Now that’s a grand myth
QUESTION Is it true that a horse survived a shipwreck and went on to win the Grand National? LEGEND has it that the new Zealand horse Moifaa survived a shipwreck and later won the 1904 grand national — but this was not the case.
Moifaa was famed for his prodigious size (standing 17 hands) and fine jumping, winning many races on home turf.
His owner, Spencer gollan, attended Cambridge University and often sent horses to the area to be trained. He was a noted sportsman, an expert rower and twice new Zealand’s amateur golf champion.
Moifaa seemed the perfect horse for an attempt on the world’s most famous steeplechase, so in January 1901, he and three other horses — Toriki, Opea and norton — were sent by steamship to England. The ship arrived safely.
Two years earlier, in 1899, the steamship SS Thermopylae left Melbourne for England carrying racehorses Chesney and Kiora. She was shipwrecked in thick fog at green Point, near Table Bay, Cape Town, South africa on September 11, 1899. The crew abandoned ship and on reaching dry land the trainer of Chesney and Kiora informed the police.
an officer swam out to the ship and managed to free Chesney, but couldn’t find Kiora in the half-submerged vessel. Incredibly, the horse had broken free and had swum to Mouille Point, where she was rescued ten hours later. She subsequently continued her journey to England.
In 1904, Kiora and Moifaa competed in the grand national and the particularly large fences suited Moifaa. at 25/1 and ridden by arthur Birch, he won by eight lengths. Kiora at 40/1, fell at the fifth fence.
Moifaa’s victory was greeted with jubilation in new Zealand, and the claim that this was the horse that had survived the shipwreck became the stuff of legend.
The following year, Moifaa entered the grand national in the royal colours as hot favourite, but fell at Becher’s Brook on the second lap. He was then given to the King’s friend Colonel Brocklehurst, who rode him on hunts in Leicestershire.
Eric Searle, Morecambe, Lancs. QUESTION In my younger days, a half-crown coin (2s/6d) was commonly known as ‘half a dollar’, meaning there were $4 to the £1. Was the dollar’s value ever so low or the pound so high? THE gold Standard fixed the value of one country’s currency to that of others, based on a fixed price for gold. The U.S. fixed that price at $20.67 per ounce and Britain at £3/17s/10½d per ounce, so the dollar-topound exchange rate was $4.867 per £1.
When war broke out in 1914, restrictions were placed on gold exports, and Britain reverted to inconvertible paper money. The result was an open exchange in currency, which saw the value of the pound fall to about $3.50. In 1925, Britain re-adopted the gold Standard and the rate was once again fixed at $4.87.
But this exaggerated the true value of the pound and put the UK’s balance of payments under stress, creating a run on sterling, so the UK left the gold Standard again in September 1931. The floating pound fell quickly to around $3.69.
Over the following year or so, confidence in sterling recovered and when the U.S. economy faltered during the great depression, it devalued the dollar in 1933, and the pound shot up to its highest-ever value: £1 bought just over $5 in 1934.
The pound’s value continued to hover around $5 until the impending war in 1939 saw it fall within a month from $4.61 to $3.99. In March 1940, the government pegged the value at $4.03, where it stayed for several years, and the half-crown became known as the half-dollar. Brian Muir, Carlisle. QUESTION Which dystopian vision of the future is proving to be more accurate: George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World? FUrTHEr to the earlier answer, in Brave new World revisited, Huxley compared his pre-war concerns about overpopulation, over-organisation, propaganda, advertising, brainwashing and moral decadence with life in 1958 and also with Orwell’s nineteen Eighty-Four.
Even though he omitted developments in warfare technology, his prophecies for our overcrowded world were not optimistic.
Orwell’s prophecy had two telling aspects. His newspeak for the agencies controlling society is being fulfilled, at least symbolically, in the language of ‘political correctness’, and his Prolefeed in shallow and pornographic entertainment for the masses.
David Ashton, Sheringham, Norfolk. Is there a question to which you have always wanted to know the answer? Or do you know the answer to a question raised here? Send your questions and answers to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspondents, Scottish Daily Mail, 20 Waterloo Street, Glasgow G2 6DB. You can also fax them to 0141 331 4739 or you can e-mail them to charles. legge@dailymail.co.uk. A selection will be published but we are not able to enter into individual correspondence.