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Cook, Captain James--A collection of medals and other memorabilia, comprising:
Description
- Cook, Captain James--A collection of medals and other memorabilia, comprising:
silver dessert-spoon (length 203mm.), old English pattern, hallmarked London 1750, maker’s initials "EJ", the handle engraved with the initials "JC", a twentieth-century paper label with the spoon states: "Spoon used by Capt. James Cook, F.R.S. on voyages round the world. Passed down by descendants of Margaret Cook, his sister"
oil painting on board of captain cook's coat-of-arms (297 x 235mm.)
Four photographs, comprising 2 of James Cook Rimer; one of Maria Rimer and one of J.C. Rimer and family, all early twentieth century
Engraving (paper 434 x 312mm., image 294 x 255mm.) of Captain Cook by Sherwin after Nathaniel Dance, slightly waterstained
Books and pamphlets, including: Besant, Walter. Captain Cook. London, 1894, 8vo, frontispiece, original cloth, waterstained--Catalogue of the Rimer Collection of Antiques at Kelvin Grove, Newlands, C.P. Wednesday July 8th, 1925. Cape Town, 1925, 8vo, loose page of illustrations, original printed wrappers--Golden Memories of Barberton. Barberton (South Africa), 1965, 8vo, original wrappers
together with other related family history
Provenance
Catalogue Note
The "Resolution and Adventure" medal, named after the two ships of Cook’s second voyage (1772-1775), was one of the medals struck by Matthew Boulton in 1772 by order of the botanist Sir Joseph Banks. Banks had accompanied Cook on his first voyage aboard the Endeavour in 1768-1771 and had planned to be on the second voyage, though in fact he did not sail. One side of the medal depicts the head of King George III, and on the other side are the ships Resolution and Adventure. Two thousand medals were struck in bronze, and these were taken over by the Admiralty and given to Cook to distribute to the inhabitants of newly discovered lands. In addition, two 24-carat gold and just over 100 silver medals were struck; it appears that all these remained in England, for distribution by their owner, Sir Joseph Banks.
Early in the Journal of his second voyage Cook wrote: "their Lordships [of the Admiralty] also caus’d to be struck a number of Medals, on the one side the Kings head and on the other the two Sloops & the time they were at first intended to sail from England, these Medals are to be distributed to the Natives of, and left upon New Discovered countries as testimonies of being the first discoveries." (July 1772)
Cook’s Journal of this voyage makes at least seventeen references to the distribution of the medals to Pacific islanders. Almost invariably other gifts, such as nails, pieces of cloth, strings of beads, a looking-glass, a kettle or a saw, accompanied the medals. They were objects of barter, for in return Cook and his men were rewarded with gifts of food or some other favour; in one instance the islanders agreed to haul a launch over some breakers to the safety of a sandy beach.
At the time the bronze medals may not have been considered of any great intrinsic worth - Messrs Boulton and Fothergill of Birmingham charged fifty pounds for making the die and striking the 2,000 medals (a unit cost of sixpence) – but their significance was of another kind; for with the king’s head stamped on one side they represented the authority of England. In a sense they can be seen as miniature objects of colonisation.
The medal owned by Rimer is in very good condition and is unusual in that the bronze is gilded. It has a mount, consisting of a metal loop attached to a pin screwed to the edge of the medal, above the King’s head on the obverse side. There is reason to believe that this was Cook’s own medal: a book from Rimer’s library - Walter Besant’s biography Captain Cook (Macmillan & Co, 1894 edition) has an interesting annotation: on page 93, where Besant refers to the "Resolution and Adventure" medals, Rimer has written in pencil in the margin the words "Cook’s in safe". This is in fact the only annotation in the book and it indicates that to Rimer’s knowledge the medal in the safe at his home, Kelvin Grove, had been the property of Captain Cook.
The Captain Cook memorial medals, of which Rimer owned one in silver and one in bronze, were struck in 1784 for the Royal Society. Cook had been elected a Fellow of the Society in 1775. A total of 802 medals were produced: thirteen in gold, 289 in silver and 500 in bronze. They were distributed to subscribers to the fund that had been raised for the medal’s production. The obverse of the medal depicts Cook, and the reverse the figure of Fortune, standing with her left arm leaning on a column, and in her right hand a ship’s rudder resting on a globe. The design is by Lewis Pingo.
Rimer’s copy of the Cook coat-of-arms is painted in oils. The arms were granted to the family in September 1785. At the centre is an azure shield bearing two golden "polar stars" and, between them, a map of the Pacific hemisphere on which is superimposed in red Cook’s tracks, ending at Hawaii, where he was murdered. Unusually, there are two mottoes to the coat-of-arms: above is written Circa orbem and, below, Nil intentatem reliquit.
Rimer’s engraving of Cook after Nathaniel Dance's oil-painting is dated August 1781. Cook’s widow Elizabeth (who died in 1835) declared that the portrait of her husband was a perfect likeness, except that it made him appear too severe. It was painted in 1776, and depicts him sitting at a table on which is a chart. He wears his captain’s uniform, and a wig; beside him rests his hat.
The silver spoon shows little sign of use, considering its age, and its existence is mentioned in a book (Some Lowveld Pioneers - published in Pretoria by the Lowveld 1820 Settlers Society, circa 1960) recording J.C. Rimer’s role as a mining pioneer. The book also refers to his connection with Cook and mentions the existence of two other treasured family heirlooms, a silver milk jug and a coat-of-arms.
James Cook Rimer (1848-1928) was the great-great-grandson of Captain Cook’s sister Margaret (Mrs James Fleck, 1742-1804). His great-grandmother was the Flecks’ second daughter Grace (1770-1855), who married John Carter (1766-1848) in the North Yorkshire village of Marske. The Carters’ daughter Grace was born in 1794, and she married Richard Pickering at Kirkleatham, Yorkshire. The Pickerings’ daughter was also named Grace. In 1842 Grace Pickering married James Rimer in the London borough of Marylebone. The Rimers’ elder son, born in the London borough of Kensington in 1848, was christened James Cook. As a young man James Cook Rimer emigrated to South Africa in 1868. He had been attracted by stories of the discovery of diamonds along the banks of the Vaal River, and he was to make a profitable career as a diamond-dealer here and subsequently in Kimberley. He was joined by his younger brother Richard, and later the brothers moved to the Barberton gold-fields of the eastern Transvaal, where they were successful prospectors. J.C. Rimer became Chairman of the Barberton General Mining Company. In about 1887 he moved to the newly discovered gold-fields of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg), where he floated the Jumpers Deep mine, which was to become one of the leading mines on the Rand. By the mid-1890s he was in a position to retire to Cape Town. Here in 1896 he bought a large early 19th century house, Kelvin Grove, in the suburb of Newlands. In 1925 this house and the substantial grounds surrounding it were sold to a sports and social club that is still in existence. Rimer inherited from his mother a number of family heirlooms associated with Captain Cook – and the fact that he bore the names James Cook probably made him the natural heir to these treasured memorabilia. They included an initialled silver spoon and silver milk-jug believed by the family to have accompanied Cook round the world, a painting of the coat-of-arms posthumously bestowed on Cook by King George III, an engraving of Cook, after the oil-painting by Nathaniel Dance, a "Resolution and Adventure" medal and two Captain Cook memorial medals. Of these heirlooms, only the whereabouts of the silver jug is unknown.
J.C. Rimer married Maria Zeederberg in 1888. The elder of their two sons, also named James Cook, joined the Royal Flying Corps in the First World War and was killed in action in 1917. Maria Rimer died five years later. An auction catalogue of the Rimer collection of antiques and paintings, dated July 1925, signals the end of an era; among the auction lots are various editions of Cook’s Travels and an engraving entitled "The death of Captain Cook". Following the sale of his house and the bulk of its contents, Rimer left South Africa to go travelling. However, it was in Cape Town that he died in 1928. The Cook memorabilia were inherited by his younger son Frederick Rimer (died 1980), and then by Frederick’s son Richard Anthony Cook Rimer (1938-1995).