9people, either overseas for business, study or pleasure, always have a
naggin~ nostalgia for their own islands.
It was perhaps such a love that kept Captain Cook, the greatest of
all Pacific explorers, from ever seeing Vava'u. In 1777 he was in the
Ha' apai group where he discovered and charted many islands. One of
Cook's greatest friends was Finau, the Chief of Vava'u. When Chief
Finau told Cook he was going home to collect some of the highly prized
red feathers from the tail of the frigate bird, Captain Cook said at
once that he would take one of his ships and go along. Chief Finau
discouraged him. Was Finau seized by the fear at that moment that the
white men might take over his precious Vava'u? Did he have some other
reason for not wanting to take his English friend home? No one will
ever know. We know only that Captain Cook stayed in Ha'apai recording
sadly in his journal that Finau had told him that in Vava'u "there was
neither harbor nor anchorage." Needless to say. that must stand as one
of the greatest historical lies of all time.
Finau kept Cook from coming to Vava'u, but he could not stem the
tide of history which was filling the Pacific with explorers of many
nations. Only four years after Captain Cook's disappointment, the
honor of discovering Vava'u fell to Spain. Francisco Maurelle. after a
brief stop at the island of Late, reached the main tsland of Vava'u on
5 May 1781 and anchored near the present village of Longamapu in the
bay to which he gave the name "Port of Refuge" (the name now applies to
the whole of Vava'u's harbor). Maurelle was not looking for new worlds
to conquer. He was merely trying to deliver dispatches from Manila to
the Spanish authorities in San BIas, Mexico. The commission had come
to him so late in the season that he had not been able to follow the