Laying of wreath in honour of fallen pilot
Two young New Zealanders laid a wreath at a memorial in Cowie last week, completing a link with Scotland begun in 1937.
The sinking of a New Zealand merchant ship in 1917 and the death of a young New Zealand pilot in a Spitfire crash in Stirlingshire form the unusual background to the unique student exchange.
The visitors, Krisha Modi and Jess Thomsen, are the first Everiss Scholars, beneficiaries of a programme honouring the memory of Pilot Officer Carlyle Everiss. The RNZAF pilot stayed with his Spitfire as it crashed near Cowie, in 1941, ensuring that it missed the centre of the village. The brave young pilot, officer 41318, was only 26 and was on a familiarisation sortie on October 2.
Locals said he opted not to bail out of his plummeting aircraft as it headed towards the Stirlingshire village and instead stayed at the controls to steer it away from the rows of houses in the aeroplane’s path paying for his choice with his life.
Former British High Commissioner in New Zealand, Geordie Fergusson, wrote to local councillors for the Cowie area in 2020 seeking their support for the Everiss Scholars to visit the village to pay tribute at a memorial to the young pilot, which was erected in 2005 thanks to the fundraising efforts of members of Cowie Bowling Club and a donation from local MDF manufacturer Norbord.
Mr Fergusson said: “As one of the St Margaret’s Primary School pupils attending the ceremony said to headteacher Paul Nugent on the way to the event, some of the pupils might not be alive if P.O. Everiss had bailed out and saved himself.”
The ceremony, at the Carlyle Everiss Memorial at Cowie Bowling Club, was attended by the Lord Lieutenant of Stirlingshire, Alan Simpson; the New Zealand Air Adviser in London, Wing Commander Steve Thornley RNZAF; Flight Lieutenant Conner Adlington RAF, representing the Air Officer Scotland, the heads and representatives of Robert Gordon’s College in Aberdeen; St Margaret’s Primary School in Cowie and Pat Maguire, president of the bowling club, where the memorial was erected in 2007. The event also linked to 85 years ago when the New Zealand Shipping Company, whose lightly armed cargo ship SS Otaki had been sunk with the loss of the Captain and three others, set up the Otaki Scholarship in memory of Captain Archibald Bisset Smith VC.
The company gave each year’s dux of Bisset Smith’s old school, Robert Gordon’s College, a trip to New Zealand, where the scholar would tour the country, visiting leading schools and staying with local families. When the shipping company stopped operating, the scholars flew to New Zealand.
The new Everiss Scholarship is a Scottish thanks for this longstanding New Zealand generosity to young Scots.
Mr Fergusson explained: “The beneficiaries are the winners of a leadership competition at Otaki College, a largely Maori secondary school north of Wellington, in the town which the SS Otaki was named after.
“After several delays because of Covid travel restrictions, the first two scholars, Krisha Modi and Jess Thomsen, are visiting Scotland this month.
“Before the Cowie ceremony, they laid a wreath at Carlyle Everiss’ grave in Grangemouth. Besides a period of attachment at Robert Gordon’s College, they are touring Scotland. In Edinburgh, they were received by Princess Anne, the Princess Royal, in Holyroodhouse, and among other visits and calls on VIPS such as Cabinet Secretary Angus Robertson, spent a morning at the Parliament as a guest of the Presiding Officer.”