1779 · Views & Engravings
Final Voyage: The Death of Captain Cook at Kealakekua Bay, Hawaii, 1779
$325
€290 · dollar price at today's exchange rate
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Shipping to the United States: $51 standard, $73 express, insured and tracked.
- Date
- 1779
- Maker
- Captain Cook voyages
- Kind
- Views & Engravings
- Size
- 22.5 × 36 cm (8.9 × 14.2 in)
- Condition
- Good. Good condition. Please study the images carefully. Minor toning or browning due to age and handling.
- Period
- The Early Republic
- Places
- Hawaii
- Reference
- BG-13597-85
What the condition grades mean
- Excellent
- Bright and clean, with no faults worth mentioning.
- Very good
- Only light signs of age, such as faint toning.
- Good
- Normal signs of age for a sheet of this period: toning, some foxing, small marks or neat old repairs.
- Fair
- Clear faults such as staining, tears or repairs, priced to match.
Every fault we see is written in the condition note, and the whole sheet is shown uncropped in the photos.
Guaranteed original. This is an original of the period stated, not a later reproduction or print-on-demand copy. If it is ever shown to be otherwise, we refund you in full.
Shipping to the United States. Sent from our gallery in Langweer, the Netherlands, flat between boards or rolled in a tube, and fully insured.
Delivery and import charges.
About this piece
Copper engraving from Thomas Bankes’s “New System of Geography” published by Royal Authority c.1775
This engraving for sale depicts a scene of Karakakooa Bay in Owyhee (Hawaii), where Captain James Cook was killed. The image includes a number of canoes on the water and a European sailing ship, indicative of the interaction between the native Hawaiians and European explorers.
From the text within the image, it is engraved for "BANKES's New System of Geography Published by Royal Authority." The engraver's name appears to be "E. Scott, sculp." which indicates that E. Scott was the engraver (the term "sculp" is short for "sculpsit," which is Latin for "he (or she) engraved it").
The term "Owyhee" is an old spelling of "Hawaii," and this spelling was commonly used in the 18th century. Captain James Cook was killed at Kealakekua Bay on the Big Island of Hawaii in 1779, which suggests that this work was likely produced sometime after that event. However, without additional information on "BANKES's New System of Geography," it's difficult to determine the exact year this particular engraving was made.
This work likely is from:
Thomas Bankes, Edward Warren Blake, and Alexander Cook’s A New Royal Authentic and Complete System of Universal Geography (hereafter Thomas Bankes’s). A massive folio volume of 990 double-columned pages, this was a popular work, running to six editions in the years from 1775 to 1797
Thomas Bankes: 18th century collector of maps and engravings and vicar of Dixton, Monmouthshire, whose New and Authentic System of Universal Geography (London, C. Cooke, ca. 1788-90) compiled views from various countries, including some detailing the voyages of Captain James Cook.
Geographers of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries recognized two great divisions of their discipline. These were ‘General’ or ‘Universal’ geography, which dealt with ‘the whole Earth in general, and explain[ed] its properties without regard to particular countries’.
