King Tembureimoa, Queen and Array Artillery

Category

Museums & Galleries Item

Item no

20200

Title

p. 7, King Tembureimoa, Queen, array artillery and national colours. Taken in front of the Palace. Butaritari

Description

King Tembureimoa and his Queen stand in front of the palace at Butaritari on the Gilbert Islands. The King is wearing military uniform and is taking a feathered hat off his head. The Queen is wearing a dark satin European style gown and a feathered hat. Behind them stand soldiers with rifles and to their right two girls stand beside a canon. A large flag is moving in the breeze.

The image is from the photograph album entitled 'The Cruise of the Equator' of Robert Louis Stevenson's travels around the Gilbert Islands and Samoa in 1889.

Artist / maker

Unknown

Date

1889

Size

18.3 x 23 cm

Type

Photograph

Location

Writers' Museum

Butaritari is an atoll in the Pacific Ocean and is part of the island nation of Kiribati. Kiribati is made up of 32 atolls and includes the main island chain, the Gilbert Islands (of which Butaritari is part).

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.

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Related subjects

Clothing and dress > Garments > Uniforms

Homes > Residential buildings > Castles and palaces

Military > Arms and armament > Cannons

Military > Arms and armament > Rifles

People > Military activities > Soldiers

People > Politics and government > Kings

People > Politics and government > Queens

Places > Oceania > Gilbert Islands

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King Tembureimoa, Queen and array artillery