Publisher: Sterling Gate Books
Format: Kindle and paperback
Hardcover and audio available early in 2025.
Pages: 391 (print length)
Genre: Historical Fiction Book Description 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 via Tahiti 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. Tasman called it 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. 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 a headland that extends far out into the blue Pacific. 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. At the same time, a young Maori sits alone on a sandy beach, looking out across a sparkling bay. On his right is the same headland Nicholas spied moments earlier. Moki is the oldest son of the chief of the Ngati Porou tribe and is 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 the wings of a giant seabird, he flees inland to his nearby pa, or fortified village, to alert the villagers to the approaching danger. After anchoring in the bay, Cook dispatches a contingent of his marines ashore. 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 region’s scarcity of wild game, he later names it Poverty Bay. This first bloody encounter with New Zealand’s indigenous people is a sobering harbinger for what follows. The Endeavour’s subsequent circumnavigation of the new land is an experience that breaks some men. Amidst the life-threatening challenges they face at sea and on land, Nicholas finds true love when he meets Anika, a beautiful Maori wahine who steals his heart. Meet the Author For more information about Lance Morcan and his writing, visit his Amazon Author Page or visit his blog.
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