Baie de Matavai
| Baie de Matavai Ha'apape |
|
|---|---|
 View from One Tree Hill |
|
| Waters | Pacific Ocean |
| Land mass | Tahiti |
| Geographical location |
17 ° 29 '59 " S , 149 ° 29' 49" W
|
 Resolution and Adventure in Matavai Bay, William Hodges , 1776 |
|
The Matavai Bay , French Baie de Matavai, native Ha'apape, is a bay on the Pointe Vénus in northern Tahiti . It is surrounded by a beach of finely ground basalt . In the south the bay is bounded by One Tree Hill , in the north by a headland called Pointe Vénus , on which there is a lighthouse built in 1867.
The British navigator James Cook anchored here with the Endeavor on his first voyage to the South Seas on April 10, 1768 . The island and the bay had been discovered by Samuel Wallis a year earlier. Cook's assignment was to observe a transit of Venus on June 3, 1768, which a memorial column reminds of today.
Cook anchored here on his second voyage with the Resolution and Adventure ships . In July 1776 he visited Tahiti again.
On October 27, 1788, the Bounty came under William Bligh in the bay, which he already knew from Cook's third trip to the South Seas. Breadfruit shoots were collected under the direction of the botanist David Nelson .
In September 1789, the Bounty returned under the command of the mutineer Fletcher Christian .
On March 23, 1791, the Pandora reached the bay under Edward Edwards in search of those involved in the mutiny on the Bounty.
