Part of a broader commemorative push by the Cook Islands in the late 2000s and early 2010s, this piece honors George III during the period when Cook's Pacific voyages were conducted under royal patronage — it was on George III's watch that James Cook made all three of his major expeditions, the last of which ended with Cook's death at Kealakekua Bay in 1779. The king himself never saw the Pacific and spent his later decades increasingly incapacitated by what modern physicians now suspect was acute intermittent porphyria.
Part of a broader commemorative push by the Cook Islands in the late 2000s and early 2010s, this piece honors George III during the period when Cook's Pacific voyages were conducted under royal patronage — it was on George III's watch that James Cook made all three of his major expeditions, the last of which ended with Cook's death at Kealakekua Bay in 1779. The king himself never saw the Pacific and spent his later decades increasingly incapacitated by what modern physicians now suspect was acute intermittent porphyria.