After months of frost and famine, the HMS Resolution anchors off Tahuata in the Marquesas Islands—where warriors are tattooed head to toe, women vanish into the hills, and a king wears barkcloth and a feathered crown. His name is Honu—turtle—and his island offers peace after death.
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A gift of kava roots. A stolen iron bar. A musket fired in haste.
As HMS Resolution sails westward from the desolate volcanic shores of Easter Island, hope hangs on the horizon. But at the lush green edge of the Marquesas, a fatal misunderstanding shatters the fragile balance of first contact.
Easter Island, March 1774. A scorched land, stone giants, and people living in the fading shadow of something greater than themselves. When Captain Cook's men explore the island’s interior, they find more than potatoes and carved wood—they uncover questions that history has never fully answered.
In March 1774, after more than three months without landfall, Captain James Cook and the crew of HMS Resolution reached the lonely shores of Easter Island. What they found was neither the paradise they hoped for nor the savage outpost some had imagined—but a stark volcanic land crowned with silent stone giants.
In December 1773, James Cook’s Resolution sailed where no ship had gone before—into the frozen heart of the southern ocean. Icebergs like floating fortresses, endless daylight, spoiled rations, and the creeping specter of scurvy tested every man aboard. This was the voyage that shattered the myth of a great southern continent beyond the ice.