Plan d´une partie de l´isle de Maouna/ Plan de l´anse du Massacre

Title

Plan d´une partie de l´isle de Maouna/ Plan de l´anse du Massacre

Description

Map shows some parts of islands near Tahiti. The Society Islands in French Polnesia.

dated 1787

Artist

Pérouse, la (1741-1788)

Jean-François de Galaup de La Pérouse (1741 1788) was a French Naval officer and explorer whose expedition vanished in Oceania. La Pérouse crossed the Pacific Ocean in 100 days, arriving at Macau, where he sold the furs acquired in Alaska, dividing the profits among his men. Lapérouse sailed all the way south to the Spanish Las Californias in 1786. He stopped at the Presidio of San Francisco long enough to create an outline map of the Bay Area, Plan du Port du St. Francois, which was reproduced as Map 33 in L. Aubert's 1797 Atlas du Voyage de la Perouse. Laterhe arrived in Monterey Bay and at the Presidio of Monterey. In 1787 after a visit to Manila, he set out for the northeast Asian coasts. He saw the island of Quelpart, present-day Cheju in South Korea, which had been visited by Europeans only once before when a group of Dutchmen shipwrecked there in 1635. He visited the Asian mainland coasts of Korea.

Historical Description

Tahiti was settled - like the other Society Islands - around 200 BC from Tonga and Samoa. It is not conclusively clear which European can be considered the "discoverer" of Tahiti. The Portuguese Pedro Fernández de Quirós sighted an inhabited island in 1606, which he called Sagittaria and which, according to some chroniclers, could have been Tahiti. However, there is no confirmation of this. Today, the Englishman Samuel Wallis is considered the first European to set foot on Tahiti in 1767. The visits of James Cook have remained in the consciousness of Europeans. In April 1769 he anchored with his ship Endeavour in Matavai Bay, about 10 km north of today's Papeete. Traveling with Cook was botanist Joseph Banks, who conducted extensive botanical studies during his three-month stay. His findings led to the fateful 1787 voyage of the Bounty to Tahiti, which was commissioned by the British Admiralty to William Bligh.