SUGGESTED COOK MEMORIAL

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28481, 10 January 1958, Page 10

SUGGESTED COOK MEMORIAL

Whitianga Residen Offers Land

(New Zealand Press Association* AUCKLAND, Jan. 9.

Land for the establishment of a memorial at the spot where it is now claimed Captain Cook observed the transit of Mercury in 1769 will be offered to the Government by a resident of Whitianga, Mr H. L. Rees. There is already a small memorial at Shakespeare’s Head, a 250 ft hill at Mercury Bay, on the east coast of the Coromandel Peninsula, where the observation was previously believed to have taken place. In an article in the Auckland Astronomical Society’s journal recently, Mr R. A. Mclntosh said that the actual site of Captain Cook’s observations was a mile and a haff east of the hill, at the | eastern end of Cook’s Beach, near the mouth of the Purangi river. This claim was based on evidence from Cook’s journal and maps. It also seemed that Cook took formal possession of New Zealand at ■ this spot, said Mr Rees. Although many believed that possession of New Zealand was taken by Cook at Poverty Bay, his journal showed it actually took place at Cook’s Bay. Mr Rees said he considered that the Government should erect at the spot in Cook’s Bay a memorial suitable to the importance of the event it would commemorate.

Mr Rees proposes to take a surveyor with him to Cook’s Bay tomorrow to determine as exactly as possible the spot where the transit of Mercury is believed to have been observed, and to plant a wooden post to mark it