Captain Cook Statue, Waimea

The bronze figure standing in this little triangular park is Captain James Cook, the British navigator who, on the twentieth of January, seventeen seventy-eight, sailed into Waimea Bay and became the first European known to make contact with the Hawaiian Islands. He named the chain the Sandwich Islands after one of his patrons. This statue is a replica of one in Whitby, England, the North Sea port where Cook learned his trade as a young seaman, sculpted after the original by Sir John Tweed.

The Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts purchased this copy in nineteen seventy-eight to mark two hundred years since Cook's landing. Cook sailed on and returned the following year. He was killed on the Big Island in seventeen seventy-nine, during a violent confrontation at Kealakekua Bay.