MRS WALKER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 September 1940, Page 6

MRS WALKER

CARE OF CAPTAIN COOK WHEN A BOY. Who was Mrs Walker. We know very little about her. She was the wife of a well-to-do yeoman farmer in North Yorkshire, and she was born in 1700 and died in 1789. There is hardly anything more to tell, except that sometimes she would take a little boy of six or seven on her knee and teach him his letters from the family Bible.

The child was not her son. He was the son of a poor man who lived at Marton in Cleveland, but small as he was, he worked hard for Mr Walker till he went to live at Great Ayton. There, proud that he knew his letters and could read better than most boys of his age, he was eager to go to school. He learnt to read and write and figure. He went on to Whitby where he found a ship. After years of fine service he became a captain, making three memorable voyages to southern seas. Today we acknowledge him as the greatest of all our navigators. He put Australia and New Zealand on the map. His fame rang round the world. He was Captain James Cook. There came a time when everyone was reading Captain Cook’s Journal, one of the most famous books of the century, and we would give much to know if Mrs Walker read it, too. She was living long after the Journal was published, and we wonder if ever she read it, and if ever she said to a neighbour, "You know. I can’t help thinking that if 1 hadn’t taken James on my knee when he was nowhere as high as the table,<ftpd if I hadn’t tadght him his letters, he might never have learnt to read, and never dreamed of learning to write, and then we should never have had this Journal.” Surely Mrs Walker helped to give the British Empire its southern continent.