1 Dollar - Elizabeth II James Cook

Cook's third and final Pacific voyage, launched in 1776, was tasked with finding the Northwest Passage from the Pacific side. He never found it. He was killed at Kealakekua Bay, Hawaii, in February 1779 during a dispute over a stolen cutter — an inglorious end to the most methodical navigator the Royal Navy ever produced. Tuvalu, whose nine atolls Cook's predecessors charted but Cook himself never visited, has issued Pacific exploration commemoratives since the late 1970s, largely as revenue instruments for a nation whose land area barely exceeds 26 square kilometers.