Category:Death of Captain Cook

Most paintings of the scene leads us to believe that Cook was trying to calm the islanders, and that image of Cook, became the authorised version of his death, as described in the official accounts of the voyage by Lieutenant James King, who succeeded him as captain, and depicted by John Webber, the official voyage artist.

But a painting by John Cleveley, from sketches made by his brother James, a carpenter on the voyage, on which the etchings were based, exposes another version of that February day when Cook, far from trying to calm the situation, fought the Hawaiians.

Based on eye-witness accounts and on sketches made by a carpenter on Cook's final voyage, Cleveley showed a version of events which chimes with what most historians believe today. Cleveley died in 1786 and by the time his four watercolours were turned into aquatints by John Martyn two years later, the changes to the scene had been made.

Clevely's previously unknown work makes clear that 18th-century engravers deployed the art of spin to boost sales of etchings depicting Cook's final moments at the hands of an angry mob. See independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/the-art-of-spin-painting-shows-how-engravers-brushed-over-cooks-demise-552992.html