RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 88, 8 January 1935, Page 8

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights on Current Events (By Kickshaws.) Ministers in England are said to be drafting a surprise Empire policy. Nothing in the way of policies could be a greater surprise than the present one. * * ♦ An inventor has hopes of producing ice from sea water. Some seasons, if we are to believe bathing pessimists the difficulty is produce sea water from ice. It is stated that wearing apparel has • been found under the floor of a racecourse building at Levin. Racing enthusiasts are reminded that the correct place for a last shirt is on a horse. “Whether what you say is right or not about Notts and Knotts knots I know not, but that that is is that that is not is not is not that it it is. (Sorry my typewriter is careless about punctuation marks, etc.”) says “Scipio.” [Now, now, now. who knows a better now?] ♦ » * “I could not help contrasting the size of the Australia with that of the Endeavour which Captain Cook so often brought up the Sound during his vogages of discovery,” said the Duke of Gloucester on landing at Pieton. The Duke has touched a slant of pioneering that for some reason has received very little recognition. We are apt to applaud men these days who fly in huge and expensive aeroplanes from one part of the world to another. Their machines are fitted with all the wonders of modern invention. In contrast to this Captain Cook sailed round the world in vessels whose tonnage was less than a coastal trawler. The Endeavour, in fact, was no more than 370 tons. Yet she was sailed from England to Tahiti in approximately nine months. She carried only the crudest navigation instruments, and no telescopes. She embarked on a world trip at a period when almost nothing was known about food values. Scurvy had no cure until Captain Cook himself discovered one. How these vessels beat up against the wind is to-day considered one of the marvels of the ocean. Yet Cook got there—and more marvellous still be got back.

The Resolution in which Cook made his second voyage was a cockleshell of 462 tons, about 100 tons larger tbau the Endeavour. The vessel that accompanied him was a bare 330 tons. Yet a distance of 60,000 miles was covered in roughly 1,000 days and only one man out of 118 was lost. In those days when one went pioneering it was necessary to organise a self-sup-porting community. Press messages, radio and other modern publicity inventions were unknown. One disappeared into the “blue” and no more was heard for a year or two years or more. In contrast to this people make a flight which lasts a few hours and they can sit back for the rest of their lives us heroes. In some cases indeed they have become almost millionaires. Yet what they did for their country is nothing compared with what Captain Cook did or what Drake did. Drake admittedly found piracy very profitable, but Cook was rewarded as miserably for his work as some aviators are rewarded handsomely for their work. Even Columbus was on the verge of being clapped into prison when he returned from his famous voyage.

Perhaps the first voyage of Columbus is one of the most remarkable pieces of pioneering in history. He set out from fhe Old World in a cockleshell called the Santa Maria no larger than the ferry boat Cobar that plies between Wellington and the Bays. In shape it was a cask sawn in half with upraised ends. It was fitted with every conceivable obstruction to good sailing such as towers and turrets and other excrescences. How this vessel sailed into the wind is a secret that has not come to us. Yet in comparison with the Pinta and the Nina which accompanied the Santa Maria, the last named was an Atlantic liner. The Pinta jnd the Nina tvere little tots of the sea of only 40 tons. They carried IS men. but how they fitted into the vessels is a mystery. Yet Columbus contrived to cross the Atlantic in a week over the two months. In this he was admittedly centuries behind the Scandinavians who had crossed the Atlantic in a vessel of some eight tons and discovered America long before. One may well contemplate with surprise, the size of modern vessels and pioneering cockleshells of yore.

Another fact concerning the sea pioneers of early days is the astoundingly crude navigating instruments that they used. One of the most interesting items in the library at Magdalen College, Cambridge, is the original chart which Drake used for his famous round the world voyage. In size it is about as large as a pocket handkerchief. The shapes given to the land — especially the New World—bear no resemblance to the real outline. On his chart a series of compass bearing.are given. Nearly everyone of them is very badly wrong. Coupled with these charts of doubtful value there were navigating instruments that were actually second in unreliability to the simple methods used by the early Polynesian navigators. The latter,did make use of a water level horizon but Drake and his forbears trusted to the crudest type of dead reckoning imaginable. Very little was known about the world in those days. It must be remembered that it was believed that the world was flat. Just how Drake contrived to get there is mystery enough. How he managed to get-back is uncanny.

“I am not a publican myself.” says “See How,” “but having at different times paid for a number of shares in numerous hotels I think I can answer the question asked by ‘Here’s Spring,’ about single bottles at wholesale rates. Does it not go to prove that the publican has solved a problem that has got both the legal and medical professions beaten. It is this way. If a custonjer goes into a ‘pub’ fox’ a bottle and tenders the full retail price, he is sober and may be served. If he goes in and pays the wholesale price, as advertised. would the p’lbliChn serve him? No fear—a publican must not serve anyone who is not sober.” God wrought our souls from the Tremadoc beds And furnished them wings to fly: He sowed our spawn in, the world’s dim dawn. And I know that it shall not die. Though cities have sprung above ths graves Where the crook-boned men made war. And the ox-wain creaks o’er the burled eaves Where the mummied mammoths are. —Uangdon Smith.