Wragge Clement

Wragge, Clement Lindley 1852 - 1922

Clement Wragge was British born and best known for his contributions to meteorology. After one period of residence in Australia he returned to Britain and founded a weather observatory on Ben Nevis. His subsequent career in Australia involved establishing further mountain top observatories. His international fame stems from being the founder of the system of giving names to tropical cyclones .

Wragge apparently had independent means and travelled widely. A book on the south seas was one output from his travels

Wragge was disappointed not to be made head of the new Commonwealth Meteorological Bureau in 1907 and subsequently moved to New Zealand, living in Birkenhead, Auckland from 1910 until his death there in 1922.

He travelled in New Zealand lecturing on weather and astronomy and was a weather forecaster of repute. He lived at No. 8 Awanui Street Birkenhead in Auckland with a Indian partner – who was apparently not his wife. They created a tropical garden there, Waiata tropical gardens where there was also a meteorological observatory. Wragge continued scientific lectures via the Wragge Institute and Museum at the same site. Wragge was also a leading spiritualist. At the time of his death he was reportedly was 'engaged upon a work of great value concerning the petroglyphs of Easter Island'.

Wragge has a Wikipedia entry.

Clement Wragge

In 1910 after he had visited the Bay of Islands he publicised his discovery there of what he thought were pre-Maori inscriptions and megaliths. The story was much reprinted in the provincial papers and there were even a couple of articles of refutation.

What did he think he had found? Here is one of the longer accounts.

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INTERESTING DISCOVERY.

AN ANCIENT CITY OR TEMPLE. Auckland, March 7.

Mr Clement L. Wragge, the well known meteorologist, who has been lecturing - and doing some exploring work in the far North, claims to have discovered in the neighbourhood of the Bay of Islands the remains of an ancient city or temple that probably dates back to the time of sun worship. He says : "The huge blocks of stone, some nearly 15 feet long, were evidently hewn by prehistoric man. Some have cups or holes scooped out on the face, which are evidently written records of immense antiquity, and others are marked with long and sort strokes, one being an ansated (looped) cross." Mr Wragge has taken a series of photographs of this weird place, which is probably unique in New Zealand, probably, he says, dating back to the megalithic track of ancient man, when he was forced by a change of climate to migrate from the northern to the southern hemisphere.

Later. In a further interview to-day Mr Wragge said his discovery linked New Zealand to the dim and distant past, long before the Maori, long before the Aryan, to the days of prehistoric man, when scientists presumed man was a giant, perhaps eight feet high. These rocks go back probably five hundred thousand years, and are most: likely a great deal older. "I consider they refer to sun worship,"' he said. "They are probably, most probably, connected with that continent that once doubtless existed in the western Pacific called Lemuria, and in order to emphasise my discovery, I have provisionally called the spot Lemurion. They date back most likely to the time when, in the vast ages past, owing to the secular shifts in the inclination of the earth's axis, prehistoric man was forced to migrate from the higher latitude of the northern, hemisphere, following a track from the north-west to the southern hemisphere, which had then in its turn become more genial." Mr Wragge explained the phenomenon which is referred to. It showed that once one grasped the theory of axial shift, the history of the earth, was an open book. It explained the coal measures found by Lieutenant Shackleton at the South Polar regions; the" evidences of a former tropical vegetation found by Commander Peary at the North Pole. Countless ages ago the axis of the earth was horizontal, the North Pole pointing direct to the sun, and gradually the axis has shifted till it reached its present cant and it was during this change that the climates changed, and the race that inhabited the northern hemisphere, a megalithic race, travelled down to the southern hemisphere, the climate of which was becoming milder, just, in proportion as the north was growing colder. This migration had left many traces in its track, and it was considered that they culminate in the wonderful monoliths of Easter Island, which had been a source of speculation for years past. "These rocks which I have discovered are probably connected with the monoliths of Easter Island. I prefer not to say any more just at present as to the locality in which they are, except that I had to get a special sailing boat to reach it. It is absurd to tell me that they are the result of accident, or that they were geologically formed as we see them there; They are to my mind undoubted marks, showing that they are the work of man, and in some of them you can plainly see the chisel marks."

A bit later he added:

"The marks have to my mind been made by a people allied to those who built the wonderful statues and carved the marvellous inscriptions on Easter Island. The latter have nothing to do with the Polynesians, but are allied to those found in Central and South America, and date from long years ago. In fact, they refer to the Atlantean race which intermingled with the still more ancient race of Lemurians. These, I am convinced, inhabited a land which once existed where is now the Pacific Ocean. Easter Island, Pitcairn, Tahiti, Raiatea, Fiji, New Caledonia and Rarotonga are the main or foundation rocks, and New Zealand south-east Australia are undoubtedly the remains sticking up of that old Lemurian land. "I have information," he added, "that in the north of New Zealand (I do not care to disclose the exact locality at present) there are to be found in certain caves human bones of enormous size, far larger than those of human beings of to-day. If this is true, they are the bones of the old Lemurdan — Atlantean race. I intend to have a look for them."

Among Wragge's critics were Augustus Hamilton, [MacKay Alexander|Alexander MacKay] and Percy Smith.

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Apart from that story there was a lot by Mr Wragge on science and meteorology in Papers Past.

Clearly his archaeology was no better than his understanding of the physics as applicable to planetary bodies, which was pretty well known by 1910.

Wragge's linking of Easter Island to Lemuria preceeded the more common and later linking of the island to the Lost Continent of Mu.

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References