CAPTAIN COOK

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 146, 21 June 1926, Page 3

CAPTAIN COOK

VISIT TO HIS BIRTHPLACE

A PAINTING OF THE ENDEAVOUR

PURCHASED FOB THE COMMON.

WEALTH.

"At daylight in the morning we discovered a bay which appeared to be tolerably well sheltered from all winds, into which I resolved to go, and with this view sent the master in the pinnace to sound the entrance."

That sentence in Captain Cook's own handwriting in the journal which lie wrote on board the Endeavor.'-, and which is now the property of the Commonwealth Government, records the action which made Australia a British possession at the end of April, 1770.

Cook was in the prime of his manhood when ho sailed into the unknown bay and planted the British flag on its shore, writes John Sandes in the "Sydney Morning Herald." He was then in his 42nd year, and the fine portrait by Dance, R.A., which hangs in Greenwich Hospital, reveals the features of a man of powerful intellect and determined character.

In trying to visualise tho Endeavour, which carried the circumnavigator across so many thousands of leagues of uncharted waters, most people are hampered by the, fact that at the present time there is no authentic contemporary painting in Australia of the little barque. Sir Joseph Cook has just purchased for the Commonwealth a painting, Baid to be by Thomas Luney, a well-known marine painter of the period, who, however, was only 13 years old when Cook set sail in the barque, and therefore could hardly have painted it at the time. There are several drawings in the Mitchell Library made by expert draughtsmen from authentic specifications of the vessel, but these, however accurate they may be, cannot reveal her as she was when "she walked the waters like a thing of life." Mr. Norman Lindsay's wonderful model of the Endeavour, carved in wood and complete down to the last pulley, was made from the original plans and drawings that he found in the British Museum, and is unique as a reproduction in miniature of the famous vessel. But even that model —though it is the work of a brilliant and versatile artist—cannot assist the imagination to visualise the ship as a good picture would. Hence the oil painting purchased by Sir Joseph Cook will be awaited with interest.

Meanwhile there is a picture of the Endeavour under sail, which has not, so far as is known, been seen in Australia before. It was given to this present writer at Whitby in Yorkshire by Mr. „T. H. Woodwark, a retired solicitor and enthusiastic collector of souvenirs of Cook, in June, 1922. We stood at the time on the bridge over Whitby Harbour, which is the estuary of the River Esk, protected by a system of breakwaters, and saw the very spot, with small vessels still lying in the river, where the Endeavour was built and launched. Mr. Woodwark affirmed that tho print was from an engraving of an oil painting of the Endeavour. It is possible that it may turn out to be from the painting by Luney that Sir Joseph Cook has bought.

COOK'S BIRTHPLACE

It is strange that ao many Australians when visiting England omit to make a pilgrimage to Captain Cook's birthplace at the little village of Mar-ton-in-Cleveland in Yorkshiie, and the scenes of his boyhood in the country near Marton. They would find much to interest the mind and to warm the heart and imagination.

In the grounds of' Marton Hall—a huge mansion of the Victorian period— erected for himself by the late Mr. H, W. Bolckow in the early part of last century, and now shut up and deserted —stood the small cottage built of unbaked clay in • which James Cook, the circumnavigator, son of James Cook, day-labourer, was born on 27th October, 1728. When Mr. Bolckow, the great ironmaster, built his mansion there the two-roomed cottage of tho day-labourer had already disappeared, but there was a pump at the corner of the cottage, and that pump was still standing. So to mark tho spot Mr. Bolckow erected a fine memorable urn of polished red marble.

As you walk down the village street you will come to the Captain Cook Memorial School, where they have two Australian flags sent from Sydney, and also a Canadian flag sent from Ottawa. For did not Cook take part in the famous siege of Quebec, and was he not specially selected as master of the Mercury for the difficult and dangerous service of taking soundings of the channel of the river St. Lawrence, a service which he performed with admirable skill, though attacked in the middle of it by Indian auxiliaries of the French troops.

It "will touch the heart of the Australian stranger to find in tho schoolroom at Matron a complete collection of wild flowers from Botany, pressed and mounted in a book. The flowers were sent by the children of Botany- to the children of Marton. There they were—the pink boronia, eriostemons, the pink four-petalled tetra-theca, the grevilleas, flannel flowers, epacris, and the lovely red and yellow Christmas bells.

SCHOOL DAYS.

When ho was eight years old, having learnt to read the short words from Dame Walker at the village school, young James moved with his family to the neighbouring village of Great Aytoii, where his father had obtained a better position as a farm-bailiff to Mr. Thomas Skottowe, a prosperous farmer. Young James must have shown unusual qualities even at that early age, for Mr. Skottowe undertook to pay the costs of his education at the Great Ayton school. The school is depicted in a photograph taken by a very remarkable Old gentleman, Mr. Waynman Dixon, the squire of Great Ayton, who gave it to me. He was an engineer in his earl* ier days. The British Government gave him the job of transporting the hu^o obelisk called Cleopatra's Needle from Alexandria to London soms fifty years ago, and many remarkable adventures happened to that obelisk—including the fate of being abandoned as a derelict in the Bay of Biscay, and subsequently rescued by a French steamer—before it reached the Thames. Mr. Waynman Dixon is an enthusiast about Captain Cook, and a well-informed authority on the story of the great sailor's boyhood. When Cook was thirteen he was apprenticed to a storekeeper at Staithes, a fishing village on the Yorkshire coast, between Middlcsborough and Whitby. It was inhabited' chiefly by smugglers in those days, and tho lad must have seen many cargoes of silk and French brandy landed in the cleft between two hills which formed tho harbour. With the North Sea beating almost against flic doors of II r. William Sanderson's aiorc, and with the daring fishermen and smugglers launching their boats daily for a run to the French coast, it was r.o wonder that the young boy heard the fall of the r.ca and obeyed it. He ran away to Whitby, and took service with a pair of Quakers, John and Henry Walker, who were ship owners. As an apprentice ho lived in tho house of his employers, between his voyages, and that house may still be seen in Grape lane, Whitby. There he studied mathematics and navigation when not en-

■gaged in his duties as deck hand, and afterwards as mate of the little coaster Freelove on her coasting voyages to Gravesend with coal. It was a hard school of seamanship, but a thorough one. JOINS THE NAVY. In 1755, when war broke out between England and France, James Cook, who was then 27 years of age, happened to be in tho Thames with his ship. There was a "hot press" for seamen for the Navy, but Cook took the opportunity to offer his services voluntarily. He joined the Eagle, a ship of 60 guns, commanded by Captain Harner, and from that time forward, in peace or in war, his abilities and his character brought him rapid promotion, and he never looked back. A legend has grown up that Captain Cook was a silent and reserved man, taking his meals alone, and holding himself much aloof from his officers during his great voyages of exploration; but this impression is considerably modified by a study of the intimate personal narratives that are discovered or re-dis-covered from time to time. For instance, in the wordy battle-royal between Dr. Forster, the naturalist, and Mr. William Wales, the astronomer, on the Resolution during Cook's second voyage, it would appear that Cook was in the habit of taking supper with those members of the ship's company at any rate, for Cook was obliged on one occasion to order the quarrelsome naturalist out of the cabin, an occurrence which the astronomer gleefully describes as an "arrest." It must have been terribly trying on the nerves for a small • group of men to see nobody but each other, and to be cramped up together on a little ship for a couple of years at a time. There is evidence that Captain Cook had a hot temper, but that he forgave readily and never bore malice against an offender-I—a1 —a fine trait in a great nature. His great intellectual power %vas seconded by untiring industry, freed by self-discipline and iron restraint from small vices himself, he could nevertheless understand and excuse the frailties of ordinary human nature in others. Ho cared for his seamen like a father. With his high courage and unswerving sense of duty, he had an innate kindliness of heart that endeared him, Bot only to his own men, but to the savages who came within the influence of his personality on many of'the islands that he discovered. '

Such a man is worthy to be looked up to by the Australian public as an example for the nation to which he be' queathed such a noble home, and as an ever-living proof of the heights to which a child of the people may attain under liberal institutions.

The' bicentenary of Captain Cook's birth will occur on 27th October, 1928— a little more than two years from now. The hope may be voiced that the occasion will be worthily commemorated by the Government and people of the Commonwealth.