1774 View of Matavai Bay in Tahiti, Called Port Royal by Captain Wallis
DESCRIPTION
Matavai Bay in Tahiti, where Wallis and Cook anchored, 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 great spreading tree crowns a grassy rise above the bay beneath a towering sky of cloud. A ship lies at anchor offshore nearby small sailing canoes and a village while a few Tahitians labor below the tree. The caption reads "Vue de la baye de Matavaï à Otahiti appellée Havre du Port-Royal par le Capitaine Wallis," or "View of Matavai Bay in Tahiti, called Port Royal Harbour by Captain Wallis."
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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