2½ dollars, 1973-74, .925 silver
200th Anniversary of James Cook’s Second Pacific Voyage
Two 3-masted ships sailing left above a world map with Indian and Pacific Oceans.

The sloops-of-war HMS Resolution and HMS Adventure were the ships of the British navigator James Cook on his second circumnavigation voyage, in 1772-1775. They are depicted on the reverse above a map of the globe centered on the Cook Islands area of the Pacific Ocean. Cook’s two ships were North Sea colliers (coal-hauling barks) built at Whitby by Thomas Fishburn. They were purchased in 1771 by the Admiralty, rerigged for Cook’s voyage and renamed. Marquis of Granby became Drake and Marquis of Rockingham became Raleigh. When it was realized that the names Drake and Raleigh might be taken amiss in the Spanish Americas, the ships were renamed once again – Drake to Resolution and Raleigh to Adventure. Resolution was the larger of the two while the smaller was the 336-ton Adventure. She was built in 1769 and had a length of 97 ft (30 m), a beam of 28 ft (8.7 m) and a draft of 13 ft (4 m). On Cook’s second voyage she had a complement of 81. During this voyage Cook discovered five of the Cook Islands. Manuae was discovered in 1773 and four of the other islands in 1774. Adventure’s voyage lasted two years and three days. Upon returning to England in 1774 she had become the first ship to circumnavigate the globe from west to east. Adventure served as a storeship in North America from 1775 until she was broken up in 1783. The map on the reverse was drawn according to the Mollweide equal-area projection method. This method uses straight line parallels of latitude and curved meridians of longitude to look at the spherical earth as a flat map. The periphery legend on the upper half of the reverse is JAMES COOK’S SECOND PACIFIC VOYAGE. The fifteen stars below the legend represent the fifteen islands of the Cook Islands.