DISCOVERY

Kealakekua Bay, on the 'Big Island'. Coincidentally, he did so while Hawaiians on shore were celebrating the Makahiki festival. Consequently, Cook was wecomed with the greatest pomp and ceremony ever recorded a visitor.
Shortly after leaving, Cook's two ships ran into a fierce winter storm, damaging the Resolution's mast. Cook went back to Kealakekua for repairs but since the festival was finished, the bay area was nearly deserted and Hawaiians less hospitable. On February 13 1780, some Hawaiians took the Discovery's cutter. Cook ordered the bay blocked and attempted to take chief Kalani'opu'u hostage, killing a young chief in the process. Warriors attacked - killing four marines. Cook ordered the cutter to take wounded to the ship.
Captain Cook was killed waiting for the cutter's return - he had never learned to swim. Cook's men inoculated hospitable females with syphilis and gonorrhea. These killers (later referred to by the Brits as 'Cook's revenge'), along with other Western germs deposited, began the rapid destruction by disease of the Hawaiian people. Thus Hawai'i was initiated into the modern world of disease and gunfire.

Spanish explorers may have discovered Hawai'i, making annual voyages from Mexico to Guam 223 years before Cook. Oral history speaks of light-skinned people given wives and becoming minor chiefs. In the late 1700s, western visitors reported light-skinned Hawaiians with Caucasian features; including sandy and reddish hair. A map taken by British Commodore George Anson in 1742 from the Spanish Galleon Nuestra Senora de Cabadongo off Cape Espiritu Santo, located a group of islands identified as La Mesa and Los Mojas at the same latitude and longitude as the Hawaiian archipelago. Hawaiians had grand cloaks, helmets and daggers- European-like items not found in other parts of Polynesia. Many of the finest featherworks are of red and yellow (the royal colors of Spain). Unaccountable also are statuary, anchors and metal daggers found in 'pre-western' Hawaiian burial sites.