"Dan Reeve and family, Taahauku, Hiva Oa", p.3

Category

Museums & Galleries Item

Item no

19361

Title

p.3, Dan Reeve and family, Taahauku, Hiva Oa

Description

A very faint image of Dan Reeve and his family at Taahauku (now Taha Uku), Hiva oa on the Marquesas Islands. Dan Reeve is wearing a straw hat and is standing with a woman, a boy and three girls. Palm trees are in the background.

The image is from the photograph album entitled 'The Cruise of the Casco' of Robert Louis Stevenson's travels around Hawaii and French Polynesia in 1888.

Artist / maker

Osbourne, Lloyd

Date

1888

Size

10.4 x 12.7 cm

Type

Photograph

Location

Writers' Museum

Taha Uku Bay, is a small bay off the larger Ta'aoa Bay on the south coast of the island of Hiva Oa. Sheltered in a natural harbour in the bay is Atuona, once the capital of the Marquesas Islands.

The Marquesas Islands are situated in French Polynesia, in the southern Pacific Ocean. They are volcanic and are named after the Marquis of Cañete, who financially supported the Spanish Explorer Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira who disovered the islands in 1595. Atuona was once the capital of the Marquesas Islands and is situated on Hiva Oa Island.

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).

Robert Louis Stevenson spent the latter years of his life both travelling and resident in the Pacific. The family chartered the 'Casco' in San Francisco and spent several weeks travelling in French Polynesia, including an extended stay in Tahiti where Stevenson recovered from a bout of illness. After this the Stevenson group continued to Honolulu, Hawaii, where they landed in January 1889. In the summer of 1889 Stevenson embarked on a six month voyage through the Gilbert Islands to Samoa aboard the 'Equator'. It was here that Stevenson bought an estate he named Vailima. After another voyage, aboard the trading steamer the 'Janet Nicoll', Stevenson returned to Vailima. 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

People > Adults > Men

People > Adults > Women

Places > Oceania > Marquesas Islands

Plants > Trees > Palms

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