A Burning Ship at Sea, a Lost Statue and the Soul of a Kingdom

When the captain of the cargo ship G.F. Haendel hoisted anchor in Bremerhaven on August of 1880, bound for Honolulu, he would never have accepted the idea that the bronze effigy of a Hawaiian king lashed to the deck might have anything to do with the violent gales that threaten to tear away the masts, or with the coal fire that has started deep in the hold where the crew won’t be able to stop it.

Captain Gerhard Schrock’s mettle is brutally tested by the collision of two North Atlantic storms that climax in the ship’s tumultuous near-sinking. When next a ship fire is discovered, the physical limits and emotional state of the crew are laid bare with freezing weather in their perilous race to reach the Falkland Islands on the burning vessel, where Schrock will witness his ship and the cargo, including the statue of the “Savage King,” be lost to the sea or destroyed by the fire.

A maritime hearing on the disaster looms in a small Falkland Islands courtroom, while Shrock questions his will to go to sea again. Forced to confront the dangers and the solitariness of his occupation, the dilemma is magnified by what he had with a Sydney harbormaster’s daughter who—like his ship—he had loved and lost. Although the captain is exonerated and makes his way to Hawaii to find work on land, he is incredulous to learn a kahuna sorcerer purportedly ‘prayed down’ his ship. Introduced to another kahuna dream healer who claims to have been involved in saving the ship until it reached the Falklands, and to have ‘seen’ Schrock on his ship far out at sea, he must try to unravel this strange reality with the help of his new friends.

The Captain & the King is a story based on real events blending an ordeal at sea, a cross-cultural love story of resolve, and an exploration of how men of logic confront the supernatural. Author Jack Champlin has infused a piece of late 1880s Hawaii history with canny storytelling filled with unforgettable characters and evocative details, taking the reader to another time in an unusual place. At the same time, the story portends what the Hawaiian Kingdom will someday become and why the first king’s mana, or soul, takes on such importance for present-day Hawaii.