Sutherland, Alison.
Anahe and Alexander.
Tangerine Books NZ.
2025.
ISBN 9781067081607.
214 pages.
Arapaoa Island, more commonly known as Arapawa Island, is familiar to those who travel by ferry from Picton in New Zealand’s South Island, and across Cook Strait to the capital, Wellington, in the North Island. After departing from Picton, the inter-island ferry proceeds down the Tory Channel, which shadows the shoreline of rugged, extended Arapaoa Island on its port bow, before sailing through a very narrow pass and entering the open waters of Cook Strait. This often-stormy body of water is known to Māori as Te Moana-o-Raukawa.
Arapaoa Island and the waters of Queen Charlotte Sound (Totaranui) comprise the setting for the novel Anahe and Alexander by Alison Sutherland. She is best-known for her non-fiction works Old Will: the first Arapawa goat1 and Cook’s Ark: the animals that sailed with James Cook.2 The setting for these earlier books is also Queen Charlotte Sound, and her research for them led to the writing of the novel Anahe and Alexander.
In the novel, the year is 1777, and the narrative takes place on the islands and coves of Queen Charlotte Sounds’ fretworked coast. Captain Cook’s two vessels Resolution and Discovery have called at Totaranui. They have two reasons for doing so. First, to obtain provisions for the voyage ahead to tropical Polynesia and, secondly, to release the animals and poultry they have brought across the world in order to begin an agricultural industry in New Zealand. Sponsor of the voyage, the reigning English monarch, King George III, known as “Farmer George”, has envisaged a pastoral and arable agricultural society in the new world, based on the English farming model.
Resolution, Cook’s favourite vessel, is familiar with the waters and islands of Queen Charlotte Sound, having been provisioned there on three previous occasions. In February 1777, his two ships anchor in what Cook had earlier named as Ship Cove. It is known to local Māori as Meretoto, which translates as “Blood Drinking Club”.
Among the men of Cook’s support vessel Discovery, commanded by Charles Clerke, was a 15-year-old midshipman, Alexander Mouat, the son of a respectable English family. Alex’s father was a naval officer known to Cook. The lad was also an animal lover with aspirations of becoming a farmer.
Among the local Māori who observed the arrival of the two European ships was 14-year-old Anahe, who well remembered the last time Pakeha ships had visited, four years earlier. They, too, had been commanded by Captain “Toot”. Anahe (also known as Ghowannahe) was an orphan fostered by older women (kuia) on Arapaoa Island.
Once encampments were set up on the shore of Ship Cove, Cook gave the order to disembark the animals from the ships. Dramatic scenes ensued as the menagerie was taken ashore.
A flurry of activity followed as several pinnaces – the lightest boats on the sailing ships – were used to ferry the smallest animals to shore. Fowl, ducks, geese, roosters, hens and chickens – all squashed together in coops of various sizes – were placed beside the tents. Next to these were several meowing cats, including a litter of kittens, huddled together in wooden crates.
Some seamen carried their pet dogs ashore, while others dragged their dogs by a short leash or knotted rope. One large, rough-coated dark brown canine barked furiously and snapped at its owner’s hand. Three elderly women stood back and gesticulated with a mixture of disapproval and disbelief. Barking, snapping dogs were a novelty to Maori; kuri [Māori dogs] didn’t bark or attack, they howled and cowered.
Among the animals transported to the new world for breeding purposes was a red Sussex bull. “This was the beast most feared by the old seadogs, the one everyone avoided throughout the long voyage”. While being disembarked, the frightened animal turned violent, rampaging ashore and threatening the life of the girl Anahe. “The horned monster, a demon frothing at the mouth, was coming towards her”.
Alexander courageously rescued the girl from the rampaging bull, and a friendship ensued between her and the young Englishman. The lad now spent all his time ashore, relishing the beauty of the native forest and flora, and the company of Anahe. They became lovers, teaching one another their languages, and, as a mark of his respect for the indigenous Māori culture, Alex received a body tattoo.
However, 1777 was not an easy time for European-Māori relations. Four years earlier, in December 1773, ten men from Adventure, commanded by Tobias Furneaux, had been massacred, dismembered and eaten at Grass Cove (Wharehunga), on the western shore of Arapaoa Island. Cook and Resolution had already left New Zealand, so were absent when the killings occurred.
The Māori in Totaranui were, therefore, nervous and wary when Cook arrived in 1777, anticipating vengeance by the English authorities for their murdered compatriots. As to the cause of the slaughter, there are differing versions, but it is thought that Anahe was at least a witness to the atrocity. The atmosphere was simmering. Would revenge be exacted for the earlier killings?
The local Māori and Omai, the Polynesian who was with the expedition on his way to being returned to his homeland, were in favour of utu (revenge) for the earlier massacre. Cook, however, seemed indifferent to their urgings. He was by now unwell, suffering from stomach complaints and mood swings that produced intemperate reactions to events. He took no action against Kahura, the probable leader of the Grass Cove massacre, when the chief came aboard Resolution. Instead, Cook made Kahura welcome, and consented to Kahura’s portrait being painted by the ship’s artist John Webber—a significant incident surprisingly not included in Sutherland’s narrative. However, the air of suspicion and fear that permeated the district is well evoked by the novelist, who makes it clear that this fraught atmosphere also affected the young lovers.
The couple’s happiness was also clouded by the realisation that their love is doomed. Both knew that Alexander must return to his ship when the voyage is resumed. Both were only too aware of this distressing reality. Unable to face a heartbreaking separation, Alexander considered the option of desertion, an offence punishable by death under Royal Navy law.
Convinced of a future with Anahe – as both kaumatua [Māori elder] and farmer – he had set aside his fears, his loyalty, and the love he felt for his family waiting in England. This was his life now, and he was determined to stay.
Alexander and Anahe retreated to their sanctuary, a cave above the forest at Meretoto. There, they hoped to be safe from naval authority. However, their situation was hopeless. Led by Alexander’s friend and fellow midshipman, Edward Riou, the expedition’s marines went ashore, and discovered the lovers in their sanctuary. Alexander was shackled, chained, and taken back to his ship. Anahe was left on the shore, bereft and heartbroken.
Back aboard ship, Alexander was put on trial under Captain Cook’s authority. Cook was ambivalent and, by naval standards compassionate. He was conscious of young Alex’s family back in England, and how an execution would stain the family’s good reputation. A flogging would produce a shameful scarring; nevertheless the lad was sentenced to the lash, and kept in chains in case he attempted once more to desert. Implausibly, the novel has Cook’s initial reaction to the case as “ ‘Leave him be’! laughed Cook, raising his tankard. ‘A toast to the impertinence of youth’ ”. This reaction does not sound at all like the Cook we know, neither the drinking nor the judgement.
The novel concludes with Anahe self-harming with a piece of flint as she faced life without her English sailor-lover, though consoled to some extent by the knowledge that she was pregnant and that, through their child, their love would live on.
This concludes Part I of Anahe and Alexander, which the author informs us is a fictional account.
Rendering the facts of history into fiction is a tricky business, and one in which Sutherland largely succeeds. The narrative she gleans from the known facts is an affectingly poignant story and one that is only too plausible. How many European sailors were tempted to forgo the privations and misery of 18th century shipboard life and, instead, enjoy a sybaritic life ashore? In Tahiti in particular these temptations were ever-present, culminating in the famous mutiny in Bounty in April 1789. William Bligh, commander of Bounty, had sailed with Cook on his Third Voyage. When desertions occurred, Cook’s tactics were to take a chief hostage, or employ the services of other locals (who were always alert to the main chance) to turn the deserters in. This tactic usually worked.
In Part II of Anahe and Alexander, the author explores the probability that Anahe really existed. She says the esteemed Cook scholar JC Beaglehole dismissed this idea as fanciful. To support her hypothesis, Sutherland quotes from two of Cook’s men, John Rickman and John Ledyard, who both recorded a girl matching Anahe’s description. Sutherland believes a sketch of a young Māori girl, made by surgeon’s mate and amateur artist William Wade Ellis in February 1777, fits the descriptions of Anahe.
Regardless, the story of Anahe and Alexander is made credible by Alison Sutherland and, as such, is a tribute to her authority and imaginative ambition. As she writes in an Afterword, “Anahe and Alexander were Māori and Pakeha respectively, and the narrative reflects the dawn of Aotearoa-New Zealand’s modern history”.
Graeme Lay
References
- Sutherland, Alison. Old Will: the first Arapawa goat. New Zealand Arapawa Goat Association. 2013.
- Sutherland, Alison. Cook’s Ark: the animals that sailed with James Cook. Published by the author. 2019.
Originally published in Cook's Log, page 8, volume 49, number 2 (2026).