John Webber
The death of Captain Cook
London: published by W. Byrne and J. Webber, 1784
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John Webber’s Death of Cook was first produced as a painting in 1783–1784 and subsequently engraved as a loose print to supplement the release of the official account of Cook’s third voyage in 1784. Webber followed the official account closely, depicting a great mob amassed on the water’s edge, the two boats off the shore, and marines swimming towards them. Lieutenant Molesworth Phillips has fallen to the ground and fires at his assailant, while Cook is about to be stabbed as he raises his arm to gesture to the boats. This gesture is key to understanding Cook’s heroic transformation. The official account omitted Phillips’s report that it was Cook himself who gave the order to open fire on the Hawaiians, and stated that if it were true that the marines ‘had fired without his orders, and that he was desirous of preventing any further bloodshed, it is not improbable that his humanity proved fatal to him’. The recently discovered ‘Explanation of the print’, a single leaf dating from circa 1783–1784 and almost certainly penned by Webber, explains that ‘Captain Cook, as represented in the Print, was calling to his People in the Boats to cease Firing, when a Chief advancing from the Croud [sic], plunged a Dagger in his Back, and falling on his Face, was immediately destroyed’. Webber, depicting the explorer as a hero sacrificing his own life to prevent further bloodshed, can be seen as the creator of Cook’s heroic reputation.