Captain Cook’s Landing Place

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Captain Cook’s landing place was in Tongatapu.

Early Navigation

The first Europeans to record landing in Tonga were Dutch explorers Willem Schouten and Jacob Le Maire, who in April 1616 spent some time in the most northern islands of Tonga. Le Maire even recorded a vocabulary of Niuatoputapu words.

However it is famed seventeenth century navigator Abel Janszoon Tasman who is credited with first ‘discovering’ Tonga, inasmuch as this is possible, given that the island cluster has been inhabited by the people of Polynesia for around 3000 years. Tasman was the first recorded European to land in Tongatapu, and his reports and charts of the region brought the islands to the attention of the rest of the world.

He named the island of Tongatapu Amsterdam, for its wealth of supplies, and gave nearby ‘Eua the name of Middleburg.

Tonga and Captain Cook

In the 1760s the Royal Society in England was considering Tongatapu as a potential location for viewing and recording the next transit of Venus, occurring in 1769. Captain James Cook had been chosen by the Royal Society to serve as navigator upon the voyage, and a short 3 months before he was due to set out, explorer Samuel Wallis returned to England with news of the newly charted King George’s Island (Tahiti). It was quickly agreed that this was the most suitable location in the South Pacific for viewing the transit of Venus, and Cook set off. Had Tonga been selected instead, the history of Pacific exploration may have turned out quite differently!

As it was, Cook did not encounter the Tongan islands until his second circumnavigation of the globe, when he stopped at both ‘Eua and Tongatapu in October of 1773. Here he was “welcomed a shore by acclamations from an immence [sic] crowd of Men and Women not one of which had so much as a stick in their hands”.

Indeed, Cook found the islanders to be so accommodating that he returned to the archipelago in 1774 on his way back from New Zealand. Stopping at the island of Nomuka, Cook was sought out by name, and with this “proof that these people have a communication with Amsterdam”, the cultural unity of the islands was established. It was at this time that he famously named the island group the Friendly Archipelago, “as a lasting friendship seems to subsist among the Inhabitants and their Courtesy to Strangers intitles [sic] them to that Name.”

Conspiracy on the Friendly Isles

Cook’s third voyage also included a visit to Tonga, where he and his crew stayed for several months. Cook first dropped anchor at Nomuka in May, and then, at the invitation of the great chief Finau, travelled to another island, Lifuka. Here, Cook and his men were treated to such entertainments as “whould [sic] have met with universal applause on a European Theatre”.

Unbeknownst to Cook, Finau was plotting to murder Cook and his men, and then loot his ships. The plan was to lure the crew to a convenient location and then kill them. However, due to fortuitous timing and infighting among the local chiefs the plot was never executed, and the Resolution and the Discovery escaped unmolested.

It is perhaps one of the great ironies of history that the land that had inspired so much warmth in Cook that he gave it the moniker of the Friendly Islands was also the site of a plot to kill him! The truth was only revealed upon the publication of William Mariner’s account of his years spent in Tonga; Mariner himself was on board the Port au Prince when it was treated in just the manner that was once planned for Cook’s ships.

Sailing South

After his near-miss, Cook sailed southwards, arriving in Tongatapu in June. The ships remained in Tongatapu for a further month, and during that time Cook described many of his interactions with the Polynesians. Cook’s journals, along with the account of William Mariner, provide the best documentation of pre-Christian life in the region, and are a valuable record.

Captain Cook’s Landing Place

Cook’s time in Tonga is commemorated by a plaque at the site of his landing at Tongatapu in 1777, where it is said that he rested under a great banyan tree before journeying to the capital, Mu’a, to see the King. The banyan tree of yesteryear is no longer there, however a younger tree, descendant of the original, stands at the site. The name of the tree, Malumalu ‘o Fulilangi, means “shading under the sky”.

The site was recently overhauled and interpretive signage was put up, as well the establishment of a small souvenir and craft shop. Visitors can now gaze out into the lagoon from a cement platform and imagine Cook’s ships sailing into the waterway more than 230 years ago.

As for Cook, as he “took leave of the Friendly Islands and their Inhabitants after a stay of between two and three Months, during which time we lived together in the most cordial friendship”, he concluded that “the advantages we received by touching here was very great”.

Malumalu '0 Fulilangi (Captain Cook's Banyan Tree)