The first known sighting of the island by a European was by Captain James Cook in 1774 during his second Pacific voyage. The pioneering missionary John Williams was the first European to land on the island in 1830.

Captain James Cook FRS (7 November [O.S. 27 October] 1728 – 14 February 1779) was a British explorer, cartographer, and naval officer famous for his three voyages between 1768 and 1779 to the Pacific and Southern Oceans.

We take a look back at the time Captain Cook tried to take a holiday in Niue and why he called it the 'Savage Islands' For more animated Pacific Legends clic...

On 1st April, 1777 Captain James Cook in the Resolution and Charles Clerke in the Discovery were approaching the island of Atiu, one of a group of islands now collectively called the Cook Islands.

Niue is well known as one of the largest upraised coral atoll in the world situated in the middle of the South Pacific within a triangle boundary of Tonga, Samoan and Cook Islands. From New Zealand, it is located towards the north eastern side of the International Date Line and is 11 hours behind the Greenwich Mean Time.

Off Cape Desolation (Basket Island), Desolate Bay, London Isles, Camden Isles, Gilbert Islands, Londonderry Isles, Cook Bay, York Minster (Waterman Island) - this 800 ft. high feature reminded Cook of his native county’s well known building.

Aug 17, 2022 · Cook did not give Niue the name ‘Savage Island’ because he inferred that its people were cannibals from a red substance in their teeth. One thing, in any case, should now be clear. The story about the red bananas is a local tradition that seems to have grown up in Niue in the generations after Cook’s visit.

Behold the Cook-o-nut Captain Cook was the first European to travel to Niue, a small island in the middle of Polynesia, when he landed ashore late in the spring of 1774. His welcome to the small tropical island was not as friendly as he would have hoped: a spear avoided his head by less than a foot, and his purser’s received the large, hurled ...

Captain James Cook, the first known European to try to enter Niue, was turned away from the island no fewer than three times by locals with red painted teeth who feared the foreign diseases which had killed so many people on other South Pacific islands.

After three weeks on Tahiti, Cook sailed west via Raiatea, Palmerston Atoll and Niue to arrive at the central Tongan Islands, north of his earlier visit. Ice Islands, 9 January 1773. The Spanish under Quiros were known to have visited islands in the western Pacific 170 years earlier, but their exact location was uncertain.