Tūrangi’s Peter Deakin has spent more than 40 years at sea — from deck boy to deep-sea fisherman to rounding Cape Horn on the Endeavour. Now he's written it all down.

Peter was just 10 years old when he talked his way onto a Yorkshire cobble in Bridlington.

He had run out of money after three fishing trips and made the skipper a deal: he would clean the boat, bait the hooks, and look after the passengers in exchange for one hour's fishing a day.

The skipper agreed. Deakin kept coming back every summer for the next five years.

Deakin went on to spend 44 years at sea, working his way from deck boy on merchant ships to skipper of his own fishing trawler.

He did two stints on the HMB Endeavour – a replica of Captain Cook’s Endeavour. The first was in 2002, in a journey from Perth to London via Cape Horn.

Peter Deakin holds up a photo of his fishing vessel and a huge catch of orange

The second was part of the Tuia 250 Voyage which sailed from Sydney to Tauranga in 2019.

He has now written a book – ‘Look Sharp’ about his various experiences at sea.

He started in the Merchant Navy at 15, joining as a deck boy and spent nearly 11 years on large cargo ships.

The industry was entering a period of rapid change, with containerisation and companies like Portline, which once operated 42 ships, saw their fleets made redundant within a few years.

When the Merchant Navy chapter closed, Deakin turned to fishing.

He became one of the first private owners to go after orange roughy, with a 49-foot trawler.

When the catches grew too large for the boat, he cut in half and lengthened it by 20 feet.

Two years of successful fishing later, he had accumulated 1000 tonnes of deep-water species quota.

"It was a lot of work, but an earner.”

His trawler years were not without drama and in his book he tells how the vessel was deliberately sunk.

He only pieced the story together years later at a dinner party, when a guest told him that a former employee had been paid to do it.

He had the boat raised with a floating crane. Seven months later, it was back in the water.

After selling the trawler, Deakin joined the crew of the HMS Endeavour for a voyage that took the ship across the Southern Ocean and around Cape Horn.

The top sails were removed before crossing the Southern Ocean because of the size of the seas and the risk of capsizing a genuine concern.

Deakin was on watch one night when he told the mate the wind was about to change. About 15 minutes later, 65 knots of southerly hit.

All hands went on deck, the sails came down, and the ship ran on a single foresail — a square sail.

"We broke the ship's distance record with just the one piece of canvas.”

The Endeavour voyage also took in New Zealand waters, including a passage through French Pass — a stretch of water Deakin already knew well from his trawler days.

What the crew did not know was that the public had been told in advance.

"The hillside was covered in people because they'd heard that the ship was going to go through there.

"We as crew didn't know we were going to go through there, but all the public knew. There were hundreds of people up in the bush waving and screaming at us."

A local crayfisherman from D'Urville Island came aboard as pilot to navigate the passage, steering the ship through the tidal current under sail, with no engine.

The voyage also included an unplanned grounding just south of Sydney, where the Endeavour got stuck on the bottom while preparing to enter the harbour.

A small tug couldn't shift her. A large tug from a nearby tanker port eventually did, breaking off the false keel in the process.

Divers went down to check the hull before the ship was cleared to proceed. By the time the Endeavour reached her berth in Sydney Harbour, it was 10 o'clock at night — well after the 200,000 people who had gathered to watch her arrive had gone home.

Deakin's contribution to the voyage extended beyond seamanship. After arriving in Rio de Janeiro, he volunteered to help with mast maintenance and ended up hand-scraping and hand-sanding six coats of varnish across all three masts — at sea, by himself, while also working 12-hour days. It took two and a half months.

His nickname aboard the Endeavour was Pete the Fish.

Deakin arrived in New Zealand for the first time in 1960, at 15 years old. He says he knew before he even stepped ashore that he was going to live here. He has been here since.

The book is available directly from Deakin at the Anglers Table café next to Creel Lodge in Tūrangi, which he owns. It is $20 a copy.

He wrote the book mainly to capture his memories for family and friends.