Tu'imalila was a turtle[note 1] given to the King of Tonga by Captain Cook in 1777.
The turtle came to be regarded as a chief to the Tongan people and later in life was blinded by a brush fire. It died in 1966 at the royal palace in Nuku, Alofa. Its remains were to be sent to the Auckland Museum in New Zealand.[1]
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- ↑ The novel's sole mention of Tu'i Malila is a Reuters dispatch, which erroneously refers to her as a turtle; she was actually a tortoise.
