ADVENTUROUS CAREER

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXII, Issue 205, 13 August 1932, Page 11

ADVENTUROUS CAREER

THREE VOYAGES RECALLED DOMINION’S INDEBTEDNESS. TRAVEL AND DISCOVERY. A tribute to the talents, industry and enterprise of Captain Janies Cook was paid by the Governor-General, Lord Bledisloe, at the unveiling of the statue erected to his memory in Victoria Square, Christchurch. “In the early history of New Zea land there are three outstanding landmarks—its effective discovery by James Cook, then a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, in 1769, its Christianisation, commencing with the arrival of Samuel Marsden in 1814, and its inclusion in the British Empire under the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840,” said His Excellency. “But for the first, the second would have been improbable, and the third impossible. Indeed, if popular rumour be correct, Cook’s far-sighted enterprise might have been defeated in the very year of the treaty, at least, so far as the South Island is concerned, by a little venture, which had Akaroa as its objective. In that event you might all to-day bo speaking French and a French Governor-General might be Unveiling a statue, not of Captain Cook, but of Captain Langlois or Commodore Lavaud.” SON OF FARM LABOURER. James Cook was born at Marton, in Yorkshire, in 1728, and was the son of an agricultural labourer, who subsequently became a farm bailiff, said Lord Bledisloe. He himself commenced life as a haberdasher’s apprentice but, owing to exceptional natural talents, great industry, and abounding enterprise, became famous in the varied role of a mathematician, astronomer, naval commander, physician, surveyor, and the first and foremost among all British maritime discoverers. During his 51 years of crowded adventure, penetrating travel and discovery he did more than any man of his century to enrich the world with topographical knowledge and Britain with world-wide territory. Ho was a man of commanding personal presence and was possessed of sagacity, decisive judgment, amazing perseverance and lovable disposition. While a firm disciplinarian, he displayed toward his shipmates and subordinates a degree of kindly sympathy and regard for their health, comfort and happiness unsurpassed in the annals of the sea. SERVICE ON MERCHANTMEN. After referring to Captain Cook’s service on British merchantmen before he joined the Royal Navy at the age of 27, Lord Bledisloe skid the story of his landing for the first time on New Zealand soil on October 9, 1769, near Gisborne, in face of considerable native hostility and inhospitality, and the resulting inappropriate designation of this exceptionally fertile area as Poverty Bay, was one of the most thrilling episodes in the Empire’s romantic history, said Lord Bledisloe. “Captain Cook’s charting of the coasts of New Zealand in the course of his six months’ circumnavigation of these Islands in the Endeavour, an armed ship of 360 tons, on this, his first great voyage, was a masterpiece of meticulous accuracy, bearing in mind the primitive instruments then at his disposal. With similar minuteness and accuracy he subsequently surveyed the coast of Australia. SECOND EXPEDITION. “He embarked on his second expedition in the Resolution, a ship of 462 tons, on July 13, 1772, its object being to determine for all time the existence or otherwise of the alleged great southern continent, making New Zealand for a time his somewhat insecure base. As a result of this single voyage, in which he covered a distance of 60,000 miles, or nearly three times the equatorial circumference of the earth, he discovered Batavia, New Caledonia, Norfolk Island, the Isle of Pines, Sandwich Land, Southern Georgia, and many islands of the Cook Archipelago, as well as the Sandwich Islands, and was able to refute conclusively the long-lived theory of a groat Antarctic continent. Cook lost only one man out of 118 during more than 1000 days that the voyage lasted, a great tribute to his medical skill. He was said at the time to have conquered scurvy. “Captain Cook undertook his third and last expedition, which commenced on June 25, 1776, in order to settle the question of the north-west passage, which had been revived by the British Government as a matter Of scientific interest. For this purpose, with the ships Resolution and Discovery, after revisiting New Zealand and the newlydiscovered Pacific Islands, and discovering others, he surveyed the West American coast as far north as Behring Straits and beyond, until he found his passage blocked by a great continent of ice rising 12 feet above the water and stretching as far as the eye could reach. DEATH AT HA WAIL “In the course of this voyage Captain Cook visited Northern Siberia on the other side of the straits. In one of the bays of Hawaii he met his death in 1779. One of the Discovery’s boats having been stolen, he followed his usual plan under such circumstances of seizing the person of the King and : keeping him a prisoner until due reparation had been made. His landing was opposed by the natives in superior numbers to his own, and compelled to retreat to his ship, in the course of which he was felled to the ground by a blow on the back.” During his three great expeditions, said Lord Bledisloe, Captain Cook proved himself to be a most able and intrepid sailor, a self-trained scientist of no mean repute, nn ardent and pertinacious discoverer, and a marine surveyor whose conscientious work had evoked the praise and gratitude Of thousands of mariners who have since sailed the hign seas. He shattered" alike the fables of the great Antarctic Continent and of the north-west passage, and he gave to his country a title to her extensive and valuable territories in the Southern Hemisphere. The ships in which he

did so, and the characteristics which achieved his success were Endeavour Resolution and Discovery. “Thtr nameof the ships exemplify the outstanding characteristic* of the man,” said Lord