The landscape painter William Hodges, who trained under Richard Wilson, accompanied Captain Cook on his second voyage to the South Pacific 1772-75 with a brief to record the places visited. While some of the smaller of his remarkable landscape paintings were painted on the voyage, most were painted afterwards in London, many for the Admiralty. Many of his finished drawings, as well as sketches which were the basis for more formal ones for later engraving in the official voyage account, were almost certainly made on the voyage.

The canoe in the background is of a type known in the Marquesas, and it is suggested that Hodges made this drawing from a boat while the 'Resolution' was at anchor in Vaitahu Bay. In theory it should derive from the Admiralty collection, but many of the Admiralty drawings from Cook's voyages were later dispersed and its detailed provenance is not known. It was purchased for the Museum from Colnaghi's, London, in July 1957 by the Society for Nautical Research (Macpherson Fund).