the sloop . Her captain was Commodore John Byron, a 42-year-old veteran of the sea, and younger brother to the profligate William Byron, 5th Baron Byron. Between June 1764 and May 1766 Dolphin completed the circumnavigation of the globe. This was the first such circumnavigation of less than two years. During this voyage, in 1765, Byron took possession of the Falkland Islands on behalf of Britain on the grounds of prior discovery, and in so doing was nearly the cause of a war between Great Britain and Spain, both countries having armed fleets ready to contest the sovereignty of the barren islands. Later Byron visited islands of Tuamotus, Tokelau and Nikunau in the Gilbert Islands, putting them on European maps for the first time (in European circles, Nikunau went by the name "Byron Island" for over 100 years); and visited Tinian in the Northern Marianas Islands. Second circumnavigation Dolphin circumnavigated the world for a second time, under the command of Samuel Wallis. Her master's mate, John Gore, was among a number of the crew from Byron's circumnavigation who crewed with Wallis. The master on this voyage, George Robertson, subsequently wrote a book The discovery of Tahiti; a journal of the second voyage of H.M.S. Dolphin round the world under the command of Captain Wallis, R.N., in the years 1766, 1767, and 1768, written by her master. Dolphin sailed in 1766 in the company of , under the command of Philip Carteret, who had served on Byron's circumnavigation. Dolphin dropped anchor at the peninsula of Tahiti Iti ("small Tahiti", aka Taiarapu) on 17 June 1767 but quickly left to find a better anchorage. Wallis chose Matavai Bay on 23 June. Although the Spanish had visited the Marquesas Islands in 1595, some 170 years earlier, Wallis officially took possession of Otaheiti, which he named "King George III Island". (About a year later, French navigator Louis-Antoine de Bougainville landed at Hitiaa on the opposite side of Tahiti and unaware of Wallis's earlier visit, claimed it for the King of France.) Early on a large canoe approached Dolphin and at a signal its occupants launched a storm of stones at the British, who replied with grapeshot. Dolphin's gunnery cut the canoe in two, killing most of its occupants. Wallis then sent his carpenters ashore to cut the eighty-some canoes there in half. Eventually, friendly relations were established between the British sailors and the locals.