in 1833.
To his great dismay, he'd been appointed captain of the guard here,
the Norfolk Island penal colony.
The worst of the worst were sent here.
Early in 1834, Fyans's superior,
the commandant Lieutenant Colonel 'Lasher' Morisset,
fell very ill.
The unfortunate Lasher was rendered 'imbecilic', in Fyans's words.
Fiennes was forced to take over as acting commandant,
and almost immediately, he was faced with a violent insurrection.
This was a well planned but poorly executed rebellion.
Fyans acted quickly and decisively.
With very few troops at his disposal,
he fired upon the murderous mob from that ridge,
rounded them up and brought matters to a swift conclusion.
The perpetrators were severely dealt with,
earning my ancestor the sobriquet 'Flogger' Fyans.
Now, popular sentiment and, indeed, historians in later years
have heavily favoured convicts, as opposed to jailers,
in these hellish places,
but had Fyans failed, most of the staff here would have been butchered,
their wives and daughters raped and enslaved,
and the next ship to arrive would have been purloined
and their crew butchered as well,
so my sympathies with these rebels are somewhat limited.
Poor old Flogger. As far as I'm concerned, he saved a lot of lives.
From Norfolk, Cook's thoughts turned to home, to England.
It often occurs to me that every Pacific territory
that Cook encountered
has had much the same debate -
how much is the man personally responsible
for the colonisation that followed?
Certainly his maps paved the way,
but could he have really predicted the consequences?
Anyway, for all that, I'm travelling south...
..mindful of Cook's many forays in the same direction,
such hardship for so little reward.
I, however, am warm and comfortable,
while outside, it's -20 degrees.
And today I join an elite explorers club
that Cook would desperately have wanted to join as well.
So I'm absolutely astonished to be actually standing in Antarctica,
the last continent, the continent that eluded Cook,
that kept him away.
So Shackleton, Scott,
Amundsen, Mawson,
Hillary and then me.
Of course, Cook simply couldn't get here.
Hi, Sam. Welcome to Antarctica. Thank you very much.
(BEEPING)
So, unlike most other lands in the Pacific,
it simply couldn't be colonised.
The surprising thing is, though, that when technology
finally allowed the Antarctic to be accessed,
all countries decided to share.
But then, of course, there were no people to dispossess.
Cook completely, by stages, circumnavigated Antarctica,
and he proved that there wasn't the vast southern continent
that everyone was sure that there would be.
But, of course, there was.
It was just further south than the limits of navigation.
And here I am today in Antarctica,
beyond the limits of navigation,
courtesy of an Airbus,
and there are other people here as well,
but they're here today not so much about exploration
but it's about science and about conservation.
MAN: So, Antarctica from the start, it's a... it's a unique place
in that it's dedicated for peace and science,
so everyone is down here doing science.
So, Cook was here at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
How much has Antarctica changed since then?
The sea was a mass of whales,
so there was extraordinary numbers of whales everywhere.
This was before industrial whaling, and, you know, seals everywhere,
so great wildlife, and around the Antarctic Peninsula,
Cook would have seen glacial tongues sticking way out
that are now retreated way back in the bay.
So there are... there are huge changes.
That's the most rapidly heating part of the globe right now,
around the peninsula.
Oh, my God. Big... big changes.
What is our future? What do you do to ascertain what's going on?
Well, the whole program looks at
what are the most important science questions
and understanding how this enormous ice cap we're standing on right now
is being influenced by a warming ocean and a warming atmosphere
and... and how those things are going to interact and affect
people living in the Pacific in terms of significant sea level rise.
We don't know how much yet.
The science we're doing now
is really trying to refine and get better predictions
of how much that level is going to increase.
And we're gonna have to prepare for it.
The more informed we are, we hope the wiser we can be with...
..with the policies and the way we live.
And now, here's the rub.
The scientists on this polar cap are shoring up the evidence
that the Pacific will change irreversibly.
And for the first time in 250 years,
Cook's glorious maps will become inaccurate,
because, terrifyingly, many Pacific islands could simply be underwater.
After three years at sea, Cook finally returns safely home
with a raft of new findings on the Pacific.
Anyone, now or then, reviewing Cook's second voyage
would have to regard it as a pinnacle of both a life and of a career,
and anyone else would have turned to retirement and to honours,
but not Cook.
I have one more journey in me, just like Cook,
a third visit, to once more enter the Pacific fray,
and this time to probe as far north
as I've just gone south, into the Arctic.
Cook's appetite to explore could not be sated.
This will be Cook's final stand.