Kealakekua Bay in Hawaii

The artwork

At the bottom, to the left of the large double canoe, a man moves forward lying on a long board, paddling with his arms: it is considered the earliest printed image of a surfboard. You receive it printed on handmade Amalfi paper, in a handmade frame.

• The bay where Cook died, with his ships and a surfer among the canoes.
• In a beach house or above a desk it brings the ocean into the room.
• A gift for anyone who loves Hawaii, surfing or great voyages.

Hawaiians called it heʻe nalu, wave sliding, and everyone did it, chiefs and commoners, men and women. James King, one of Cook's officers, saw it in this bay in 1779: twenty or thirty people swam out with their boards and came back to shore on the summit of the largest wave, “with amazing rapidity”. In the same bay, on 14 February 1779, James Cook died. He had tried to take Kalaniʻōpuʻu, ruling chief of the island, as a hostage to recover a stolen boat; the Hawaiians resisted, and men fell on both sides in the fight.

The view is by John Webber, official artist of Cook's third voyage, and William Byrne engraved and etched the plate; the engraved title, “A View of Karakakooa, in Owyhee”, is the eighteenth-century English spelling of Kealakekua on the island of Hawaiʻi. It is plate 68 in the atlas of A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, the official account published in London in 1784. On the left, at anchor among the canoes, are the Resolution and the Discovery; on the right, beneath the cliff, is the village with its thatched houses. This copy, from the second edition of 1785, belongs to the David Rumsey Map Collection.

It suits a house by the sea or the desk of someone waiting for the right wave; it is a gift for anyone who loves Hawaii and for surfers curious about where it all began. And the man on the board, down there, is still paddling towards the ships.

Unique quality material

Print on handmade Amalfi paper
Sheet size: 29 x 42 cm (11.4 x 16.5 in)
With frame: 31 x 44 cm (12.2 x 17.3 in)
Material: artwork printed on very fine handmade Amalfi paper with deckled edges
Frame: dark brown with gold fillet, handmade, with glass