THE MAN WHO SAILED NORTH.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 263, 5 November 1932, Page 3 (Supplement)

THE MAN WHO SAILED NORTH.

Everybody lias heard of Captain Cook, the man who discovered Australia; but not many people remember Captain Charles Clerke, who was with him on all his great voyages, and succeeded to the command of the expedition when Cook was killed on his third voyage by the natives of tho Sandwich Islands. Yet it is a most sunny, lovable person that the glimpses of Captain Clerke in the accounts of Cook's voyages reveal for a moment, and in his end he, too, touched greatness. He went to sea when he was quite a small boy; and was still a boy when his ship Bellona fought the French ship Courageuse. The Bellona had her mainmast blown overboard with young Clerke sitting in the mizzen; but he was rescued, smiling and unhurt. He was generally smiling. "The frequent and heavy rains here," he writes, while still a lieutenant only in Australia, "render it very disagreeable at times; however, this is my third trip round the world, and I cannot recollect any place I was ever at but had some disagreeable quality or other attending it;'and Ido think that Dusky Bay, for a set of hungry fellows after a long passage at sea, is as good as any place I've ever yet met with." Most of his letters have this tone of cheerful common sense. It was shown again in his device for dealing with tho islanders in tho South Seas, who would come aboard and steal from the ships. They seemed to care nothing for flogging. When their chiefs were asked how they should be punished they said, "Kill them." But Clerke found a better way. He had the heads of all caught thieving shaved by the ship's barber. Their comrades laughed so at their shaven polls, and they were themselves so ashamed of them, that the thieving stopped. Clerke was aboard his ship ill when the unfortunate Captain Cook was killed in an affray with the natives on Oioliy'hc beach. He watched the miserable business helplessly through his glasses. His cool, sailorly fairness and good sense shows in his account to the Admiralty of this "wretched business. He insists that despite the tragedy these natives were ordinarily "the friendliest creatures in the world," and that it must all have been a ghastly mistake of some kind. But he had other things to think about now. As senior officer he had to take command of the expedition, which had been organised to find a passage from the Pacific to the Atlantic round the north of Canada. He was already ill. He lamented his bad health in ono short passage in his report; not for his own sake, but for the possible "loss to the service." "However," he added cheerfully, "here be very able oflicers," and he had hopes of accomplishing something worth while. It never seems to have occurred to him to give up or to steer anywhere but north, though he must have known that his health would not stand a northern winter. As it happened, that winter was very severe; the crews suffered terrible hardships and privations, despite the generosity of the Russian garrison in Kamchatka, who gave them almost all the stores they had. At last, when all the other oflicers were agreed that to try to get further north was hopeless, Captain Clerke gave the order to turn south again. But by this time he was so ill that he could not leave his berth; and before they reached' Kamchatka again he was dead. He was still only thirty-eight. They buried him under a tree in Kamchatka, the Russian garrison attending, with great respect and solemnity. So, far from home, Captain Clerke lies dead; and yet lives, too, in the story of the great man he delighted to call "my friend and commander," the very picturp of a frank, laughing_ sailor; -a fine seaman, and an honest, kindhearted Englishman.