INTERESTING RELICS FOR MUSEUM

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 204, 26 May 1938, Page 10

INTERESTING RELICS FOR MUSEUM

Thought To Have Been Used By Captain Cook

PORCELAIN CUP AND SAUCER

Believed to have been used by Captain James Cook on board the Endeavour in his voyage of discovery to New Zealand, a cup and saucer of blue and white porcelain have been received by the Dominion Museum and were exhibited last night at a meeting of the Wellington Philosophical Society.

The articles were presented to the museum by Mr. John L. Mereer, of Dean House, East Breton, Sussex, in whose possession they were. Unfortunately no details have come to hand authenticating their use by Captain Cook.

The cup, which would perhaps be more aptly termed bowl, is handleless, wide and shallow. It is apparently of Chinese manufacture, thick and heavily glazed, and patterned with a roughlylimned Chinese dragon design, a similar pattern being drawn on the saucer. The colouring appears to have been executed by hand. This is the type of cup first used for the consumption of tea and from which originated the expression “a dish of tea.” If it belonged to Cook, it seems more probable that the navigator used it for other purposes; in the ships of those days even officers were usually not well supplied with crockery, and such an obviously utility bowl would serve many purposes. To know how it was used would be an interesting glimpse into the past. Captain Cook was an experimentalist in drinks brewed from various leaves and herbs; he studied deeply the question of antiscorbutics to prevent the scurvy that until that time had been the bane, of all long ocean voyages. That he drank tea on board the Endeavour is more than probable. At that time, from being a luxury, tea was becoming nip re popular in Britain than at any previous period, the average consumption being about two pounds a head of population during the year. It was a time when fabulous fortunes were being made out of tea and Sir Joseph Banks, who accompanied Captain Cook to New Zealand, was keenly interested in tea ; indeed, he prepared a detailed report for the East India Company on the subject of tea production and its possibilities in India. So there seems little doubt that Captain Cook did drink tea, and perhaps from this very vessel. If so, however, he must have been a skilful drinker. To hold a modern cup with a handle and drink in comfort in the lurching cabin of a modern liner is no simple feat at times; and Cook must have found it more difficult with such a relatively wide bowl, tossing in his little barque. Even to hold it must have been difficult, unless the tea were halfcold or did not come nearly to the brim. It is a valuable relic, and it would be interesting to have more detailed accounts of its history and its use. Such accounts would throw a vivid sidelight on an intimate aspect of the captain’s life under the very different conditions of seafaring, a century and a half ago. (Picture on page 9.)