I reverteed the good faith edit that added 1 or 2 sentences about BLM protests because I don't believe BLM material is significant enough for this top-level article. There has been a lot of discussion over the past year about what to include/exclude (and trying to keep the article near the recommended 9,000 word size). Much material about protests against Cook has been left out (meaning: it can be and should be in sub-articles ... just not in this article). That said: if someone wants to argue that the BLM material is essential: Please provide quotes from the sources here in the Talk page so we can discuss and compare relative to other material that has been deliberately left-out for space reasons. Again: the material is good for the WP encyclopedia: the only question is: which articles does it go in? An alternative to putting this material in this article is to create a new article on "Anti colonial protests in Australia" (or a similar topic) and put them BLM material in there. Noleander (talk) 00:30, 15 February 2026 (UTC)[]

I agree with your points. I have moved the reference to the Black Lives Matter protests to the article on James Cook and Indigenous Peoples. That article already mentions the link between the attacks on monuments dedicated to James Cook and the global decolonisation movement. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 01:25, 15 February 2026 (UTC)[]

Auught to be mentioned. EditorÆ (talk) 01:59, 13 April 2026 (UTC)[]

You got a source for that there fact? Noleander (talk) 02:04, 13 April 2026 (UTC)[]

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Gaetano (include Brittish sources)

EditorÆ (talk) 01:08, 14 April 2026 (UTC)[]

I don't read Portuguese.... can you provide some quotes in English from high quality sources that say that he definitively saw Hawaii? Noleander (talk) 01:52, 14 April 2026 (UTC)[]

The first sentences of that article say: "Juan Gaetano was a Spanish explorer and navigator who, according to some studies, was the first European to discover the Hawaiian Islands in 1555, two hundred years before Captain James Cook. Several studies have refuted this theory, which they do not consider credible, although doubts remain regarding the possibility that explorers like Gaetano arrived in Hawaii by chance before Cook, during a mission led by Ruy López de Villalobos. Villalobos, commanding a fleet of six ships, set sail from Acapulco in 1542, with Gaetano on board as a pilot. Gaetano's accounts appear to describe either Hawaii or the Marshall Islands, depending on how they are interpreted."

So there's nothing definitive there. Our note u is also relevant: "Some historians speculate that Spanish trading ships may have seen or even visited the Hawaiian Islands before Cook, but kept the discovery secret to protect their lucrative trade route between Acapulco and Manila."

So we already say that some Spanish ships may have seen Hawaii, but that there is no conclusive evidence they did. That's in agreement with the Gaetano article, so I don't think there's anything we need to change here. Gawaon (talk) 06:59, 14 April 2026 (UTC)[]

Agree. The two English language sources cited in the wikipedia article on Juan Gaetano state that there is no credible evidence to support the claim. The vast majority of scholarly books and articles on the matter credit Cook's expedition as being the first Europeans to sight Hawaii. Unless more evidence comes to light, the claim is fringe and not worth mentioning in the Cook article. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 08:18, 14 April 2026 (UTC)[]

https://imagesofoldhawaii.com/first-foreigners-to-find-hawai%CA%BBi/

"But, was Cook the first foreigner to find Hawaiʻi?

“Old Spanish charts and a 1613 AD Dutch globe suggest that explorers from Spain had sighted Hawaiʻi long before Captain Cook. When Cook arrived in 1778, galleons laden with silver from the mines of Mexico and South America had been passing south of Hawaiʻi for two centuries on annual round trip voyages of 17,000 miles between Acapulco and Manila.” (Kane)

“It seems to be almost certain that one Juan Gaetano, a Spanish navigator, saw Hawaii in 1555 AD. A group of islands, the largest of which was called La Mesa, was laid down in the old Spanish charts in the same latitude as the Hawaiian Islands, but 10 degrees too far east.” (Hawaiʻi Department of Foreign Affairs, 1896)

There are undoubted proof of finding the Hawaiian Islands by the Spaniard, Juan Gaetano. This is the first known record of the islands among the civilized nations. There are evident references to this group in the legends of the Polynesians in other Pacific islands. (Westervelt 1923)"

EditorÆ (talk) 10:20, 14 April 2026 (UTC)[]

You are citing a blog post from the website of a private real estate consulting firm. And the blogger is selectively citing quotes from 1896 and 1923. The James Cook article is a Featured Article. Like all historical articles we rely on the consensus of recent peer reviewed and high quality academic sources. Blog posts citing unspecified secondary sources that are more that 100 years old don't cut the mustard. Please have a look at policy on WP:RELIABLE and WP:FRINGE. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 11:00, 14 April 2026 (UTC)[]

First- I havn't written it. But "It seems to be almost certain that one Juan Gaetano, a Spanish navigator, saw Hawaii in 1555 AD. A group of islands, the largest of which was called La Mesa, was laid down in the old Spanish charts in the same latitude as the Hawaiian Islands, but 10 degrees too far east.” (Hawaiʻi Department of Foreign Affairs, 1896)"

And if You are aware of the LONGITUDE PROBLEM (how to meassre North and South positions on our planet , has not been very difficult during the last 2400 years or so. But East - West (logitudes) was a very troublesome prior to the CHONOMETER. (just being able to meassure the sun or a specific star and compare to a table was done already by the Greeks). Two very good clocks , one never changed, the other pu to 12' o'clock exactly at noon - and the longitude problem was solved. Cook had chonometers onboard, Gaetano didn't. (Who reached the Sothern pole first, by the way ?) EditorÆ (talk) 11:24, 14 April 2026 (UTC)[]

sory for the spelling of "meassure" EditorÆ (talk) 11:25, 14 April 2026 (UTC)[]

Sorry, EditorÆ: as experienced editors are saying, you haven't made the necessary case. High-quality sources of definite support, if possible in English, are indispensable. If there is a longitude problem in the sources, it has to be addressed already in interpreting the sources, not left for WP readers to work out. Come back, by all means, if you can find such sources. Errantios (talk) 13:24, 14 April 2026 (UTC)[]

I just explained what the "longiture problem" was. And it was solved with one clock set at 12 o'clock at high noon - and the other was during the entire voyage set to 12 o'clock Greenwich Mean Time. A longitude difference of 15 degrees corresponds to exactly one hour difference. EditorÆ (talk) 14:10, 14 April 2026 (UTC)[]

I said "in the sources". There doesn't seem to be anything more here to discuss. Errantios (talk) 14:17, 14 April 2026 (UTC)[]

Minor correction. As our planet doesn't orbit the sun in an absolute circle, but as an "tiny" oval, with planet Earth in the one focus - which actually causes the local time of high noon to vary a few minutes over a year. But the logitute problem was solved within a few minutes. High noon is the local time when the sun stands exactly SOUTH - (between the capricorns). THEN if a Dutch Globe from arond 1600 actually puts these islands around about where tey do exist - THEN Cook cannot spotted them first ??? To my knowledgde the spanyards never got a shore, but Cook did. EditorÆ (talk) 14:22, 14 April 2026 (UTC)[]

I undid a few good faith changes related to image size & placement.

• The "upright" field was added to a few images with no scale factor. But MOS:IMAGESIZE says: " Just upright alone, with no scaling factor ... is equivalent to upright of 0.75; this usage is confusing and therefore deprecated." Not only is "upright" with no scale deprecated, it actually shrinks the image to 75% size.

• Two images were moved two images from right side to left side. The convention for James Cook is all images on right side. It went through a Featured Article review last year, with all images on the right side.
  • And MOS:IMAGELOC says: "Most images should be on the right side of the page, which is the default placement."

• Scale factors on some landscape images (wider than they are tall) were reduced to 1.0. But MOS:IMAGESIZE permits scale factors larger than 1.0:
  • "Where a smaller or larger image is appropriate, use upright [value other than 1.0 are acceptable] .."
  • " [for example] upright 1.15 might be used for an image with fine detail (e.g. a map or diagram) to render it "15% wider than this user generally wants ..."
  • " When specifying upright values greater than 1, take care to balance the need to reveal detail against the danger of overwhelming surrounding article text.
  • " Images in which a small region of detail is important (but cropping to that region is unacceptable) may need to be larger than normal, but upright 1.6 should usually be the largest value for images floated beside text.

Scale factors larger than 1.0 are helpful to readers for landscape images that have lots of detail in them. There are several such images in this article, particularly the maps, but also some paintings. Noleander (talk) 11:17, 22 April 2026 (UTC)[]

Interesting, I had somehow thought that using just "upright" is recommended for images in portrait mode – as I suppose it must have been at some point. I hadn't realized it's deprecated; thanks for pointing that out! Gawaon (talk) 15:00, 22 April 2026 (UTC)[]