PAGEANT OF THE SEA

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 977, 21 May 1930, Page 2

PAGEANT OF THE SEA

BRITAIN’S £IOO.OOO SHOW Rome details of the British Government’s most important exhibit since Wembley the British Section of the International Maritime and Colonial Exhibition at Antwerp—are announced by the Department of Overseas Trade. The exhibition, which is held on the outskirts of Antwerp, opened on April 26 and lasts until October. A “British Week’’ is to be held from July 17 to 23 which will include the Belgian National Fete Day—the hundredth anniversary of the treaty giving Belgium her independence in defence of which Britain entered the wax* in 1914. The British Government is spending £IOO.OOO on its exhibit, which will be largely maritime. The building, designed by Sir Edward Lutyens, with interior decorations by Professor Richardson, stands on the bastions of one of the old forts and it commands a view of tne whole of the rest of the exhibition which is roughly the size of the British Empire Exhibition, Wembley. • Some 20 countries are taking part in the exhibition each with its own pavilion and they include Canada, Italy, France, Holland. Norway, Sweden, Portugal, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Brazil, Chili, Columbia, Peru, Uruguay, Ecuador. Costa Rica and Japan. VARIETY OF EXHIBITS The British section Eociutfes exhibits dealing with the sea. the air, the Empire, scientific research and tropical health—all of them of a spectacular kind. In the centre court there is installed a huge electric working model showing British shipping routes throughout the world. This map, with the geographical features shown in relief and with real water for the oceans, is about half the size of a lawn tennis court and has taken over six months to construct at a cost of about £2,000. It is designed on the lines of the huge illuminated map shown in the British Government Pavilion at Wembley and its object is to convey some idea of Britain's importance as a commercial maritime nation.

At the suggestion of the Prince of Wales, who is patron of the special com - mittee for the British Section, a “Pageant of the Red Ensign” is being organised by the master mariners in co-operation with leading shipping companies. AERONAUTICS DISPLAY A procession of scale-model ships, beginning with a Roman galley and ending with the present-day Nelson, is being shown and the Air Alinistry is cooperating with the Department of Overseas Trade in arranging an exhibit, showing the progress made in British aeronautics, in the form of scale-model airplanes from the earliest times to the present date, each model being shown as in flight. The Department of Scientific and Industrial Research is to show an experimental Cank in which models of projected ships are tested and a special committee, presided over by Sir William Beveridge, is arranging a striking and novel exhibit to illustrate the part played by British scientists in fighting tropical diseases. The East African Dependencies, the Gold Coast and Nigeria and Malaya are exhibitors in the Colonial Court, and there is a separate composite exhibit for all the Dominions and Colonies in the Empire Court. Among individual exhibitors in the i Bi-itish Section are the Port of London i Authority, the Mersey Docks and HarJ hour Board, the Tyne Improvement Comi missioners, Goole Harbour, Air and Cal- , der Navigation Company, Harland and Wolff’s, the Travel Association of Great | Britain, the London and North Eastern Railways, the London Midland and Scottish Railway, the Southern Railway, and the shipping companies include the White Star, Cunard, Union Castle, Furness Withy, Clan and Elder Dempster lines. The Department of Overseas Trade has arranged a striking series of dioramas and “cycloramas” to illustrate various phases of British history and particuj larly maritime and colonial development, - the artists engaged on this work includ--1 ing Professor Anning Bell, Air. Spencer i Pryse, Mr. Rutherston, Mr. George Sher- ; ringham* Mr. T. Robinson, Mr. Johnson i and Mr. Warren Wilson. HISTORICAL —CYC LOR AM A*’ j In one alcove oft the Centre Court there will he seen a view of the Thames lin Elizabethan times from the house of Sir Thomas Gresham, founder of the original Royal Exchange, which was a I copy of the exchange at Antwerp. In another alcove is reconstructed the i view from the stern sheets of Nelson's Victory- at Trafalgar when the action ; was about to begin. The landing at Botany Bay. Australia from Cook s Endeavour is a third oycloi rama and others are of Drake s Golden

[-find and the Pilgrim Fathers* Mayflover, Lhese views being of the ships themseiw*. The dioramas illustrating Empire hi*rory include the Plj'mouth Bretbres sighting America from the deck of 11*?flower, Cook’s East India man. Com caving Bristol, and Davis renrehiag hr he North-West passage, while otbm 'how present-day scenes in various parti • f tli* Empire, including Table Bay, Sr*. ti*>y Harbour, Vancouver, the Pool (P<r .f London), motor-boat racing in the Solent and yacht racing nt Cowes. Another series of dioramas entitle ■•The Origin of the Race’’ will rtwr j graphically all the contributory strata* in the British "make-up," beginafc: ivith Neolithic man digging out flints aac rontinulngr through the bronze age to 1b Roman, Saxon, Viking, Norman si* finally the Briton as today.