Cook Relics Unopened In Cellar For Century

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30115, 26 April 1963, Page 13

Cook Relics Unopened In Cellar For Century

(N.Z.P.A -Reuter—Copyright)

STOCKHOLM, April 25. Curators of the Swedish Ethnographical Museum are busy cataloguing a private collection of souvenirs brought back from Captain Cook’s first voyage round the world in 1768-71. The collection belonged to the Alstroemer family, which had a private museum near Gothenburg in the 18:h century. The souvenirs were given to Johan Alstroemer in 1777 by the British naturalist. Sir Joseph Banks, who was a member of Cook’s expedition. The Alstroemer collection, including the Cook trophies, was presented to the Ethnographical Museum in Stockholm in the middle of the 19th century. But, owing to

lack of exhibition space, it has'remained stored unopened in the museum’s cellars ever since.

The Cook collection consists of various items which Sir Joseph Banks had brought home in duplicate. It includes numerous plants, insects, and shells as well as weapons, darts, metal arrows, javelins and wooden clubs from Australia, New Zealand and Tahiti.

Dr. Stig Ryden, of the Ethnographical Museum, started investigating the Alstroemer collection recently as a result of his study of the diaries of the Venezuelan national hero, Francisco de Miranda (1752-1810) Miranda reported in the diary having seen the Alstroemer private museum in 1787. He particularly noted the Cook trophies.