COOK’S MEMORY

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16360, 7 June 1927, Page 7

COOK’S MEMORY

AUSTRALIAN ENTHUSIAST * ‘ GREATEST EMPIRE BUILDER ’ ’ (Special to the Herald.) AUCKLAND, this day. Off to the tropics once more to get tiway from the Australian winter, Sir Joseph Carnithers was a passenger from Sydney on the Maunganui this morning. Not so long'ago the name of Carruthers used to appear in the newspapers with daily regularity, for in his more strenuous years he was in the forefront of the political battle. Now that, he has got beyond active duties, he has more leisure to follow up his hobby of Captain Cook, if one can so - express it. Cook was a great man, and New Zealand should be specially interested in his remarkable career, but beyond naming a strait and a mountain after him and giving him a monument at Gisborne, New Zealand has not done much to perpetuate his memory. Sir Joseph Carruthers lias devoted years to studying the life and times of Cook, and no man has done more to see that posterity does justice to the. great navigator; When Minister of Lands in 1895-1000 he reserved Kura ell at Botany 1 Bay where Cook first landed on tile Australian shores and where ho unfurled the Union Jack and took possession of Australia for the British race.- Then followed the dedication Of ivurnell as a national reserve to commemorate Cook's first landing. LONDON'S MONUMENT. In 1908 Sir Joseph Carruthers visited London, and noted in that great Mother City of our Empire that there was no. monument or record to the memory of Cook, whom lie referred to in a letter to the London Times as ‘ ‘Our greatest Empire builder. ’ ’ The result of that letter was that a meetitfg was called at once in London,' at which the then Prince of Wales {now King George) presided. Sir Joseph Carruthers' letter to the Times was read,, and a resolution yvas carried inaugurating a movement to erect a statue to Captain Cook in London. Within two or three years, a line statue was erected on a splendid site, and at the,, unveiling of it special stress was laid on the fact that this statue was London's reply'to thCj suggestion made by an Australian. In 1924 during a. visit to the Hawaiian Islands, Sir Joseph found that there existed a strong current of local .opinion that the native Hawaiian and the American rvere adverse to the good name and reputation of Captain Cook, who discovered the Hawaiian‘islands in 1778. Immediately he set to work to ascertain the grounds for this opinion, and finding a complete answer to the grounds upon which it was founded, he took steps publicly to vindicate Cook's memory in a series of addresses and articles. A change of sentiment in Hatvaii was the . result, and the Governor of the territory, with the fullest public support behind him, has taken action towards a fitting commemoration of Captain Cook's life and works bv the dedication of a national reservation of the area of land where Cook was killed in 1779.