Paddington’s pioneering Captain Cook Hotel has come under fire by some seemingly spoiling for a fight, falsely accused of bowing to the movement challenging Australia’s formative years through the tweaking of its common name.
The old pub was taken on by Robby Moroney in February, after some troubled times and a period in dry-dock.
Built in 1914 on a bustling corner of historic boulevard Flinders Street, the location struggles for pedestrian traffic. This evolution previously claimed nearby neighbour the Flinders Inn.
Determined to shake up the offering and find success in a pub where others had not, Maroney carried out significant changes inside and out – including dropping the (assumed) Cook to refer to the pub simply as ‘The Captain’.
Following a brief reopening in March, The Captain closed for the pandemic along with every other.
During this time, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement again rose to the forefront of American news as protesters, armed with picket signs and face masks, took to the streets to rally against the callous killing of George Floyd.
In Australia a sympathetic movement arose in unison, demanding greater attention to the plight of black deaths in custody here, and greater recognition for the ancestry of first Australians.
Eager to jump on the click-bait bandwagon, some exuberant if not well-informed publications latched onto The Captain’s new moniker, accusing it of being another example of the so-called “cancel culture”.
Despite Moroney’s assertation the decision was nothing to do with politics, alarmist articles cited “concerned academics and experts” bemoaning how the push to deny Australia’s beginnings is being forced onto mainstream Aussies.
The Telegraph ran a poll encouraging outraged readers to vote on whether The Captain should return to its traditional name, claiming over 90 per cent of a modest group of the kind of people that do Facebook surveys agreeing “Cook” should be reinstated and triggering a veritable frenzy of threatened boycotts.
But a major flaw in the debate is that the name change was announced back in March – at least two months before George Floyd was killed in late May.
Furthermore, the full name – The Captain Cook Hotel – is still on the hotel’s credit card machines and receipts, the licence above the door, the name embossed on the building, and of course represented by the heritage-listed sculptural bust of Cook atop the parapet.
“It’s still everywhere,” says a slightly dumbfounded Moroney. “The key fact is that we rebranded well before this movement started.
“It’s very Australian to abbreviate. We’ve done a very Australian thing and abbreviated to The Captain.
“We were completely sure everyone would make the direct association.”
While the likes of The Oaks, The Morrison and The Newport remain unchallenged, The Captain has seen a sizeable posse of haters rage against its supposed motives in name abridgement – blaming supposed “woke folk” for ignorance that is theirs alone.
