It’s 1768. A chance meeting at London’s dockyards sees
medical student Nicholas Young recruited as Surgeon’s Boy to serve under
Captain James Cook aboard a bark called the Endeavour. Ahead of the handsome
17-year-old is a voyage that will test his mettle and take him to uncharted
places at the bottom of the world. One of those places being a land Dutch
explorer Abel Tasman discovered the previous century when he encountered its
western shoreline. The land was occupied by tattooed, brown-skinned, warlike people.
A land Tasman called Nieuw Zeeland.
Nearly five centuries earlier, in 1301 AD, huge, twin-hulled canoes depart the South Pacific Island nation of Hawaiki. Aboard each craft are 80 villagers hand-picked by their rangatira, the mighty Hotu. Raids by enemies from neighbouring islands prompted the decision to flee their homeland. Their destination is a land far to the south. Many weeks later, the survivors aboard Hotu’s canoe sight the eastern shoreline of a rugged land covered by cloud. They call it Aotearoa – land of the long, white cloud.
In 1769, eight months after departing England, Nicholas Young and his crewmates arrive in Tahiti aboard the Endeavour. The Surgeon’s Boy is quickly becoming a man; the journey out was a baptism of fire for him with mid-Atlantic storms resulting in injury and death. In Tahiti, Captain Cook puts his men to work, building an observation post from which he can observe the transit of Venus. Nicholas is excused from shore duties after a local priest, Tupaia, informs Cook that Tahiti’s beautiful queen, Obadia, has invited his Surgeon’s Boy to stay in the village as her guest. Tupaia didn’t mention he convinced the childless queen that Nicholas had been sent to her by the spirits of her ancestors and that he would give her a son. The beautiful queen seduces a surprised but delighted Nicholas, and in the weeks that follow they enjoy long days and nights of lovemaking.
It's 1501 AD and for the first time the hills of Aotearoa echo to the sounds of war. As the competition for food and land increases, so too does inter-tribal fighting between tribes of the brown-skinned people who now call themselves Maori. Apera, chief of the Te Arawa tribe, leads a war party down the east coast, attacking settlements along the way. Defeated warriors are either enslaved or eaten, for cannibalism is widely practised.
October 1769. It's springtime in Aotearoa. A Maori boy sits alone on a sandy beach, looking out across a sparkling bay. On his right is a headland that extends far out into the blue Pacific. Moki is the oldest son of the chief of the Ngati Porou tribe. He’s a proud descendant of Hotu whose battered canoe arrived on this same beach centuries earlier. Moki suddenly jumps to his feet when he sees a tall ship far out to sea. Mistaking its billowing sails for a giant seabird, he flees inland to his nearby pa, or fortified village, to alert the villagers to the approaching danger.
Aboard the Endeavour, Nicholas serves as lookout in the bark’s crow’s nest. Many long weeks have passed since leaving Tahiti. He spies land and shouts, “Land ahoy!” He’s looking at the very headland Moki was sitting alongside moments earlier. So delighted is Cook by the sighting, he names the landmark Young Nick’s Head after his keen-eyed lookout. The captain suspects it’s part of the eastern shoreline of the land Abel Tasman called Nieuw Zeeland. Translating the Dutch to English, Cook renames it New Zealand.
After anchoring in the bay, the captain dispatches a contingent of his marines ashore. From aboard ship, Nicholas and his crewmates look on as the marines are greeted by an impassioned haka, or war dance, performed by Ngati Porou warriors armed with clubs, spears and other Stone Age weapons. The chief’s brother is killed and several warriors wounded in the inevitable violence that follows. So disillusioned is Cook by the conflict, and by the apparent lack of fruit and game, he names the region Poverty Bay.
This first bloody encounter with New Zealand’s indigenous people is a sobering harbinger for what follows.
The Endeavour’s circumnavigation of the new land will be an experience that breaks some men. But not Nicholas. The Surgeon’s Boy is now as ready as any of his crewmates to face the many challenges that life will throw at him in the long weeks and months ahead.
New Zealand novelist and screenwriter Lance Morcan is a
prolific author with more than 20 published fiction and non-fiction books to
his credit as well as several screenplay adaptations of his work. A former
journalist and newspaper editor, he regularly writes in collaboration with his
son James Morcan, and their books are published by Sterling Gate Books.
The father-and-son team's published books include the new release horror Silent Fear (A novel inspired by true crimes) and the bestselling historical adventures White Spirit and Into the Americas. They also have several series on the market including The Orphan Trilogy, an international thriller series, the globetrotting action-romance series The World Duology, and the controversial non-fiction franchise The Underground Knowledge Series. An additional non-fiction title, Debunking Holocaust Denial Theories, was written in collaboration with Holocaust survivors to document the genocide.
The Morcans’ production company Morcan Motion Pictures has a number of feature films in early development, including adaptations of Silent Fear, Into the Americas and White Spirit. It is also developing Underground Knowledge into a TV series.
Lance is currently revising his solo-written novel New Zealand, an epic historical adventure spanning 500 years of South Pacific and Polynesian history. Including research, writing and life's distractions, this novel has been over a decade in the making.
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