Description
Rare engraving from the official British Admiralty sanctioned edition of the accounts of Cook’s third and final voyage. All other later copies made of this image by other publishers were unauthorised, usually smaller and inferior in quality.
Famous image of ten Hawaiian rowers transporting a priest who is carrying a feather-covered image of Kukailimoku, the Hawaiian god of war. The priests and paddlers are all wearing gourd masks in their double-hulled canoe with an upright lateen woven sail. Double-hulled or single-hulled outrigger canoes were the primary form of transportation in Polynesian Hawaii. The smaller canoes, like the one depicted here, were shaped from a single, great koa log harvested from upcountry rainforests where they were carved before being hauled to the coast. Each canoe typically held five or six paddlers.
Beddie 1743-65, p.342, Joppien 3.309A, ill.p.539
From Cook & King, A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean Undertaken by the Command of His Majesty, for Making Discoveries in the Northern Hemisphere….
