50 Dollars - Elizabeth II English slave trader John Hawkins

John Hawkins conducted three slave trading voyages between 1562 and 1567, making him the first English subject known to have profited from the transatlantic slave trade. His operations were backed in part by Queen Elizabeth I, who provided him with a royal vessel — the Jesus of Lübeck — for his second voyage. The third voyage ended in disaster at the Battle of San Juan de Ulúa in 1568, where Spanish forces ambushed his fleet in a Mexican port, destroying much of it.

Cook Islands issued a substantial commemorative silver series in the early 1990s covering figures from world history, controversial inclusions among them. Hawkins appears here without evident irony.