Secret Life of James Cook

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by Graeme Lay


  ‘And the news sheet story said something else.’ Elizabeth’s eyes continued to bore into his. What else could possibly be coming? ‘Mr Banks said that he was going to sail around the world again, very soon, to discover the Great Southern Continent they did not find on the Endeavour expedition.’ Her frown deepened. ‘What do you know of this plan?’

  James shook his head wearily. ‘I know nothing of Banks’s latest scheme.’ He could hear his sons playing outside with their Maori fighting sticks. ‘Although I venture to say that before long I will.’ Yes, he thought, there is still unfinished business, and it will not be Banks who will finish it.

  Releasing her, he walked over to the chest which lay open on the parlour floor. From beneath his folded clothing he brought out the journal. Holding it in both hands, he carried it over to her and said:

  ‘For you, Elizabeth. With all my love.’

  Acknowledgements

  The Secret Life of James Cook is by definition a work of fiction, but it is one founded on fact. What might be called James Cook’s ‘outer world’ has been chronicled by scholars and writers ever since his first biography, The Life of Captain James Cook by Andrew Kippis, was published in 1788, just ten years after the subject’s death. Since then Cook’s voyages have been exhaustively documented so that today the voyager’s bibliography is immense.

  Instead of reading every Cook biography or article published, which would have been time-consuming as well as repetitious, I drew on a few selected works to familiarize myself with the actualities of the first forty or so years of Cook’s life. These books included JC Beaglehole’s monumental work The Life of Captain James Cook (1974) and Anne Salmond’s gripping accounts of Cook’s voyages, Between Worlds: Early Exchanges Between Maori and Europeans (1997) and The Trial of the Cannibal Dog: Captain Cook in the South Seas (2003). For a depiction of the traditional Polynesian world which shaped the life of Tupaia, the Raiatean who sailed with Cook on the Endeavour after Tahiti, Joan Druett’s Tupaia: Captain Cook’s Polynesian Navigator (2011) was enormously helpful. The Captain Cook Encyclopaedia by John Robson (2004) was an invaluable reference for fact-checking when pure facts were called for. Other biographies I referred to were Captain James Cook by Richard Hough (1994) and Captain Cook: Obsession and Discovery by Vanessa Collingridge (2007). I am grateful to Joan Druett for her expert advice on maritime matters, and to writer and artist Don Donovan for his reminiscences of growing up in England. A friend in Tahiti, Hinata Pea, provided me with a translation of Tupaia’s Tahitian speech. My gratitude must also be extended to my editor, Stephen Stratford, for his skills and unerring eye for detail, and to Antoinette Sturny, project editor at HarperCollins, for all her care and consideration.

  The words of Cook himself — short extracts taken directly from the journal he kept on Endeavour — appear throughout the text. They consist of careful observations of weather and sea conditions, the ship’s course and bearings taken, with the occasional avian or ocean creature also noted. The official journal illustrates Cook’s ability to closely observe and record the physical phenomena which surrounded him. He was scrupulous in his day-to-day documentation of Endeavour’s progress, but his personal feelings never intrude.

  The above references provided the foundation upon which I constructed an imagined version of Cook’s inner life, told mainly through a personal journal dedicated to his wife, Elizabeth. Given the paucity of facts about Cook the man, it seemed to me that such an invented account, in which crucial events of his life are viewed through the eyes of Cook himself, could paint a portrait of the explorer which is very different from conventional depictions. Accordingly, I have spliced into the facts of his life, during his formative years and his later maritime career, an interpretation of Cook’s principles, motives and deeds in the hope that these may provide insights into the inner nature of this remarkable man. The personalities of the other principal characters in the novel, and their relationships with one another, are entirely invented. Hence the story, as told here, is primarily fiction. The rest is history. I am now writing a sequel to this novel, based on the four years of James Cook’s life following his Endeavour voyage. This includes his second world circumnavigation.

  My final acknowledgement is to my agent, Linda Cassells. I am deeply grateful to her, not only for planting the seed which ultimately grew into this book, but also for her sound editorial and publishing judgments along the way. Without Linda, this book would never have materialized.

  Graeme Lay

  January 2013

  About the Author

  A full-time writer and editor, Graeme Lay has published short stories, fiction for adults and young adults and collections of travel writing. He has a deep interest in the history and cultures of the South Pacific islands.

  OTHER BOOKS BY GRAEME LAY

  Novels and Short Story Collections

  The Mentor

  The Fools on the Hill

  Temptation Island

  Dear Mr Cairney

  Motu Tapu: Stories of the South Pacific

  The Town on the Edge of the World

  Alice & Luigi

  Young Adult Novels

  The Wave Rider

  Leaving One Foot Island

  Return to One Foot Island

  The Pearl of One Foot Island

  Children

  Are We There Yet? A Kiwi Kid’s Holiday Exploring Guide

  Nanny Potaka’s Birthday Treat

  Non-fiction

  The Cook Islands (with Ewan Smith)

  Pacific New Zealand

  In Search of Paradise: Artists and Writers in the Colonial South Pacific

  Whangapoua: A History

  Travel

  Passages: Journeys in Polynesia

  New Zealand: A Visual Celebration (with Gareth Eyres)

  Samoa (with Evotia Tamua)

  Feasts and Festivals: A Celebration of Pacific Island Culture in New Zealand (with Glenn Jowitt)

  The Globetrotter Guide to New Zealand

  The Best of Auckland

  New Zealand: The Magnificent Journey (with Gareth Eyres)

  The Miss Tutti Frutti Contest: Travel Tales of the South Pacific

  The Globetrotter Travel Atlas of New Zealand

  Inside the Cannibal Pot

  Copyright

  Fourth Estate

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

  First published in 2013

  This edition published in 2013

  by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited

  ABN 36 009 913 517

  Copyright © Graeme Lay 2013

  Graeme Lay asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers.

  HarperCollinsPublishers

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  2 Bloor Street East, 20th floor, Toronto, Ontario M4W 1A8, Canada

  10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022, USA

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data

  Lay, Graeme, 1944–

  The secret life of James Cook: a novel / Graeme Lay.

  ISBN 978-1-77554-012-0

  1. Cook, James, 1728-1779—Fiction. I. Title

  NZ823.2—dc 23

  ISBN: 978 1 77554 012 0 (pbk)

  ISBN: 978 1 7754 9025 8 (epub)

  Cover design by Matt Stanton, HarperCollins Design Studio, Australia

  Cover photography by Richard Jenkins; all other images by shutterstock.com

  Author photo by Matthew Lay

  Maps by Outline Draughting & Graphics Ltd

&n
bsp; Publisher: Alison Brook

  Published by arrangement with Calico Publishing Ltd

 

 

 


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