S1-E37: Easter Island: Latitude of Hope

Podcast 10 September 2025

In March 1774, after more than three months without landfall, Captain James Cook and the crew of HMS Resolution reached the lonely shores of Easter Island. What they found was neither the paradise they hoped for nor the savage outpost some had imagined—but a stark volcanic land crowned with silent stone giants.

Navigating by chronometer and lunar observation, Cook’s expedition arrived at Rapa Nui with the precision other explorers had failed to achieve. The approach was slow, the coastline barren, the air heavy with salt and volcanic dust. First contact came by canoe: two islanders offering bananas in exchange for beads.

**First sight of Rapa Nui – Cook’s crew meets the islanders by canoe, with the moai watching from the shore. – Click on the image to listen to this episode on YouTube.**

Over the next days, Cook’s men encountered the island’s people—slender, tattooed, and elaborately adorned with feathered headpieces. They noted the scarcity of wood, the small size of chickens, and the poor soil that yielded only sugarcane, sweet potatoes, and bananas. Yet they also recorded remarkable masonry, moai statues with long ears, and ceremonial platforms.

The episode captures the sharp contrast between the isolation and ingenuity of Rapa Nui and the challenges of 18th-century Pacific exploration—where every new shore promised relief, but delivered its own truths.