CAPTAIN COOK.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIX, Issue 5228, 18 January 1928, Page 2

CAPTAIN COOK.

TWO ANNIVERSARIES THIS YEA®. HAWAIIAN CELEBRATION. - Two important anniversaries connected with Captain Cook will occur this year. The bicentenary of his birth falls on October 28, and January 20 marks the 150th anniversary of his discovery of the Hawaiian Islands in 1778. The latter event will be observed by a round of. cere* monies and gatherings at Honolulu and elsewhere in the group. The administration has appropriated £5OOO for the purpose, and a commemorative series of postage stamps is to be issued.

It has been suggested that New Zealand, which owes so much to the great -navigator, should be officially represented at the celebrations. So far the Government has said nothing about the matter, but it is possible that Professor J. B. Condliffe, director of research for the Institute of Pacific Relations, and formerly of. Canterbury College, will be asked to act.

Strictly speaking, Cook was probably not the original discoverer of the Hawaiian group. There is some reason for thinking kthat these were the islands upon which two ofi the vessels of Alvaro de Saavedra, a .Spaniard, were wrecked in 1528, and that ’ they were, visited two decades later by Juan Gaetan. The''records, however, are imperfect. Cook encountered the group upon his third and last voyage, little knowing that upon the island of Hawaii itself he was to meet his end. He was on his way northward from Tahiti, bound for the Behring Sea, in an unsuccessful attempt to discover the Northwest Passage. His stay was for a bare fortnight, but at the end of November following he returned and continued his explorations and surveys. On February 14, 1779, he was killed in an affray upon the) beach of Kealakakua Bay, on) the Island of Hawaii. The spot where he fell is now marked with a monument.