5 Dollars - Elizabeth II Ship of Death

The "Ship of Death" — locally called the tomoko — was a war canoe central to the headhunting raids that dominated inter-island conflict in the Solomons through the nineteenth century. Expeditions could cover hundreds of miles, and skulls taken were integral to both spiritual practice and the social authority of chiefs. British naval suppression campaigns in the 1890s, combined with missionary influence, effectively ended the raids within a generation.

This 1999 issue belongs to a broader Solomon Islands commemorative program that drew heavily on pre-colonial material culture at a moment when the country was less than two decades from independence.