Captain Cook was an explorer, navigator and hydrographer, born in Marton and later living in Great Ayton, Whitby and London. In 1762 he married Elizabeth Batts, a keen embroiderer and needlewoman. Elizabeth began a new waistcoat for her husband, but he died in 1779 before it was finished. She kept many of his belongings in his memory, including the unfinished embroidered waistcoat. It is relatively rare for embroidery and needlework to have such clear provenance.

Alison began her research at the Captain Cook Memorial Museum in Whitby, but the quest to make an exact, finished replica took her all the way to Australia and New Zealand. The State Library in Sydney holds the original unfinished waistcoat. It is made from an unusual fabric called tapa cloth: an unwoven fabric made from the bark of a Polynesian tree, beaten until it is thin, flat and almost like paper. The pieces are mounted on linen and embroidered with S-twist and silver passing threads, with silver spangles about 2mm across. In Wellington, another of Cook’s waistcoats could be measured to get the size right. The waistcoat may have been made for an appearance at court, which would explain why it is far grander than anything the Cooks, a working family with a Quaker influence, would normally have worn.

Alison bought a 10m roll of tapa cloth from Hawaii. It took three days to arrive by post; in 1779 it would have taken three years. Every detail was considered, from the linen backing to the placing and design of the embroidery. The buttons were educated guesswork, matched to designs of the period, and rabbit-skin glue was used to fix the buckram, just as it would have been at the time.

Alison’s research was accurate enough to work out Cook’s measurements: he was at least 6’2” tall and quite slim. And from the direction of the tambour work, she deduced that Elizabeth must have been left-handed. The replica waistcoat has been on display at the Captain Cook Memorial Museum in Whitby, alongside an embroidered map that Elizabeth also began and that Alison has also recreated.