A collection of rare artifacts from Captain Cook's voyages in the Pacific have come into public ownership at an Australian museum. The weapons, which were collected during a fascinating era in naval exploration, are now on display at Sydney's National Maritime Museum.

It has taken more than two centuries, but these artifacts are now available for the public to view and enjoy.

They may not look like much, but each has its own story.

The two wooden clubs were gifts given to members of Cook's expedition in Tonga in October 1773, while the whalebone hand club was presented in New Zealand in December of that year.

The clubs were taken back to England with an islander named Omai.

The three clubs remained in Tobias Furneaux's family until 1986, when a private collector bought them.

They've now been sold to the Maritime Museum for more than 550-thousand U.S. dollars, acquired with the help of government funding.

Cook may not have personally collected the artifacts, but the fact that they went with him, together with the story of Omai, put them in high demand.

Mary-Louise Williams from the National Maritime Museum says she's delighted to have acquired such unusual pieces of history.

Mary-Louise Williams said, "There are many types of souvenirs from the eighteenth century that were gathered over various voyages, but most of them were dispersed at the time, very few of them were actually kept together as a group. It was made famous by great painters like Sir Joshua Reynolds who painted Omai, who himself is a wonderful story. And so it was the association of the collection with Omai, with Cook, and with the history of voyaging in the Pacific that made this collection quite unique. Its provenance is exquisite."

It is very rare for artifacts from this era to remain in private ownership, according to the Maritime Museum.

Captain Cook was killed in a fight in Hawaii during his third voyage to the Pacific in 1779.