PACIFIC IMAGES: Views from Captain Cook's Third Voyage

Featuring Stamps Related to Cook's Voyages

Pacific Images, in this, its second edition, presents the earliest illustrations and descriptions of Pacific peoples and cultures as they were observed and recorded on Captain James Cook’s third and final voyage (1776–1780) with HMS Resolution and Discovery. Reproduced are all 61 engraved plates from artist John Webber’s drawings, plus three maps published in the rare folio Atlas that accompanies the British government’s official journal, A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean (1784). Text describing each illustration is derived from the meticulous notebooks and detailed journals kept by Cook and his officers.The second edition of Pacific Images includes selected colorful stamps from the Ron V. Meads Captain Cook stamp collection as a fitting complement to the beauty of the engraved plates. Scenes, people, and objects associated with Cook’s eighteenth-century scientific voyages have been featured on 96 stamps from 40 countries.

Eleanor C. Nordyre was a research fellow at the East-West Center and a specialist in Hawai'i's population.