Life and death of Captain James Cook as the Hawaiian god „Lono“

Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Constance, course: The Sunset State , language: English, abstract: On January 17th 1779, the HMS Resolution, under the command of Captain James Cook, and the HMS Discovery under the command of Captain Charles Clerke anchored for the first time in a shallow bay on the west of Hawaii, which the natives called Kealakekua Bay. Immediately, the ships were surrounded by a huge crowd of Indians, either swimming around them or circling them in canoes. Cook describes the situation in his journal: “I have no where in this Sea seen such a number of people assembled at one place, besides those in the Canoes all the Shore of the bay was covered with people and hundreds were swimming about the Ships like shoals of fish”. Due to a lack of understanding the native’s language, Cook and his crew had no chance of realizing that all those people had gathered not only to greet strangers from across the ocean, but to celebrate the arrival of their god Lono, who was believed to have sailed across the ocean in search of his wife “in time immemorial” and was due to return. In his last journal-entry Cook writes: “… to enrich our voyage with a discovery which, though the last, seemed, in every respect, to be the most important that had hitherto been made by Europeans throughout the extent of the Pacific Ocean” [...]