INTERESTING CAREER

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 19, 22 July 1925, Page 11

INTERESTING CAREER

LATE MR. I. HOF'KINS'S ADVENTURES

SAILOE, MINER, BEEKEEPEB.

(M KLEOIIAPB.—SPECIAt, TO THS POST.)

AUCKLAND, This Day.

The life of Mr. Isaac Hopkins, for many years Apiarian Expert to the Agricultural Department, whose death was reported yesterday, was attended with a considerable amount of adventure. In his youth he was apprenticed to the sea, and in 1852, when the Crimean War broke out, he was employed on a vessel, chartered by the French Government, to carry coal to Malta, following up the French fleet. The ship then went back to Antwerp and loaded with general cargo for Constantinople. The vessel plied with stores from the Bosphorus to the seat of war all through the period of hostilities. For some time she was engaged in conveying wounded to Scutari, on the Boaphorus, where Florence Nightingale and her staff of British nurses were carrying on their beneficent operations. He was in Constantinople when peace was proclaimed, and his ship was one of the first of those dispatched to Taganrog, in the north corner of the Sea of Azof, with supplies. Mr. Hopkins's acquaintance with New Zealand began in 1858, when he was one of tho company of a vessel which arrived in Wellington. With thirteen others he quitted the ship there, and after spending 18 months in the colony he went to Sydney, and then to Bombay, where ho joined a P. and 0. vessel, being made officer-in-chargo of the mail room. For some time his ship was engaged in trade with Chinese and other ports. He was in Suez when De Lesseps was carrying out the finishing stages of the Suez Canal construction. While lying at anchor in the bay he witnessed a dramatic scene in which a slave of an Arabian merchant, who was visiting his captain, threw his arms around the vessel's flagpole, thus claiming the protection of the British flag, with the result that his owner had the mortification of having to row himself ashore, and the slave was freed and taken into the ship's company. ' On his return to England Mr. Hopkins married, and he and his wife came permanently to New Zealand, landing at Auckland on sth January, 1865. In this colony, as it then was, he became a pioneer of two goldfield3. At the time of his arrival the West Coast rush was beginning, and he was numbered in the honourable company of the "sixtyfivers." Two years later ho was among the first to arrive at the newly-opened Thames goldfield. There he achieved no particular luck as a digger, but by his sailorly training he made himself useful in the lifting of heavy weights for the erection of the first (circular) battery, built for the Golden Crown Company, one of the first mills on the field. He also acted as underground boss in the Nonpareil Mine, and carried out important sinking and driving contracts in others. Afterwards he engaged in business as a tentmaker in the town.

Probably Mr. Hopkins is best known for his connection with the bee-keeping industry, which won him a reputation throughout the Dominion. He may fairly be called the father, of bee-keeping in this country. First he took it up as a hobby, while living at the Thames. Then he made it the subject of scientific study on lines of the Langstroth system, and advocated in the Press and by lectures the substitution of systematic bee culture for the happy-go-lucky methods that had up to then been followed. At that time there was probably not £5 worth of commercial honey produced in New Zealand every year. Eventually the Government was interested in the matter', and appointed Mr. Hopkins Apiarian Expert to the Department of Agriculture, a post he held for many years. Before his retirement from active life he had the satisfaction of seeing what had at first been a mere hobby elevated to the rank of an important industry.