Tower Bridge control. Tower Bridge control.
BEEPING
Can you confirm your name, please?
This is Coast.
As islanders it's in our blood to reach out and explore.
Sails up, gears in motion, and 30 miles to the open sea.
I'm following in the wake of our coastal pioneers,
seafarers who left the land in search of oceans of opportunity.
And the team are on voyages of exploration too.
Tessa is telling a Pilgrims' tale, where explorers go wayward.
How did a group of illegal stowaways
come to found the most powerful nation on earth?
And why did they head here,
to Amsterdam, before America?
Andy's in pursuit of cod, exploring the deep.
I'm searching for the solution to
a question that's easy to ask but hard to answer.
How many fish are in the sea?
And Mark's on an extraordinary quest for the explorer
who turned a prison colony into a nation.
This is not the birthplace
that you would expect for the Father of Australia.
This is The Explorers' Coast.
MUSIC: "Coast Theme" by Alan Parker
For centuries, explorers set sail from the capital
to make their mark on the world.
This Explorers' Coast
offers glimpses of glorious voyages gone by.
A replica of Drake's Golden Hind -
the first English ship to circumnavigate the globe.
The Cutty Sark - a super-fast clipper built for global commerce.
She ran trade routes that early explorers pioneered.
And, surprisingly, that spirit of exploration
still thrives on this highway to the sea.
I've hitched this lift to meet modern-day explorers,
soon to embark in the wake of heroic seafarers of old.
It's a personal passion of mine
to walk around our coast, as you may know,
but circumnavigating these isles by sea
has captivated intrepid explorers for millennia.
It's a nautical tradition that proudly lives on.
Our earliest explorers relied on muscle power.
Can these crews match our ancient ancestors?
Remarkably, they're trying to row right around Britain.
This is going to be a wild ride.
This is what it was always like leaving the Thames
at the beginning of an amazing voyage.
You waited till the ebb tide
and you got sluiced down towards the ocean.
You can feel the power of the river willing you on your way.
Soon, the tide will propel
the rowing boats to sea.
Turning the corner
on the south coast,
the rowers will follow
in the wake of paddle-powered explorers from the Bronze Age...
..braving the same deadly reefs at Land's End.
Pressing on to the Irish Sea,
they'll struggle like Celtic oarsmen of old.
As our crews reach the Scottish coast,
they'll row in seas
ruled by Viking explorers.
On the home shores of Captain Cook and Admiral Nelson,
our rowers must pull together,
as did heroic life-savers of the east coast.
Coming full circle,
our explorers will have rowed
themselves into history.
That incredible voyage lies ahead.
Now, they're almost ready to leave the capital behind,
for a month or more, in tiny craft.
Well, it's very confined in that cabin
and that's putting it politely - it's absolutely minute!
And when you crawl in, then -
you really do have to crawl - after a rowing spell,
you're really tired
and you don't get much rest in there
because the boat is pitching from side to side.
Just movement the whole time,
there's actually no physical rest at all.
And this is just the Thames!
Well, good luck, guys,
and row safe.
Cheers. Bye. Bye.
Exploration begins with fond farewells
that our coast has witnessed through the ages.
SHIP HORNS BLARE
Can these explorers prove their mettle
and match up to ancient mariners
who propelled themselves around our isles?
2,000 miles on the oars - an odyssey from millennia ago.
Whoa!
While they're all at sea,
I'm going on my own journey by foot.
I'm following the forgotten explorers
who first navigated our treacherous coast.
Epic voyages that not only shaped us as a people,
but revealed the shape of our mysterious shores.
And, of course, our exploration of the explorers' coast
is a team effort.
Tessa is going back 400 years for a voyage to new worlds.
She's embarking from Boston Lincolnshire,
on a pitch-dark night.
It's winter,
the year of our Lord 1607, on the shores of Boston.
A desperate group are fleeing from religious persecution.
A hundred men, women, and children are gathered here,
seeking illegal passage to a new life overseas.
But they're betrayed.
DOOR THUDS AND LOCK CLICKS
The captain has double-crossed the illegal emigrants.
They're captured by the authorities, who throw them into this very cell.
DOOR THUDDING
These explorers in search of religious freedom
were in fact the Pilgrim Fathers.
MUSIC: "The Star-Spangled Banner"
The founders of what would become the United States of America.
And as every American knows,
their founding fathers set sail from Plymouth, England,
on board the good ol' Mayflower.
MUSIC STOPS RAPIDLY
But hang on a minute!
The Pilgrim Fathers,
when they were attempting to leave Boston, weren't on the Mayflower,
and they weren't heading for America -
they were off to Holland.
BICYCLE BELL RINGS
We know that... because of this man...here.
William Bradford.
He was one of the would-be escapees,
and he kept a journal.
In it he wrote -
"We resolved to go to the Low Countries,
"where we heard was freedom of religion for all men."
So, if Holland was where they intended to set up home,
how on earth did they become blown off course
and end up founding modern America?
To understand that, let's begin with where they came from -
the tiny Nottinghamshire village
of Scrooby, with its own historian Sue Allen.
So, Sue, tell me about this place called Scrooby.
Well, you've probably never heard of it,
but everyone knows where Sheffield is,
and if you just travel
east into north Nottinghamshire
you'll find this tiny little speck. That's Scrooby. Oh,
it is weeny and there's no sea. It's landlocked!
This is rural Nottinghamshire.
They clearly weren't seafaring types,
why where these villagers so keen to leave?
It's all down to religion.
Our group were Puritans,
the Church of England was too Catholic for their liking,
and because they made a stand
and wanted to leave the Church of England
that was a no-no.
The head of the church was the monarch,
if you go against the monarch it's almost treason.
So they have no option but to turn towards the sea.
To go across the sea.
The Puritans resolved to put their faith in Protestant Holland.
Their story is taught to children
but that chapter's often skipped over.
Remember we last left them in prison in Boston in 1607.
The book tells us that they were released and sent back home
and told NOT to flee again.
But they didn't obey.
Their next voyage was successful.
By the grace of God the Pilgrims had been delivered to Amsterdam.
In 1608, they'd set sail from the Humber Estuary,
but the English villagers didn't find the bustling business hub
of Amsterdam to their Puritan taste.
So the group set off again to Leiden...
..a city not of commerce but of ideas.
The explorers in search of religious freedom,
settled happily into the university town of Leiden...
..and set about
doing what they did best.
Antagonising the Church of England.
Have a look at this pamphlet, it's signed by William Brewster -
one of the Pilgrims' ringleaders - and it's a debate about
whether to split from the Church of England, heretical stuff.
But pamphlets like these could be safely printed here in Leiden
and sent back to England to stir up discontent.
The city seemed heaven-sent.
But being an immigrant in someone else's country wasn't easy,
and after ten years it looked like Catholic Spain might invade
Protestant Holland.
Time for the English Puritans to move on.
The Pilgrims set sail from Holland in 1620, next stop America.
Well, OK, not quite.
Next stop, Southampton, and from there
they set sail for America
in a ship called the Speedwell.
Confused?
Well, a few days into their journey,
the Speedwell sprang a leak.
So they had to go back to Plymouth,
where they transferred onto
a new ship called...
the Mayflower.
This time, the next stop
for our intrepid explorers
really was...America.
# I like to be in America
# OK by me in America
# Everything's free in America... #
Even troublesome Puritans were welcome in this new English colony.
But not all the women and children made it to the promised land.
THEY CHATTER IN DUTCH
Hello, Ria. Hello, Tessa.
'Ria Koet and her family are descendants of Mayflower
'passenger Moses Fletcher.
'Moses died in America before his own family could join him.'
His family stayed in Leiden
and they stayed, and stayed,
and stayed many generations. And so now,
we are living here in Holland in Leiden, all in Leiden.
Do you wish you were American, or are you happy to be Dutch?
No, I am very happy to be a real Leiden woman.
And Leiden sons. Yes, we love Leiden and I stay here.
But, of course,
if we go really far back in history, you are in fact British.
Yes. Well, long live the Dutch.
Thank you very much. Thank you. Bye.
The Pilgrim Fathers have left a living legacy in Holland,
but they also took a surprising tradition from Leiden with them.
A tradition we think of as quintessentially American -
Thanksgiving.
Every year since 1574, Protestant Leiden has held
a community feast to give thanks for the defeat of Catholic Spain.
The Pilgrims took the Dutch ritual of Thanksgiving
across the Atlantic, and it's come full circle.
Now every year, Leiden celebrates American Thanksgiving.
ALL: One nation under God...
The Pilgrims left Britain and headed east to Europe,
but they ended up going west to America.
It was the beginning of our special relationship with the New World,
and the rest, as they say, is history.
Britons looked longingly across the ocean
long before the Pilgrims made their voyages.
We've explored our own seas for millennia.
Before sail it was paddle power.
Now six teams are reliving the experience
of Britain's early explorers.
Whoa! He's literally right under the boat.
There he is.
They're trying to row right around our isles.
That's the White Cliffs of Dover.
That's not bad, is it?
They've chalked up the first major landmark,
but some 2,000 miles of struggle lie ahead.
I've got five blisters on my hand already,
and it's only day two.
They hurt quite a bit, so I've got to wear these giant gloves.
Our 21st-century explorers
soon discover determination isn't enough...
..if your luck runs out.
Electrical failure means this crew lose radio and navigation.
Their voyage is over.
Soon, more boats call for help and drop out.
It's humbling to think of the problems tiny craft
must have posed for our earliest explorers.
To discover more about those nautical heroes
I'm basing myself in Cornwall.
This rocky finger pointed THEIR way to the wider world.
For me, Cornwall is the explorers' coast.
For our ancient ancestors,
epic journeys began from inlets like Falmouth.
It's the third-largest natural harbour on earth.
Boats have been coming and going not just for hundreds of years
but thousands of years, journeys we can't possibly imagine.
Or so I thought.
In 1963, archaeologists excavated the remains of a boat
that had been buried in mud since the Bronze Age,
that's 2,000 years before the birth of Christ.
And now, this extraordinary piece of prehistory has been resurrected.
At the National Maritime Museum, Cornwall,
they've built a life-size replica of that Bronze Age craft.
Now, for the first time, historians can experience
how Britain's earliest-known boat handles.
And...stroke,
stroke.
Pretty hard work, these paddles are cut with bronze tools
from solid pieces of ash, and they're...
very heavy so it's pretty physical.
There's evidence these tiny Bronze Age craft
made voyages to rival our ocean-going liners.
And...stroke. Stroke...
Archaeologist Robert van de Noort
knows how Britons traded bronze around Europe.
Bronze is made from
tin and copper,
and these two ores are rarely found in the same location together, so
to make bronze axes, which are much, much harder than copper axes,
you have to start to travel, you have to often travel great distances.
And you can see that in the archaeological evidence. You get
the same kinds of pottery in Holland, in France, in Spain, in Ireland and
in Britain, and it can only happen because you have boats like this.
4,000 years ago,
how on earth did those early explorers find their way?
One way of doing it is to travel at night.
If you start observing the stars, then you would immediately recognise
that the North Star is always stable in the northern hemisphere
and it is the safest tool to navigate by.
So it's very simple. If you go from Britain to France
you travel eastwards, you have the North Star on your left shoulder.
When you come back to Britain,
you have it on the right of your shoulder.
It's really basic.
But very effective and very safe.
Seafarers still look to the heavens to navigate.
Now though, it's for satellites not stars.
But those Bronze Age explorers would feel at home today
in the tiny boats we're following.
Only two crews are left,
trying to row around Britain.
A voyage of exploration
facing the fierce waters off Portland Bill...
..the whirlpool of the Corryvreckan...
..and the tidal races of the Pentland Firth.
Wayward explorers must also be wary of sandbanks.
This is the fourth time we've done this today. Fourth time.
Fourth time we've...run aground.
And open seas usher in sea monsters unknown to ancient explorers.
That's quite a big beastie. Be a bit of a wash after that, Josh,
do you think? Maybe a splash. SHIP'S HORN BLARES
With so many hazards to navigate,
no wonder seafarers worry about exactly where they are.
That's why lighthouses were a welcome sight for explorers,
both a comfort and a warning.
Mariners' lonely companions for centuries,
bright beacons of hope, staking out our edge.
But what about before the lights, in the dark nights of ancient history?
Before charts, no-one knew the shape or position of our isles.
To see how, 2,500 years ago,
a Greek explorer first put us on the map,
I'm continuing my Cornish adventure.
Around 320BC, a seafarer from the Mediterranean landed here,
a man who literally penned our isle into existence.
This remarkable seafarer was
embarking on a circumnavigation of our isles that would become
so legendary his story would be retold for generations.
His name was Pytheas the Greek,
and he's one of my greatest heroes.
He was an explorer eager to discover the fabled "Tin Islands" -
the mysterious lands where the ancient Greeks sourced
tin in the Bronze Age.
A voyage to uncharted territory
that Pytheas named "Prettanike".
The exact details of Pytheas the Greek's odyssey have been lost,
but he left a series of measurements that would eventually allow
our isles to be mapped, and as a map man that's what excites me the most.
Like navigators before him,
we know Pytheas looked to the skies for guidance.
But not just the distant stars,
he used the sun too.
Pytheas travelled with an instrument called a "gnomon".
A stick much like a sundial, the gnomon cast a shadow
when raised vertically in the midday sun.
Imagine I'm the gnomon.
The further south we travel,
the higher in the sky the sun is at noon
and the shorter the shadow.
The further north we travel,
the lower the sun is in the sky at noon and the shadow lengthens.
By looking at the length of the shadow cast by his stick,
his gnomon, Pytheas could get an indication of how far north
or south he had travelled.
But it was only an indication.
To convert shadow lengths into a precise position on the globe
would take some clever calculations.
Mathematicians cracked the code that would help them
to convert the measurements of the sun's shadow,
taken by Pytheas the Greek,
into that critical navigational tool - lines of latitude.
Lines of latitude run round the earth parallel to the equator,
a measure of how far north
or south you are.
Latitude is crucial to making maps.
Using Greek trigonometry of angles,
and the shadow lengths from Pytheas
for latitude,
early map-makers went to work.
Without even visiting Britain, scholars could use
Pytheas's raw data to plot the location of our isles.
It had taken one epic voyage and some pretty epic brain work,
but finally Britain could be marked on a map.
And what a map.
Classical scholars pieced together a remarkable picture of our isles,
that endured for centuries, using stick measurements and maths.
Cornwall was big in their minds,
revealing its importance to explorers,
but Scotland needs some work!
After thousands of years of effort,
we've mapped every inch of the globe.
But most of the planet still remains a mystery.
The oceans are explorers' biggest challenge.
And Britain leads the way,
as scientists try to discover how many fish are left in our seas.
To explore this conundrum,
experts embark from Ullapool.
Andy Torbet is joining an underwater mission
that's been under way for over half a century.
Like generations of scientific explorers before me,
I'm setting sail in search of fish.
I've signed on with the Scotia,
a research vessel that studies fish stocks in Scottish waters.
Time to cast our nets into a stretch of water
that's been explored with scientific precision.
Every year the same procedure, but every year a different catch.
Since the 1950s, they've been comparing catches year on year.
Concerns about fish stocks are nothing new.
The numbers of our nation's old favourite,
cod, have been falling for decades.
I've got here the logbook from the 1960s with the records of hauls.
And finally a crew's report with comments like -
"Whiting was fairly numerous at all stations, cod was rather scarce".
Scottish scientists are old hands at counting fish.
1956 saw the first purpose-built vessel.
And here she is.
The SS Explorer.
The Explorer's pioneering voyages provide clues to how today's
scientists try to forecast fish stocks.
For the first time,
age-old techniques were married with hi tech.
Now, the Explorer is washed up in Edinburgh
somewhat the worse for wear.
Helping to restore her is scientist and old shipmate John Dunn.
The Explorer was very, very strongly built,
and I would quite happily, in the day,
have gone anywhere in her, and indeed did do.
All of our fittings and fixtures were good quality.
The phones were very heavy Bakelite.
The Explorer was right up there with the best.
This equipment from another age did point the way to the future.
She was one of the very first fisheries' research vessels
anywhere to sail with a computer.
It had quite large pieces of valve-operated machinery
and ticker tape, and it had a teleprinter chattering away,
but it did manage to deal with huge amounts of data,
which otherwise had to be done by hand, and number-crunched by hand.
It was the start of something which revolutionised everything.
Computers are now at the heart of our fish forecast,
processing data dragged up from the deep.
Detailed measurements are recorded and fed into computer simulations
which help predict likely fish stocks.
For biologist Coby Needle, a crucial factor in their analysis
is the age of the fish we've caught.
To determine the age we take out the otolith,
or one of the otoliths from the fish, which are
ear bones. So you go in through the gills
and pull out the otoliths that way.
We then cut the otoliths in two, slice it down the middle
and look at them under a microscope.
And otoliths are very much like tree rings - every year the animal
lays down another bony ring onto the otolith, so you can essentially
count up the rings and work out from that how old that fish was.
This meticulous research
will help set the all-important fishing quotas.
The catches landed by trawlermen
are also fed into the computer models.
But these guys have their favourite fishing grounds,
and they stick to the areas with the largest stocks.
In contrast, the Scotia trawls all around Scottish waters,
helping build up a better picture of fish populations.
As a survey vessel, we need to fish in areas both where
there are a lot of fish and also areas where there may have been fish
in the past - in the '50s and '60s -
but there are no longer fish any more.
If we were running a commercial fishing vessel,
we wouldn't do this operation here, we would go where the fish are,
but then you might get an overly optimistic impression
of how many fish there are in the sea.
The latest findings do indicate some recovery in North Sea cod stocks
as co-operation between scientists and trawlermen deepens.
We may never be sure about the future of our fish but,
thanks to this exploration of the deep,
we're not completely in the dark.
We're charting a course around our explorers' coast.
On epic voyages, adventure becomes a way of life.
Muscling their way around our shores,
Jason McKinlay
and Josh Tarr fall into a shipboard routine that explorers
over the centuries would recognise.
How are you feeling, Jase?
Can't see you, mate.
They've got to work with the sea to make it their home.
Which means housekeeping.
Washing clothes...
..and themselves.
After weeks away from loved ones,
Jason's suffering in Scottish weather.
Roughly halfway round Britain,
they've struggled to reach Skye.
But it's pausing for reflection that gives explorers the greatest pain.
Like adventurers of old, it's not what they endure,
it's what they leave behind.
I miss my kids and my wife terribly.
Sarah really understands what I'm like deep down, and this
is going to be good for us, not just good for me in the long run.
She builds up a lot of Brownie points doing this, by the way.
'I've just had to sort of get used to it
'and accept that's part of him.'
I know that if he's not doing these challenges
he's a misery to live with.
'So I knew what I was letting myself in for when I married him.'
Josh and Jason have learned to rely on each other.
The bond they've forged has brought them to a key turning point.
KLAXON BLARES
The joy of reaching the coast off John o'Groats
means they're heading south.
Now each stroke takes them closer to the finish at Tower Bridge.
If they do make it, they'll have done it together.
But some explorers fail because they fall out.
On the trail of travelling companions who famously went
separate ways, I'm in Falmouth.
Two hundred years ago, an artist adventurer came to this coast,
a young man with a grand plan.
That entrepreneurial explorer became the country's most ambitious
landscape artist - William Daniell.
In 1813, William Daniell began a mighty project.
Before photography, Daniell planned to depict the majesty of our coast.
He created over 300 illustrations.
An explorer's guide.
From Ilfracombe...
..to Fingal's Cave...
..and beyond.
Artworks to be sold in a series entitled
"A Voyage Round Great Britain".
Today, originals hang here at Falmouth.
Daniell's work captures the coast of 200 years ago,
spectacular and ripe for exploration.
But part of the picture is missing.
Daniell didn't take on his epic voyage alone,
he had a companion, now almost forgotten,
a writer named Richard Ayton.
Ayton's words were meant to accompany Daniell's drawings.
They set off in the year 1813.
The first location - Land's End.
And here is Ayton's description.
"This western promontory presents a very grand and striking scene;
"the rocks hang about it in huge, disjointed masses
"and are tumbled together in magnificent confusion."
The scene is exhilarating both in words and in picture.
Daniell's illustration shows a lighthouse.
That original lighthouse has since been demolished.
William Daniell's partnership with his writer wouldn't last either.
To see why, I'm retracing their footsteps
with artist Charles Newington.
We're picking up their route at Portreath.
Daniell was inspired by what he saw in Portreath.
And, two centuries later, so is Charles.
I'm fascinated to see what you're selecting from the view, Charles.
Just what Daniell would've been doing.
Daniell was hunting for the beautiful view all the time, and, um,
this one rather does it for me here.
OK, this wonderful hillside here with the great bite taken out of it
and this extraordinary sort of nose
in the middle. It's fantastic.
He was bringing the beauty,
the diversity of the coast
and celebrating it in a way that it had never been celebrated before.
Yes, you've got it, I think.
There was nothing like it before.
He produced the ultimate, best travel guide to Britain you could imagine.
200 years ago,
full-colour reproductions of Daniell's pencil sketches
took painstaking effort, back in his studio,
using the aquatint process.
Copper plates were coated in fine powder to give a textured finish.
Beeswax was applied and burned to blacken.
The original pencil drawing was placed on top.
Pressing transferred an imprint of pencil graphite.
Those lines were then hand-etched into the copper.
After an acid bath,
the ink was applied for printing onto high-quality paper.
Repeated steps built up the full hand-coloured image.
That laborious process was expensive.
The artist desperately needed wealthy buyers.
But his writer, Richard Ayton,
was interested in the poor, not the rich.
Ayton's passion for gritty reality
was spelt out in their trip to the tin mines at St Agnes.
Ayton gives us an account of their arrival.
He wrote, "There was no water in the harbour,
"so that we were obliged to land on the rocks.
"The cliffs above us were strangely shattered,
"and hollowed into innumerable cavities
"by the best of all hole-makers,
"the Cornish miners".
Look at that.
And here are those holes.
This working landscape was ignored by the artist,
but not by the writer.
With no illustration to see the industry
that captivated Ayton in 1813,
we have to rely on photos from much later.
I'm with local historian Roger Radcliffe.
It is really quite a miserable kind of place,
you've got smoke, tin stamps here working.
So the noise was something that you have to appreciate.
The stream would be running nearly black
at times, with this, tainting the bay.
Back then, it really was quite a grim place to work,
and I don't think it's any mistake that we don't have
a nice illustration of St Agnes.
I think it was pretty ugly at that time,
and that's what we've got to think of.
Ayton's words painted the grim picture
that the artist Daniell ignored.
"Instances of sudden suffocation are very frequent in the mines,
"in which there are many varieties of foul air that occasion death
"with equal certainty, but with very different degrees of suffering."
That's pretty heavy stuff for a coffee-table book
intended for the well-off middle classes.
Daniell planned hundreds of luxury prints.
Each new stretch of the journey around Britain had to be
paid for by sales of the PREVIOUS volumes.
But Ayton's writing on the workers' plight risked alienating
the rich buyers Daniell relied on.
As the voyage continued,
their accounts grew further and further apart.
Before they were halfway round our coast, sketcher and scribe split up.
We don't know if Ayton jumped or was pushed,
but the artist wrote him out of the picture.
Daniell, taking over the writing duties himself, says,
"Mr Ayton's account of the voyage is to be
"considered as terminating at the close of the preceding volume."
After departing from Land's End, it took ten years for Daniell
to complete his masterwork - A Voyage Round Great Britain.
Now two centuries old, the volumes inspired generations of explorers.
Industry given an artistic gloss.
And landscapes rendered with romantic splendour.
His epic voyage saw William Daniell elevated to the Royal Academy.
But writer Richard Ayton left his best work behind him on the coast.
In 1823, the year Daniell completed the journey
they had started together, Ayton died.
A forgotten explorer for the truth.
Great coastal adventures are now within everyone's reach.
We're in the age of the independent traveller.
A country of amateur explorers.
There's so much history to enjoy on our shores,
even the professionals can make surprise discoveries.
The West of Scotland was the site of
an odd encounter for Professor Mark Horton
on the Isle of Mull.
In 2010, I made this intriguing discovery.
Why would The National Trust of Australia
own a mausoleum,
here on this tiny little island?
The remarkable answer is revealed by the inscription on the mausoleum.
This is the grave of perhaps the greatest man in Australian history.
"The Father of Australia."
Scotsman Major General Lachlan Macquarie.
Embarking from Portsmouth,
a passage of over 10,000 miles
took this Scottish explorer
down under to found a new country.
But Macquarie wasn't travelling alone.
And neither was I on my voyage of exploration to Mull.
I made this crossing with my wife Kate,
because of our shared fascination with
a man and wife who set sail in 1809.
Here they are - Lachlan Macquarie and his wife Elizabeth...
..a remarkable couple from a remote Scottish outpost
who, 200 years ago, changed the face of the British Empire.
Now, fellow historian Kate and I
are going to explore their extraordinary tale.
To do so we need to be continents apart.
While I'm in Scotland on the trail of Lachlan Macquarie...
..I'm in Sydney to discover the creative force behind Macquarie -
his wife Elizabeth.
Together we're bridging two lives.
Of two unlikely explorers.
Let's begin our story by uncovering Lachlan's.
It began in 1762 on the Isle of Ulva,
just across the water from Mull.
This is not the birthplace that you would expect
for the Father of Australia.
Ten to fifteen people would be living here probably,
but they would have lived with their animals.
There's a little stock enclosure at the back where they would have had
one or two cows for their milk and cheese and so forth.
And in their fields they would have grown oats and barley.
A kind of idyllic lifestyle really.
These are the ancestral lands of the Macquarie clan,
and Lachlan is related to the chief.
It is this pedigree that gives him aspirations. Macquarie is ambitious.
Lachlan left his island home aged 14, with an eye on adventure.
He joined the Army, moving quickly up the ranks...
..until in 1809, a fantastic opportunity lands in his lap.
Governor in Australia.
When Lachlan and his wife Elizabeth
arrived on the 31st of December 1809,
it wasn't called Australia, and it wasn't a country.
It was just the colony of New South Wales -
a convict settlement in wild bushland.
Now, embedded in the stone and steel of Sydney,
Macquarie's name is never far away.
Some two centuries ago,
Lachlan began laying down the city's grid plan.
The growth was spectacular! Look at this map from this time.
Dilapidated streets were realigned and old houses were rebuilt.
Public buildings were commissioned,
including this one which was the barracks for the convicts.
But the couple that did all this were honoured - Macquarie Street
and Elizabeth Street.
Kate is on HER trail.
It wasn't only Lachlan that had grand designs,
so did his Scottish wife - Elizabeth Macquarie.
One of the main thoroughfares in Sydney is Elizabeth Street.
I believe SHE was the creative powerhouse in the couple.
Think a kind of 19th-century Michelle Obama.
Evidence of her influence can be felt across the city.
"Mrs Macquarie's Road,
"so named by the Governor on account of her having originally
"planned it. Finally completed on the 13th day of June 1816."
From bushland to a thriving port.
Grand houses and modest cottages sprang up.
And where did the inspiration
for the Macquaries' make-over spring from?
Take a look at this.
This is the orphan school he built near Sydney,
and THIS is a house he often stayed in on Mull.
Life on the Scottish isles shaped the fabric of a new country
emerging down under in more ways than one.
Macquarie needed builders
and architects to make their vision a reality.
So he made a decision to use the colony's underclass, the convicts.
Lachlan Macquarie was rewriting the rule book.
Prisoners who served their time were now allowed back into society.
How much was Macquarie's radical philosophy
inspired by his Scottish island upbringing?
I'm meeting local historians Olive Brown and Jean Whittaker.
The Scots valued each other for their skills and for who they were,
they didn't necessarily rate people on their wealth.
As a practical islander, Macquarie made the most of what was to hand.
He wanted to have proper currency
because up until then the currency had been rum.
He got some silver dollars
and he used a convict, who'd been shipped out for forging currency,
to turn them into the first Australian coins,
by taking the middle out of the coins.
So he had what was known as the "holey dollar" and the "dump".
KATE: With the convicts onside, Sydney blossomed under Macquarie.
Macquarie's influence wasn't just physical.
He gave us our first currency, our first police force,
and used the Latin "Terra Australis" -
"great southern land" -
which of course became the name Australia.
We've got a phrase in Australia, "a fair go",
it means "fair dealing".
You know, we never adopted the same class system as exists in England,
and I wonder if we don't owe a bit of that to the people of Mull.
And to Scottish Governor Lachlan Macquarie.
Why, when he's so revered in Australia,
has he been forgotten at home?
Perhaps because being transported no longer meant punishment,
but opportunity.
To the Government in London Macquarie was an embarrassment,
but more...
he was dangerous.
The repercussions for Macquarie were devastating.
Pressured to change his ways, he resigned.
In 1822, the couple found themselves back in Scotland.
Successive governors returned to using harsh methods
to keep the convicts in check.
As for Lachlan, within two years of leaving Australia he was dead.
His supporters felt that his vision had died with him.
In death, Lachlan rests in the isles that prepared him
for an explorer's life.
To use his own words...
"If you are born on a mere speck of land in the middle of the ocean,
"you quickly learn how things work, and why people do as they do.
"Learn that lesson well
"and you are equipped to become a citizen of the world."
SEAGULLS CRY
It's easy to think that days of exploration are over, but not so.
Epic journeys are still taking place
and new heroes are in the making.
Our earliest explorers would pay tribute to these crews,
who've tried to match their exploits
propelled by muscle power.
Like those seafarers of old,
they'll return with tall tales of the sea.
We went up north into Scotland,
behind us was a Force 8 gale,
and that took us nicely all the way down to the Corryvreckan Gulf -
the home of the notorious whirlpool.
Lucky for us we didn't actually get too close to it,
so that helped us slingshot across to...
We rowed over two of them. Little ones but not the big one. No.
Oh!
Oh, Jase, look.
Now one boat's almost come full circle around Britain.
After 2,000 miles of struggle they finish first,
in a record time for a four-man crew.
CHEERING AND HORNS BLARING
26 days, 9 hours, 9 minutes and 4 seconds.
An achievement explorers from any age would be proud of.
Come on, let's hear it, boys! Yeah!
Well done, lads.
The adventure's not quite over though.
15 days later, I'm on the Thames.
Not many wait around for those in second place, but we do.
For me the greatest explorations
are not necessarily about coming first,
they're about not giving up, pressing on, taking your time
and coming home with the story of a lifetime.
Josh Tarr and Jason McKinlay have explored the edge of our isles,
the only other crew to finish.
It took 41 days,
the quickest time ever for a pair.
With muscle and sinew they've written their names
into the record books.
WHOOPING, WHISTLING AND APPLAUSE
Explorers come and go, but their legacy lives on,
their indomitable spirit has shaped our island's history.
This is The Explorers' Coast and it's been one heck of a journey.
CHEERING
BOAT HORN BLARES
Fantastic!