Fifteen years after his death at Kealakekua Bay on Hawai'i in 1779, the figure of Captain Cook was immortalized in a print designed by P. J. de Loutherbourg entitled The Apotheosis of Captain Cook. The Apotheosis is an artistic rendering of the moment of Cook's supposed elevation to the heavens, immediately following his violent death at the hands of a crowd of enraged Hawai'ian islanders. None of the many contemporary images of this already legendary figure, nor any that were to follow, captures more completely his status as hero of empire. As he is whisked heavenward, the island of Hawai'i and the encircling Pacific Ocean he had done so much to expose to European vision recede beneath and behind him. The viewer is invited to see the Pacific, its lands and its peoples as a backdrop to his greatness, but also to see it in perspective – like the detailed maps he had meticulously prepared for the Admiralty. The viewer sees the previously unknown (to Europeans) Pacific from the vantage point of elevation. This is what the Apotheosis invites us to see as Cook's accomplishment. Cook is immortalized because he was the one to have reduced the unknown and unseen to the scrutiny of European vision, European charts and European navigation.

The viewer of course cannot be unaware that Cook's accomplishments have been won at the cost of his life at the hands of people he had made known to Europe. Much ink was later to be spilled over the question of whether Cook's death was caused by his misjudgements and violence on the beach, or by the islanders’ belief that he was the personification of their god of peace and productivity, Lono, who had outstayed his ritually-prescribed welcome. Cook's European divinity, however, was assured by his apotheosis. If the viewer harboured any doubts as to the viciousness of the ‘savages’, the iconography of the Apotheosis removed them. Cook is shown floating upward on a cloud flanked by two allegorical female figures.