time out
Local historian endeavours to find new angle
Author Anthony Hill spent some 18 months exhaustively researching his subject in a multifaceted manner, and even read Captain Cook’s handwritten journal. Images supplied.
The origin story that marks the beginning of European Australian history, Captain Cook’s Endeavour voyage, now 250 years old, is a story most Australians know just a little about. Canberra author Anthony Hill’s
book Captain Cook’s Apprentice is a fictional narrative re-telling of said voyage. He told Canberra Weekly he spent some 18 months exhaustively researching his subject in a multifaceted manner.
Between sailing on a replica Endeavour to travelling through the UK, New Zealand and Tahiti, he also gained access to Captain Cook’s very own handwritten journal from the trip in question, which is housed at the National Library of Australia. “I was very lucky that the manuscript director allowed me to have four hours with it,” he says. “Day by day, seeing it in his words growing on the page, you get a real sense of it.” The perspective by which Hill approaches this story is intriguing; his protagonist is a 13-year-old cabin boy based on Isaac Manley, the youngest crew member of the Endeavour and the last survivor of the voyage to pass. Hill says he couldn’t find anything Isaac wrote about the voyage which meant his own perspective had to be fictional. “I wanted to write it as a novel
with the immediacy of someone who is there and came across references to Isaac in the writings of Captain Cook,” he says. “The sailing of the voyage was his first time and everything was new … it allowed me to write about it in a way you couldn’t if it was an experienced sailor.” Hill says he long wanted to write about the Endeavour prior to publishing the first edition of Captain Cook’s Apprentice back in 2008. “I think it’s one of the most extraordinary stories of discovery and I wanted to tell it in a new way and make it accessible. “Writing it as a fictional narrative recreation allows you to get inside your characters in a way you just can’t with a historical book.” The new edition of Captain Cook’s Apprentice will be released 2 July; penguinrandomhouse.com.au - Denholm Samaras
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