MEMORIAL HONOUR.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 20088, 27 October 1928, Page 4 (Supplement)

MEMORIAL HONOUR.

A (NATION'S GRATITUDE.

MONUMENTS IN YORKSHIRE

RECORDS IN THE SOUTH SEAS

There are many memorial monuments of Cook. A bronze statue stands in tho Mall, London. A bust of him is in tho National Portrait Gallery. Liverpool has a statue. ''.'he London County Council has affixed a tablet in Mile End Road. There is a pew. carved in his honour in the parish church at Stockton-on-lees. Various memorials are situated hero and there in England, notably in the places associated vrith his youthful days. A medal was struck to commemorate his second expedition; another, in gold, silver and bironze, was issued by Iho Royal Society in 1784. The obelisk at Easby, in the Cleveland district, has a peculiar interest because of the early date of its erection. To the Gentleman's Magazine, in 1791, a correspondent wrote an appeal for a. memorial. He advocated tho erection of a pyramid on a height, Iloseberry Topping, in the district. s His appeal elicited m> practical response. A similar fate befell a public appeal in 1811, the location then favoured being an adjacent hill known as Eston Nob. This appeal noted that nothing had yet been done to perpetuate Cook's memory. " Tho interest of navigation and the honour of tho country being objects of great national importance," the promoters said, "a society of gentlemen, desirous of promoting such useful and j beneficial ends, propose a subscription for erecting a monument in honour of tho celebrated navigator, Captain James Cook, on Eston Nob, a mountain of Cleveland, in the vicinity of which ho was born, no mark of pubiic distinction and gratitude having vet been shown to his memory." In the "face of these two failures, the prospect of a worthy memorial in Cook's native place seemed slender. Then, in 1827, Robert Campion. Lord of the Manor of Easby, took tlio matter into his own hands, defraying the cost of a monument on tho highest point of tho Cleveland hills A Benefactor of tho Human Eace. The opening paragraph of its inscription reads—--Erected-, to tho memory of the celebrated circumnavigator. Captain James Cook. F.R.S., a man in nautiual scarcely inferior to any, and in zeai, prudence, and indefatigable exertion superior to most. Regardless of personal danger, he opened nn intercourse . with the inhabitants of tlio Society Islands, and other portions of the Southern Hemisphere. He was bora at Marton, in this neighbourhood, October 27, 1728, and was massacred at Owyhee, .January 14, 1779, to the unspeakable grief and disappointment of his countrymen. While the sciences in general, and navigation in particular., shall be cultivated among men. while the spirit of enterprise, commerce and philanthropy shall animate the sons of Britain, while it shall be deemed the high honour of a Christian nation to spread tho enjoyments of civilised life and the higher blessings of the Christian faith among Pagan und Savage Tribes: so long will the name of Captain Cook stand enrolled among the most, celebrated and most admired of the benefactors of the human race.

Restoration of the monument was found necessary in 1894, as it was falling into ruin. This was accomplished by willing and prompt donations from a local public fully alive at last to the. merits of the great sailor bred in Yorkshire. Belciw the statue-.at Whitby, which was _ presented to the town by the Hon. Sir Gervase Becket, M.P., and unveiled by Lord Charles Bercsford in 1912, there is a briefer but 110 less eloquent testimony— For the lnstin? Memory of a Great Yorkshire seaman this bronze his been cast, snd is left in the keeping of Whitby; the birthplace of those good ships that bore him 011 his enterprises, brought him to glory, and left him at rest. Australia and New Zealand. At Venus Point Island in the Societies a stone commemorates the observation of the transit of Venus on June 3, 1769. At Ivealakekua Bay, Hawaii, is an obelisk. An inscribed plato is placed near the spot where he fell. The earliest monument of all was erected by Captain Lord Byron, of H.M.S. Blonde; in 1825, on the place where his body was burned. Australia possesses a number of memorials. One is a statue at Randwick. Another marks the landing-place of Cook and Banks at Sutherland Point, in Botany Bay. At Cooktown, in Queensland, is a plate recalling that there the Endeavour was repaired, after running on the reef iu 177'9. In Torres Strait, on Possession Island, is an obelisk commemorative of Cook's! landing there and taking formal possession of the whole east coast of Australia.

New Zealand boasts an inscribed obelisk at Gisborne, a monument in Ship's Cove, Queen Charlotte Sound, and an inscription iu Endeavour Inlet, recording the dates of Cook's visits.

Franco has its " Le Tombeau de Cook" 111. a garden at Mereville. This was erected bv La Borde.

Soirie honours fell to Cook in his lifetime. On his return from his second voyage ho got, indeed, all that it was then the fashion to bestow. To be given a post-captaincy and appointed also a captain of Greenwich Hospital-—this ensuring h:m •• honourable retreat from life's stress s 'iild ho ever be in need of it—was little enough for a man who had done more for geography and seamanship than any since Columbus; but these preferments were then counted considerable.

lie was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1776, and on the day of his election two papers prepared by him were communicated through the president. Ono dealt with the a'ction of the tides along the east coast of New Holland; the other with the preservation of the health of seamen ou long voyages. It. is significant of the general approbation of his work in the latter domain that the gold medal of the society, annually allotted to the best experimental rescaich "of the year, was in 1776 awarded to him for the paper that dealt with tho saving of sailormen from scurvy.

Had ho returned from his third vovnsjo, it is now understood, be would have been created a baronet.