HMS Resolution carried James Cook on his final expedition through the Pacific in search of the Northwest Passage. Cook was killed at Kealakekua Bay, Hawaii, in February 1779, but the ship continued under Charles Clerke and John Gore. Resolution returned to Britain in October 1780 with extensive geographical and ethnographic records.

Published narratives of Cook's voyages influenced the maritime imagination surrounding Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Pacific poets have since rewritten Resolution's journey from Islander perspectives, examining encounter, translation, sacred authority and colonial intrusion.