Commemorating Bicentenary Of Cook’s First Voyage To N.Z.

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31248, 21 December 1966, Page 13

Commemorating Bicentenary Of Cook’s First Voyage To N.Z.

The Royal Society of Newt Zealand will commemorate Captain James Cook’s first voyage of discovery and scientific exploration to New Zealand and the Pacific with an expedition to the Southwest Pacific in September/ October, 1969. The New Zealand Naval Board has agreed to make H.M.N.Z.S. Endeavour available for the expedition. Hence the modern counterpart to Cook’s Endeavour will be used to extend the science to which Cook’s colleagues, Sir Joseph Banks and Dr Daniel Solander, made original contributions. The Royal Society of London, of which Sir Joseph Banks was once president, was prominent in sponsoring Cook’s voyages and to mark this association the society has been invited to select several British scientists to join the expedition. The Council of the Royal Society of New Zealand has appointed an expedition committee whose chairman is Dr E. I. Robertson, the In-

ternational Secretary, Assistant Director of the D.S.I.R. and Scientific Adviser to the New Zealand Naval Board.

The expedition will concentrate on areas of the Southwest Pacific of current scientific interest, particularly in the Tonga and Cook Islands region.

The New Zealand party will comprise nine to 10 scientists who, with their British colleagues, will bring the scientific complement to 14. With members of the expedition on board the En-

deavour will spend four to six weeks in Pacific waters and it is planned that she will return to New Zealand on October 9, 1969, arriving off Kaiti Beach, Gisborne, where Cook first stepped ashore 200 years before. The scientific programme will include work at sea and ashore in such fields as botany, archaeology, biology (marine and terrestrial) geophysics and oceanography. Universities, museums and divisions of D.S.I.R. have been asked to submit pro-

posals from which a comprehensive programme will be drawn up. The photograph shows the Endeavour berthed near Hut Point in McMurdo Sound, Antarctica. ■