New scholarship honouring Kiwi wartime hero connects Forth Valley with New Zealand students

Two young New Zealanders laid a wreath at a memorial in Cowie recently, completing a link with Scotland which began 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 a 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, an RNZAF pilot who stayed with his Spitfire as it crashed near Cowie in 1941, ensuring that it missed the centre of the village. They visited Everiss’ grave in Grangemouth before the ceremony.

As one of the St Margaret’s Primary School pupils attending the ceremony said to Paul Nugent, the headteacher, 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 the Cowie Bowling Club, was attended by the Lord Lieutenant of Stirlingshire and Falkirk, Mr 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.

Eighty-five years ago 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. Over the years, a distinguished line of Scots benefited from this experience, including Sir Graeme Catto, later President of the General Medical Council, and rugby stars Calum and Chris Cusiter. When the shipping company stopped operating, the scholars flew to New Zealand. Unusually, they have also been given guest of government status by the New Zealand Government, with an official car and driver and meeting the Governor-General and, often, the Prime Minister.

The new Everiss Scholarship, is a Scottish thanks for this longstanding New Zealand generosity to young Scots. A trust was set up, with half the funds coming from donations from former Otaki Scholars, and the remainder from the Wood Foundation and Babcock International. The beneficiaries are the winners of a leadership competition at Ōtaki College, a largely Māori 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.