Years ago on a vacation in Hawaii, I was told by a tour guide that the spot Captain James Cook died has been given to the UK. I always assumed this was some kind of honorary gift and that the place is still technically under Hawaiian/US sovereignty.
Now I see the following quote in the Wikipedia entry for James Cook
So was there actually an exchange of sovereignties for these two memorials or are they just honorary in some manner? Or in other words, if someone committed a crime at the Cook monument (e.g. defacing the obelisk with graffiti), would they be tried under Hawaiian or British law?
If they are an exchange of sovereignty, are there any other examples of this in the world? (Please don’t bring up embassies; they aren’t an actual exchange of sovereignty.)
According to this site , listing Cook’s memorials round the world (there are a lot of them!), the actual spot where Cook was killed is marked by a plaque which is now underwater. The monument itself and small patch of British territoty is nearby on the shore.
An excellent (and funny and true) book about Cook’s voyages is Blue Latitudes, in which modern day oddballs decide to retrace Cook’s journeys. They visit a lot of the memorial sites.
Fascinating question and thank you for the link aldiboronti. I would not have believed there were that many memorials to him.
My interest lies in the fact that I used to live in England in Marton, near where Cook was born, and went to school in Great Ayton, the same town where he went to school. On my one trip to Hawaii we got close to the spot where he died, but ran out of time and had to turn around to get back to the airport before we managed to reach the spot. I thought it would make an interesting bookend-like experience.
I will resist a full scale excursion like the guy in the book referenced by Chefguy, although the book might be interesting to read. Thanks as well.
FWIW, I have been to the Cook Memorial at Kealakekua Bay, and it’s just as described by aldiboronti. The spot is not especially easy to reach - you either have to hike a couple of miles downhill (and then up again), or take a boat (or swim) a mile across the bay. But it is beautiful, not heavily visited and has about the best snorkeling on the Big Island.
(True confession: we actually drove our rental car down the hiking trail. You do NOT want to do this.)
Off-topic, but my dad’s great-grandmother’s maiden name was Cook, and growing up, everyone knew that she was Captain Cook’s great-grandaughter. It was common knowledge in our family.
About ten years ago I decided to do some genealogy, and traced her family back to the point they had arrived in Canada from England in the 1800’s. Then I decided to work the other way, figuring it would be easier to start with the famous Captain and work forward. So that’s when I found out what some of you probably already know: none of his children had children of their own. He has no living descendants.
I told my dad but we agreed to let his mother live in ignorance.
Absolutely. The author is Tony Horwitz, who also wrote the sensational Confederates in the Attic. He has a real knack for getting at the heart of strange cultural practices, and is an excellent writer. Blue Latitudes isn’t as great as the earlier book, but is still a very nice read.
As for the OP’s question about the issue of sovereignty and its legal implications, a good place to start might be the following short journal article:
John Wesley Coulter, “Great Britain in Hawaii: The Captain Cook Monument,” The Geographical Journal, Vol. 130, No. 2, (Jun., 1964), pp. 256-261.
If you have access to the JSTOR journal database through a library or university, you can download the article here. If you don’t, that link will only take you to a login page.
Anyway, Coulter spends a few pages talking about the significance of British influence in Hawai’i, and then discusses the circumstances in which the monument site came to be handed over. First:
After reprinting a transcript of the deed of conveyance, Coulter notes an “interesting anomaly.” The deed itself did not deed the land directly to Britain, but to the British Consul General, Major James Hay Wodehouse.
In 1939, the British Foreign Office realized that, as a result of the wording of the deed, the title to the land was owned not by Great Britain, but by Ernest H. Wodehouse, a descendant of the Consul. Wodehouse agreed to deed the land to Britain for one dollar. Coulter reproduces two newspaper articles from January, 1939, describing the transfer.
As far as the legal standing of the land goes, Coulter has more questions than answers.
Coulter, in writing his article, had some correspondence with Ralph S. Kuykendall, an Emeritus Professor History at the University of Hawai’i. He also contacted a geography and law specialist from the Library of Congress. Coulter says, in the footnote to the previous quoted paragraph:
Thanks, mhendo. It looks to me like Professor Kuykendall has the answer. It’s owned by the British government but not as a sovereign part of the UK. But that’s just his opinion. No doubt if a crime ever were committed on the site, the defence attorney will bring up the international aspect and then the courts will rule on its status.
I suspect the other suggested extralities (cemetaries and monument to La Pérouse) also don’t actually involve transfers of sovereignty but just simple ownership. However, I’d never heard of La Pérouse, so thanks to bluezooky for bringing him to my attention.
Very interesting book. I picked it up about 5 years ago in the Oakland airport- someone had apparently finished it and left it for me to find. Cook was one of the first to see Antarctica and Alaska, and had a tremendous ability to eat just about anything.
He certainly saw Alaska, but my understanding was that he narrowly missed seeing Antarctica. He did explore southern latitudes enough to show that if there was a southern continent, none of it extended far enough north to be inhabitable. (A “great southern continent” with a land mass sufficient to “balance” the known land area of the northern hemisphere was a popular theory of the time. Cook’s voyages knocked that on the head.)
Why is it under water? Did the sea level rise, or did the island sink? I know the Big Island (and maybe others) is subsiding, as seen by old frost lines on the big volcanoes, although I don’t know the rate.
You may be right. I believe that he was the first to make it to 77* South and North. He also thought that walrus made a fine beef, even as most of his crew was retching.