The Daring Book for Girls - Andrea J. Buchanan [28]
CAPTAIN COOK’S VOYAGES TO THE SOUTH SEAS
The famous English explorer Captain James Cook made three voyages through the Pacific islands between 1768 and 1779. Cook was the first European to see Tahiti, to sail around New Zealand, and to set foot in Australia.
A Tahitian man named Omai guided Cook through the islands during his first voyage. Cook brought Omai back to England with him and, on his third and final voyage to the islands, he returned Omai to his home.
Cook left from Tahiti, heading north and then east to the Americas, where he mapped the west coast and tried, unsuccessfully, to find passage back to England through the Bering Strait. He died in Hawaii in 1779.
PAUL GAUGUIN AND THE SOUTH PACIFIC
Perhaps you have seen French artist Paul Gauguin’s vivid paintings of village scenes, huts, and the spiritual life of South Sea Island people, in his trademark oranges and lush greens. Gauguin (1848-1903) embraced these islands. On his last legs as a failed businessman, he left his Danish wife Mette and their five children (forcing them to live with Mette’s family to make ends meet) and boarded a ship for the South Pacific. There, he dreamt, he could escape the conventions of European life and the Impressionist school of art, which he found confining.
In Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands, where Gauguin lived the rest of his days, he painted his now renowned images of island life. Gauguin found himself at odds with the European governments established on the islands; it turns out he couldn’t really escape Europe after all. The colonial government sentenced him to prison, but he died of illness at the young age of 54, before he could serve his time. Gauguin is buried on the Marquesas Islands, and his work earned fame and fortune only after his death.
Tahitian Women on the Beach by Paul Gauguin
WAR BATTLE ON THE SOLOMON ISLANDS
During World War II, the key battle of Guadalcanal took place in the Solomon Islands. The Japanese were using several of the Solomon Islands as bases, hoping to intercept ships between the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. The Allies (the United States and its partners) wanted these islands for their own bases, and to stop Japan’s growing control in the South Pacific.
From August 1942 to February 1943, United States marines and allied forces fought Japanese troops in and near the Solomon Islands. The Allies’ victory at Guadalcanal was a major turning point in the war against Japan.
EASTER ISLAND AND THE MOAI STATUES
Deep in the Pacific Ocean sits Rapa Nui, two thousand miles from its nearest neighbors, Tahiti and Chile. Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island, is famed for its haunting—and huge—human-like stone carvings, the Moai, who stood guard around the whole circle of the island’s coast for a thousand years.
The first European to discover Easter Island was the Dutch explorer Admiral Roggeveen, who landed with his caravan of three ships, the Eagle, the Thienhoven, and the African Galley on Easter Day in 1722 (hence the island’s English name). They were neither the first nor the last explorers to reach this outpost, as the Polynesians had been there since 400 AD and other Europeans such as Captain Cook were on their way.
Cook visited Rapa Nui/Easter Island in 1774, on the second of his three voyages to the South Sea. He brought along the artist William Hodges, who was transfixed by the Moai statues and made oil paintings of them. A century later, several hundred villagers helped roll two of the Moai statues onto the British ship HMS Topaze. The statues were brought back to England and presented to Queen Victoria. The queen made a place for them in the British Museum, where, in Room 24, you can see them today.
In 1888, Chile claimed Easter Island, and transformed it into a giant sheep ranch. The Chilean colonists crowded the native islanders into the small village of Hanga Roa and confined them with a stone wall, even taking some islanders as slaves. Life went from bad to worse. Some natives tried to