LIKE ITS TWO PREDECESSORS, The Secret Life of James Cook (2013) and James Cook’s New World (2014), this final novel in the trilogy is a work of fiction. However, all three novels are based on factual events. To familiarise myself with the facts surrounding James Cook’s third voyage of exploration I drew on a variety of sources.
These included: The Trial of the Cannibal Dog: Captain Cook in the South Seas by Anne Salmond (Penguin, 2004), Captain James Cook by Richard Hough (Hodder & Stoughton, 1994), Captain Cook: The Seamen’s Seaman by Alan Villiers (Hodder & Stoughton, 1967), Cook: From Sailor to Legend by Rob Mundle (ABC Books, 2013) and Into the Blue by Tony Horwitz (Allen & Unwin, 2002). The text of Captain Cook’s Hawaii by Anthony Murray-Oliver (Millwood Press, 1975) is complemented by many colour plates and black-and-white illustrations of the people of Hawaii, mostly the work of the artist on Cook’s third voyage, John Webber. The Captain Cook Encyclopaedia by John Robson (Random House New Zealand, 2004) was again a useful reference.
As in the earlier novels, brief extracts from the official journals of James Cook during his second world voyage are occasionally quoted to illustrate the navigator’s keen observance of sea and weather conditions and his prose style. I selected these extracts from The Voyage of the Resolution and Adventure 1772-1775 and The Voyage of the Resolution and Discovery 1776–1780, both edited by JC Beaglehole (Cambridge University Press, published for the Hakluyt Society, 1959) and The Journals of Captain James Cook on his Voyages of Discovery, edited from the original manuscripts by JC Beaglehole (Cambridge University Press, published for the Hakluyt Society, 1967). I am grateful to the Hakluyt Society for their permission to quote from Cook’s journals.
A number of people were extremely supportive of the project and provided expert advice whenever I needed it. These included Ian Boreham of the Captain Cook Society, Ipswich, and maritime novelist Joan Druett of Wellington. My editor, Stephen Stratford, carried out his work with characteristic rigour and meticulousness. HarperCollins’s New Zealand publisher, Finlay Macdonald, was extremely encouraging throughout all stages of the project and Sandra Noakes, HarperCollins’s publicist in Auckland, drew on her extensive range of contacts to ensure that no one in the media was unaware of the novels’ presence. I am again deeply grateful to my literary agent, Linda Cassells, whose sound judgment and publishing experience in New Zealand and overseas were invaluable. Darragh Walshe of Hawaii Tourism Oceania in Auckland put me in contact with Hawaiian historical experts De Soto Brown at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu and Boyd Bond on Hawaii’s ‘Big Island’. The knowledge of both these experts was extremely helpful while I was researching James Cook’s time in the Sandwich Isles–Hawaii.
Finally, sincere thanks to my wife, Gillian. James and Elizabeth Cook have been a constant presence in our household for more than five years, and throughout that time Gillian’s wise counsel has been of inestimable assistance to the entire project.
Graeme Lay
January 2015