James Wilson (explorer)

Captain James Wilson (1760–1814) was an English sailor and explorer. He commanded the ship Duff, which the London Missionary Society contracted in 1797 to convey a team of missionaries (consisting of thirty men, six women, and three children) to their postings in Tahiti, Tonga, and the Marquesas Islands.

Quotes

A Missionary Voyage to the Southern Pacific Ocean (London: T. Chapman, 1799)

• Sire,
  To whom can the Missionary Society so properly dedicate these first-fruits of their labours as to Your Majesty, by whose order the voyages of discovery were first undertaken, which have brought into view the numerous islands dispersed over the Pacific Ocean? The reports made concerning them attracts the general attention of European nations; and Your Majesty's subjects felt themselves peculiarly interested, whether their views led them to confider these discoveries as tending to enlarge the bounds of science, or as opening a field of commercial speculation. A nobler object, Sire, has engaged the attention of the Missionary Society, who, believing CHRISTIANITY to be the greatest blessing ever imparted to mankind, desired to communicate that inestimable gift, with all its happy effects, to these unenlightened regions.
  • "To the King"