Sailing into history:

Sam Neill comes face to face with his past in Uncharted.

For Sam Neill, his journey to Norfolk Island in the Prime documentary series Uncharted was a chance to correct the record in a chapter of his family’s history.

While Cook didn’t spend long on Norfolk Island, his actions would reverberate throughout time for Neill’s family.

On his second trip to the Pacific, the English navigator and explorer arrived on Norfolk Island and quickly claimed it for the Crown.

Neill says Cook initially thought the island held great promise.

“He was always looking for good timber for masts,” says Neill.

“They were always fixing their ships wherever they went because they were not necessarily built that well.

“You break a mast you needed replacement timber and Norfolk pine looked like a great resource. As it turned out, it wasn’t.”

It was determined, however, that Norfolk Island would make an excellent penal colony, especially suited for holding the “worst of the worst, the real intractables.”

In 1833, Neill’s great-great grandfather, Captain Foster Fyans, was posted there as captain of the guard.

“My ancestor becomes acting commandant there during a very dangerous mutiny and, acting swiftly, he put the trouble down,” says Neill.

“So much of our voyage in the wake of Cook was one of looking at unintended consequences and one of the unintended consequences was my forebear ending up in Norfolk Island.”

Captain Fyans’ reaction to this uprising is described in the book The Fatal Shore, which depicts Fyans as a cruel overlord given to excessive violence.

Neill believes that author Robert Hughes, “Paints my bloke rather unfairly. Actually very unfairly and so I was keen to set the record right on that. This was an opportunity to do that.”