1774 Military Gorget of the South Sea Islanders
DESCRIPTION
A Tahitian breast gorget appears in this excerpted plate from the French edition of John Hawkesworth's account of the voyages of Byron, Wallis, Carteret, and Cook.
In it, a broad crescent-shaped gorget hangs from a braided cord tied in a bow, its dark surface banded with rows of small pale triangles and its upper edge set with round tufts. A shaggy fringe falls from the lower edge. The caption reads "Hausse-col militaire des insulaires de la mer du Sud," or "Military gorget of the South Sea islanders."
Hawkesworth's Voyages
In 1773 John Hawkesworth published, at the Admiralty's commission, a compiled account of the British voyages of John Byron, Samuel Wallis, Philip Carteret, and James Cook's first voyage, which together opened the South Pacific to European readers. It was translated into French the following year as Relation des voyages entrepris par ordre de Sa Majesté britannique (Paris: Saillant et Nyon and Panckoucke, 1774), with its plates re-engraved under the direction of Robert Bénard and others. Wallis's Dolphin reached Tahiti in 1767, the first European ship known to have done so, and Cook's Endeavour followed in 1769.
CONDITION
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