Two large whalebone breast plates were collected by members of Captain Cook's expedition on Tonga on the Second Voyage in 1773 and 1774, one of which is now in the Pitt-Rivers Museum, Oxford, and the other with John Forster Reinhold's collection in Gttingen, Sweden. Another of the same size as the present example and traditionally believed to have belonged to the great Cakobau of Bau is illustrated in Clunie, F., Yalo i Viti, Suva, 1986, p.161, pl.116. Clunie writes that such breast plates were probably made by Tongans.