Cook's passion for exploration continues as he searches for the mythic North West Passage, but is it a journey too far? Now retired and promoted to Post Captain, James Cook is bored. He jumps at the chance to take on a third great voyage: to find a fast route to China to secure Britain's place in the lucrative tea trade. Cook and his wife Elizabeth have been together for only four of their 16 years of marriage but he is ready to leave his growing family once more. This is Cook's chance to put his stamp on the northern hemisphere, matching his total command of the south. Success means a personal fortune and an even greater prize for the former farm boy - a knighthood. To do it, he must sail across the world and then over the top of the North American continent, pushing against a wall of Arctic ice. But it's too much for the ships of the day. Cook is forced to return to the Pacific. When his ship snaps a mast and he returns to Hawaii, the inhabitants who once greeted him with open arms turn hostile. As relations deteriorate, Cook takes a Hawaiian chief hostage in retribution for a stolen boat. In the confusion that follows, Cook is killed on the beach. The man who has become an icon of the British Empire is about to be swept up by history.
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