Samuel Wallis was born near Camelford, Cornwall.

He had served under John Byron, and in 1766 was promoted to captain and was given the command of HMS Dolphin (1751) as part of an expedition led by Philip Carteret in the Swallow with an assignment to circumnavigate the globe.

The two ships are parted by a storm shortly after sailing through the Strait of Magellan, Wallis continuing to Tahiti, which he names "King George the Third's Island" in honor of the King (June 1767).

Wallis himself is ill and remains in his cabin: lieutenant Tobias Furneaux is the first to set foot, hoisting a pennant and turning a turf, taking possession in the name of His Majesty.

Dolphin stays in Matavai Bay in Tahiti for over a month.

Wallis goes on to name or rename five more islands in the Society Islands and six atolls in the Tuamotu Islands, as well as confirming the locations of Rongerik and Rongelap in the Marshall Islands.

He renames the Polynesian island of Uvea as Wallis after himself, before reaching Tinian in the Mariana Islands.

He also sights Mehetia, a volcanic island in the Windward Islands, in the east of the Society Islands in French Polynesia.

This island is a very young active stratovolcano one hundred and ten kilometers (sixty-eight miles) east of the Taiarapu Peninsula of Tahiti.

It belongs to the Teahiti'a-Mehetia hotspot.