The Landing at Tanna one of the New Hebrides.

Title

The Landing at Tanna one of the New Hebrides.

Description

Rare engraving from the official British Admiralty sanctioned edition of the accounts of Cook’s second voyage. The view depicts Cook landing on the island of Tana, where he remained between 6 to 20 August 1774. Cooks Journal II, 484-5. References; Beddie 1381-59, p.269. Joppien 2.134A, ill.p.234. After Wiiliam Hodges (1744-1797).

ca. 1777

Artist

Sherwin

Historical Description

New Hebrides was the colonial name for the group of islands in the South Pacific now Vanuatu. Native people had inhabited the islands for three thousand years before the first Europeans arrived in 1606 from a Spanish expedition led by the Portuguese navigator Pedro Fernandes de Queirós. The islands were colonized by both the British and the French in the 18th century shortly after Captain James Cook's visit, and the two countries eventually signed an agreement that turned the islands into an Anglo-French housing estate that would include the New Hebrides in divided into two separate communities: one Anglophone and one Francophone. This gap continued after independence, with schools teaching in either one language or the other and with different political parties.