FIRST MAGNETIC SURVEY OF N.Z.

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27065, 13 June 1953, Page 8

FIRST MAGNETIC SURVEY OF N.Z.

CAPTAIN COOK’S TREE NOT USED Members of the party that visited the southern fiords in 1909 during the original magnetic survey of New Zealand did not take observations on a tree said to have been used by Captain Cook for the same purpose during one of his visits, according to a letter the Director of the Magnetic Survey (Mr H. F. Baird) has received from Mr H. D. Cook, now living in England, who as a student at Canterbury University College helped with the original survey. Mr Baird said it had been reSorted that the 1909 party had used le tree Cook had used. The report was hardly true, said Mr Cook, who is now director of an English engineering firm. They had, however, worked nearby and had seen the stumps of the trees cut down by Captain Cook's men. These stumps were then much overgrown.

The 1909 expedition, which visited Astronomy Point, had, however, verified Captain Cook’s experience of having difficulty in anchoring a ship there. “The sides fell so steeply that while water might be quite shallow on one side of a whale boat it was quite impossible to find bottom on the other," he wrote. ‘.’He had to have chains rigged from tree to tree across the sound and tie up to the middle in order to zpoor his ship safely. We had to keep steaming, and I remember that on Christmas Day, our last fine day, during the evening meal on deck the ship touched and saved the captain from making his speech.” Mr Cook is the son of a former professor at Canterbury University College.