CAPTAIN COOK BEGAN IT

Taranaki Daily News, 1 December 1934, Page 21 (Supplement)

CAPTAIN COOK BEGAN IT

NEW ZEALAND’S COAST. A special surveying ship provided by the British .Government is to rechart the coast of New Zealand in 1936. This announcement, recently made by the Governor-General of New Zealand at the opening of the Dominion’s Parliament, reminds us that 165 years have passed by since Captain Cook began the task of charting the long coastline. It was in 1769 that Cook, while on the first of his celebrated voyages to the South Seas, rediscovered New Zealand, which had been made known to Europe as early as 1642 by the Dutch navigator Abel Tasman. But Tasman was in a hurry, and he merely sailed along the western coastline for a few hundred miles giving a few names to the bays and capes which still remain on the maps. The world had to wait until Captain Cook made his voyages before it knew the size and shape of New Zealand. Captain Cook was the first navigator to sail round New Zealand and to make charts of the coastline. And very good charts he made, considering that he made his voyages in a little sailing-ship and without the aid of the wonderful surveying instruments cf to-day. Since his day much has been done by surveyors ashore and on ships, but it has been found that the existing cTiarts are not complete enough. Ships have been delayed off the coast of Rew Zealand owing to the difficulty of finding out their position under conditions of low visibility, and delays cost money when they effect great liners. .