William Pascoe Crook

William Pascoe Crook (1775–1846), a missionary, schoolmaster and pastor, ^[1] was born in Dartmouth, Devon, England on 29 April 1775. He was the first missionary to document the Marquesas Islands in an ethnographical account after he was sent by the London Missionary Society, embarking on board Duff in June 1796. Initially he was accompanied by John Harris but was left to his work alone when Harris travelled with the ship to Tahiti after Crook had landed in Vaitahu Bay. In 1798 the whaler Butterworth visited the Marquesas. Crook embarked on her to return to England, which he did when she arrived there in May 1799.

Bibliography

• S. Marsden, A Letter to Mr William Crook (Sydney, 1835)
• J. Ham, A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Labours of the Late Rev. William Pascoe Crook (Melbourne, 1846)
• William Pascoe Crook, An Account of the Marquesas Islands 1797–1799, ed. Greg Dening et al. (2007) ISBN 2-904171-66-2

References

1. Australian Dictionary of National Biography

External links

• Niel Gunson, 'Crook, William Pascoe (1775 - 1846)', Australian Dictionary of National Biography, Volume 1, Melbourne University Press, 1966, pp 259-261.