Kaibuke - One of the Kings of Majuro

Category

Museums & Galleries Item

Item no

19817

Title

p. 52, Kaibuke - one of the Kings of Majuro

Description

Kaibuke, one of the Kings of Majuro, stands under palm trees. He is wearing a white shirt and skirt and has a long beard. A canoe lies on the ground behind him.

Artist / maker

Osbourne, Lloyd

Date

1890

Size

19.2 x 23.2 cm

Type

Photograph

Location

Writers' Museum

Majuro is the capital of the Marshall Islands, a Micronesian nation of atolls and islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It is situated west of the International Date Line and slightly north of the Equator.

On 11th April 1890 Robert Louis Stevenson his wife Fanny and her son Lloyd Osbourne set off aboard the steamer Janet Nicoll from Sydney for a three-month trading voyage through the Pacific. The ship was under charter to Messrs Henderson and Macfarlane of Auckland, a well known trading firm The travelled through the Cook, Gilbert, Ellice and Marshall Islands, arriving at Noumea, New Caledonia on the 26th July.

Born in Edinburgh on 13th November 1850, Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, playwright and travel writer. Although he was plagued by ill health all his life, he was extraordinarily well-travelled, visiting Europe, America and the South Seas. He married American born Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne in 1880 and is best-known for works like Treasure Island (1883), Kidnapped and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (both 1886). From the late 1880s, Stevenson stayed in the South Pacific with his family on his own estate in Vailima in Samoa. He died here on the 3rd December 1894 of a brain haemorrhage at the age of 44, leaving what many consider his best work, Weir of Hermiston (1896) unfinished.

Exhibitions with this item

Other views of this item

Related images

Related subjects

Clothing and dress > Accessories > Hairstyles

People > Adults > Men

People > Politics and government > Kings

Places > Oceania > Marshall Islands

Plants > Trees > Palms

Transport > Water > Canoes

Read how our collections have inspired people taking part in events, visits and community groups. Use the slider or navigation arrows to see more responses.