SAVED FOR BRITAIN

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 445, 1 February 1933, Page 3

SAVED FOR BRITAIN

NELSON'S TELESCOPE SPIRITED COMPETITION BY SOUVENIR-HUNTERS AT AUCTION. PATRIOTIC SCOTSMAN. London, Saturday. Nelson's spy-glass, which he used at Trafalgar, has been saved for Britain by a Scotsman, after the fiercest of fights at Christie's. It realised 1450 guineas. Recently the press referred to the Nelson relics, stating that an Amcrican souvenir-hunter was prepared tc bid £300 for the telescope 'alone. Mr. P. M'alcolmn btewart, chairmar of the Associated Portland Cement Manufacturers, read this. His Scottish blood tingled with indignation "It is unthinkable," he said, "that we should allow these relics to leave the country." Mr. Stewart rang up Captain Jacl Spink, of the famous London dealers . "America wants to buy Nelson's telescope," he said. "Buy it for me." "At what limit?"

"Any limit. I must have it for the Royal Naval College. What's America got to do with Nelson?" Then the thought that anything at •all should go overseas was too much for Mr. Stewart. . "Buy .the lot," he said. What a fight it was yesterday! There casually entered the crowded auction room two men. One was the tall, white-haired Scotsman. The other was a well-knit young man in a bowler hat. His interest in Nelson relics was apparently the vaguest. Two presentation watches were the first of the coveted souvenirs. One had been presented to Nelson on his marriage. "Five guineas," said somebody. "Ten." Then the souvenir-hunters ran riot. The price reached a hundred in no time. There was a tall, handsome man with a beard who stood up and wasn't going to have his bid missed. He represented the famous Sheuer of New York. At 155 guineas there was a halt. "One fifty-five," said the auctioneer; then: "One sixty." > Who had suddenly come into the fray ? I- could see nobody lilcely where the auctioneer looked, except a well-knit young man. Captain Jack had taken a hand. The others flew at him. They were not going to ue robbed of the spoil like that. But Captain Jack won. "Three seventy," gasped a thiclc-set man. The Crowning Treasure. Captain Jack unseen except bj^ the auctioneer, elevated his nose the sixteenth of an inch. "Three eighty," said the auctioneer. And they let him have it. , Then appeared the crowning trea- | sure — the spy-glass. A reporter held I it proudly aloft". A deep basg voice like the crack of I doom, a voice that intended to begin it and end it in one overpowerng bid, I growled "Three hundred guineas." I This was the great frightening price which had heen expected from across the water. But 300 guineas was laughable. I They wanted this telescope all round 1 the room. America grew almost frantic about it. It looked as though there were two groups of representatibes hoping to get it for the States. It reached 800 guineas with a series of bounds. They everybody took breath and went at it again. At a thousand guineas one or two dropped out; but at 1200 they began to come in again. Captain Jack Spink spoke never a word. Again and again he just tipped that aristocratie nose a sixteenth. And at 1480 he tipped it for the last time. He had beaten the lot. Mr. Stewart is a generous victor. The relics are to be presented to the Royal National Martitime Museum, which is in preparation at Greenwich.