Gyalzen Kazi was a climbing sherpa, interpreter, and sardar on the 1921, 1922, and 1924 Mount Everest Expeditions. George Mallory mentioned him by name.
Climbing sherpa on 1921 Mount Everest Expedition with George Mallory, mentioned by name.
Friend and Biographer of George Mallory.
Born on 29 April 1886 in Hampstead, London, the sixth of the seven children of William Arthur Pye, wine merchant, and his wife, Margaret Thompson. Educated at Tonbridge School and Trinity College, Cambridge and was placed in the first class of the mechanical sciences tripos in 1908. In 1909 C. F. Jenkin invited Pye to join him in Oxford and he was elected a fellow of New College in 1911.
During the First World War, Pye taught at Winchester College (1915–16), then worked as an experimental officer in the Royal Flying Corps on design and testing, and learned to fly as a pilot. In 1919 he returned to Cambridge as a lecturer, and became a fellow of Trinity where he met Henry Tizard and Harry Ricardo. This association led to important pioneer work on the internal combustion engine.
In 1926 Pye married Virginia Frances, daughter of Charles Moore Kennedy, barrister. They had two sons and a daughter.
Pye's The Internal Combustion Engine (2 vols., 1931–4) was published in the Oxford Engineering Science series, of which he became an editor. In 1925 he was appointed deputy director of scientific research at the Air Ministry. He succeeded him as director in 1937 and in the same year was appointed CB and elected FRS. During the early war years he became closely associated with the development of the new jet propulsion aircraft engine which he did much to encourage.
In 1943 Pye accepted the provostship of University College, London. Serious illness forced him to resign in 1951. He was knighted in 1952 and in the same year became president of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.
Pye was an enthusiastic climber and in 1922 was elected to the Alpine Club of which he became vice-president in 1956. He was a friend of George Mallory's and on his and Andrew Irvine's loss he wrote: Those two black specks, scarcely visible among the vast eccentricities of nature, but moving up slowly, intelligently, into regions of unknown striving, remain for us a symbol of the invincibility of the human spirit.
Percy Farrar was born in 1857 in Chatteris, Cambridgeshire. He was President of the Alpine Club between 1917-1919 and was an original member of the Mount Everest Committee (a joint body composed of Alpine Club and Royal Geographical Society members that was set up to co-ordinate the reconnaissance of the approaches to and possible routes up Mount Everest in 1921). He had been party to the discussions that led to this body's formation and proposing the mountain as an achievable mountaineering objective Farrar's role was, amongst other things, to raise funds for the expedition. He was the one who successfully proposed that George Mallory, to whom he had been introduced at one of Geoffrey Winthrop Young's parties at Pen-y-Pass in 1909, should go on the initial 1921 expedition.
Member of the 1921 and 1922 British Mount Everest Expeditions.
Henry Morshead was born in 1882 and brought up near Tavistock. He was the eldest son of Reginald Morshead, a banker, and Ella Mary Morshead. He was educated at Winchester College. In 1901 (at the second attempt) he passed the exams to enter the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, to become an officer in the Royal Engineers. At the Chatham Royal School of Military Engineering he had such a distinguished record that in 1904 he was posted to the Indian Army in the Royal Engineers' Military Works Services at Agra.
In 1906 he joined the Survey of India where, apart from his service in the First World War, he remained with the Survey until his death. He became knowledgeable in the history of Himalayan exploration, particularly in Tibet and distinguished himself on several arduous winter Himalayan expeditions.
In 1920 he accompanied Alexander Kellas in an attempt to climb the 25,447 ft (7,756 m) Kamet.
On the 1921 British reconnaissance expedition, Morshead led the Survey of India team which mapped 12,000 square miles (31,000 km2) of entirely unexplored country. During this expedition he climbed Kama Changri at 21,300 ft (6,500 m) and with George Mallory was the first to establish the camp on the 22,350 ft (6,810 m) Lhakpa La.
In the 1922 expedition, Morshead was a member of the Everest climbing party itself but because he had only been allowed leave at the last minute his expedition clothing had to be bought at Darjeeling bazaar and it was inadequate. On 20 May 1922 with Mallory, Howard Somervell and Teddy Norton, Morshead was in the first assault team, which attempted reaching the summit without oxygen. As the party left the North Col to head up towards the north east ridge, Norton's rucksack fell down to the glacier and this reduced the overnight clothing for camp V at 25,000 ft (7,600 m). The camp was at a higher altitude that anyone had ever been before. The next morning another rucksack was let slip but Morshead climbed down 100 ft (30 m) to recover it. However, on resuming the climb Morshead was almost immediately unable to continue and so went down to camp V while the other three continued. The team reached 26,985 ft (8,225 m) before turning back.
They joined Morshead at camp V who by then was very cold and all four immediately went down to camp IV on the North Col. On the way Morshead slipped and dragged two other men down the couloir. Mallory managed to stop the fall and saved everyone's lives. They reached camp at 23:30 but a logistical error had meant that the stove and fuel had been taken to a lower camp so there was no liquid water and no edible food. After surviving the night on the Col they descended to the glacier the next day but by then Somervell thought that Morshead was "not far from death". Norton, the expedition leader, wrote of him, "he kept going doggedly without complaint and in spite of a bad fall on an ice slope, knowing that the safety of the whole party depended on his determination to 'stay the course'". Morshead had severe frostbite to his hands and a foot and later three finger joints had to be amputated. However, at the time he hid the pain of his injuries from his colleagues.
For the 1924 Everest expedition Morshead was not considered able to participate as a climber because of his injuries but he was offered the role of base camp and transport officer. He had to turn this down because his employers would not give permission, even for unpaid leave. However, in the 1924 Olympic Games medals were awarded for mountaineering and Morshead received a special medal awarded to the climbers on the 1922 expedition.
In February 1931 Morshead stayed in Burma while the rest of the family returned to England for reasons of schooling. It was a time of unrest. A rebellion had started in Burma, against British rule, and Thakin rebels were in the vicinity of Maymyo. A colleague of Morshead had been shot at by a disaffected Survey employee who had been convicted of attempted murder. On 17 May 1931 Morshead set off riding by himself and later that day his riderless pony was discovered back in Maymyo. After extensive searching his body was found next day in the jungle nearby. He had been shot in the chest at point blank range. Two people were arrested, an ex-Gurkha who had been out shooting at the time, and the man whose gun he had been using. There was no apparent motive and no charges were ever brought because both men seemed to have alibis.
Dr Alexander Heron was a member of the 1921 British Mount Everest Expedition.
Alexander Heron was a Scottish geologist who became Director of the Geological Survey of India. He participated in the 1921 British Mount Everest reconnaissance expedition following which he produced a geological map of the Everest region of Tibet.
1922 expedition - The Survey of India nominated Heron to accompany the 1922 expedition as geologist even though the Tibetan authorities had refused permission [they had accused the 1921 party of mining precious stones and disturbing Demons]. Frederick Bailey was Britain's political advisor for Tibet and he continued with his predecessor's decision not to allow geologists. So, even though Heron joined the party at Kalimpong hoping for a last-minute reprieve, the Foreign Office in London, not wanting to cause diplomatic difficulty, instructed Charles Bruce, the leader of the expedition, not to allow Heron to participate and he had to return to Darjeeling. Despite all this Heron's discoveries were to be the foundation for the unofficial later work of Noel Odell on the 1924 expedition and Lawrence Wager on the 1933 expedition.
Dr Alexander 'Sandy' Wollaston was the Medical Officer and Naturalist of the 1921 British Mount Everest Expedition. He was killed by a student in Cambridge in 1930.
Sandy Wollaston was an English medical doctor, ornithologist, botanist, climber and explorer and part of the 1921 Expedition to Everest. After qualifying as a surgeon in 1903, Wollaston decided to spend his life on exploration and natural history, travelling extensively; he wrote books about his travels and work, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 1907. He took up an offer from John Maynard Keynes to be a tutor at Cambridge. He was shot dead by Douglas Potts, a deranged undergraduate student, in Cambridge in 1930.
Born on 21 July 1865 in Edinburgh, the fourth son of William Raeburn, a brewer, and his wife, Jessie, née Ramsay. In 1896 Raeburn joined the Scottish Mountaineering Club, which had been founded in 1889, and within a few years he became its leading climber, recording many classic routes throughout Scotland. He climbed further afield too including the first British guideless ascent of the Zmutt ridge of the Matterhorn in 1906, as well as first ascents in Norway and the Caucasus. In 1904 he joined the Alpine Club (London).
Raeburn was vice-president of the Scottish Mountaineering Club from 1909 to 1911, but later turned down the presidency.
1921 he was appointed lead climber on the the First Everest expedition. By the time the expedition reached Tibet, dysentery had broken out. One member of the party, Alexander Mitchell Kellas, died, and Raeburn himself had to be carried down and spent two months in hospital. Against common sense he returned to the expedition, but he was exhausted and never really recovered. Declining health eventually led to his death five years later. He died, unmarried, at Craig House, Edinburgh, on 21 December 1926.
Brigadier Sir Edward Oliver Wheeler was a Canadian surveyor, mountain climber and soldier. Wheeler participated in the first expedition to Mount Everest in 1921. He was an accomplished mountain climber and on the 1921 expedition was one of the team to reach the 7000 metre North Col. As a Brigadier in the British Army he was appointed Surveyor General of India in 1941. He was knighted for the work he did surveying India.
Dr Alexander Kellas was a member of the 1921 British Mount Everest Expedition. He died en route to Mount Everest.
Kellas was born on 21 June 1868 in Aberdeen, the son of James Fowler Kellas, secretary to the local marine board, and his wife, Mary Boyd. He was educated at Aberdeen grammar school and then attended Aberdeen University, Heriot-Watt College in Edinburgh, and Heidelberg University, where he gained a PhD. He was keenly interested in chemistry and even more enthusiastic for mountaineering. The two interests combined to make him pre-eminent for a time in the field of high-altitude physiology. He was able to combine research at low pressure in the laboratory with practical studies at altitude in the Himalayas.
Kellas had a great love for wild mountain places. He was not given to technical climbing but was supremely interested in mountain geography and exploration, in the course of which he reached numerous unclimbed Himalayan summits. He began mountaineering in the Cairngorms while a student at Aberdeen University.
In his late thirties Kellas made his first visit to the Himalayas. He made six expeditions to Sikkim from 1907 to 1920. He did a phenomenal amount of climbing and yet very little is known about him because he was of a retiring nature and wrote very little of his achievements. Unusual in that he generally climbed without European companions, he was accompanied by an ever loyal group of local porters whom he trained in the basic alpine skills. He possessed phenomenal energy and tenacity.
During the First World War, Kellas channelled his energies into high-altitude research and the effect of diminished atmospheric pressure on human physiology, a subject of great importance to the Air Ministry.
In 1919 Kellas suffered a breakdown in health from overwork, resigned his lectureship in London, and returned to Aberdeen. He recovered the following year and set out again for the Himalayas to carry out more experiments at altitude on himself and his high-altitude porters. He reached a height of 23,622 ft on Kamet. After several months in the Garhwal he travelled over to Sikkim, where in November 1920 he climbed north of the Kang La to obtain photographs of the peaks north of Everest that were then unknown.
Kellas returned to the Kang La region in April 1921 and climbed a higher peak to see more of Everest's north side. He then climbed Narsingh (19,110 ft) before turning his attention to working out a way through the icefall on Kabru. He had time to reach only 21,000 ft. He returned to Darjeeling just one week before he was to join the first expedition to Mount Everest, led by Charles Kenneth Howard-Bury.
Kellas was chosen to be a member of the climbing team of four at the age of 53. He had far more experience of high-altitude climbing than any contemporary. He had alone built up a good rapport with the Sherpa Bhotias hill men and, by emphasising the importance of adequate training and of treating them with respect, had shown their value to any mountaineering enterprise.
After only a week of rest from his attempts to see more of the Everest region and his prolonged work on Kabru, Kellas had no time to recuperate properly for the rigours of the Tibetan plateau. He went down with dysentery and had to be carried on a stretcher. Just before Kampa Dzong the accumulated strain of his spring climbing, the biting cold of the plateau, and rampant dysentery overtaxed his heart. He died, on 5 June 1921, among his faithful porters, as he had insisted his countrymen went on ahead.
Kellas was buried on a hillside to the south of Kampa Dzong in sight of the peaks of Sikkim, where he had made so many first ascents.
Guy Bullock was a member of the 1921 British Mount Everest Expedition.
As expedition mountaineers, Guy Bullock and George Mallory found a northern access route to Everest by climbing the 6,849-metre (22,470 ft) Lhakpa La col above the East Rongbuk Glacier and by going on to reach the North Col at 7,020 metres (23,030 ft). They did not, however, reach the summit of Mount Everest.
Shortly before the 1921 Everest expedition was due to embark, one of the climbing team was asked to drop out (Finch) and Mallory suggested Bullock as a replacement. The Foreign Office rejected Younghusband's request to grant leave to Bullock, who was in Lima at the time, to join the expedition but he gained a special dispensation from the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Curzon, so he could have leave on half pay until the end of 1921 but with no chance of this being renewed. Bullock and his wife sailed for Bombay on the SS Naldera, arriving on 30 April 1921. The expedition had a climbing team of four but, of the two most experienced members, one died doing the march-in (Kellas) and the other was taken ill (Raeburn). This left only two main climbers, Mallory and Bullock. Bullock was a well-organised person, able to get on well with almost everybody. He was steady and cheerful, and so was a very good companion for Mallory (the better climber). Bullock was reunited with his wife at Lachen in the Teesta valley in Sikkim on 8 October and they eventually sailed home from Bombay.
Bullock's diary of the expedition was published in 1962 in the Alpine Journal. Bullock had previously declined to lend the diary to Mallory who had been wanting to make use of it for his lectures after the expedition.
He died in a London hospital in 1956.
Lt. Col. Charles K. Howard-Bury, Leader of the 1921 British Mount Everest Expedition.
Born at Charleville Castle, King's County, Ireland, the only son of Captain Kenneth Howard-Bury (1846–1885) and Lady Emily Alfreda Julia, daughter of Charles Bury, 3rd Earl of Charleville. He was educated at Eton and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst.
He was interested in climbing in his youth and climbed the larger routes in the Austrian Alps. In 1904 he joined the King's Royal Rifle Corps and was posted to India, where he went travelling and big game-hunting. At the beginning of World War I he rejoined his regiment and served with distinction as a frontline officer on the Somme and throughout the conflict. He was captured during the German Spring Offensive of 1918, and then made a dramatic escape from his prisoner-of-war camp, before being recaptured ten days later.
In 1921 he became the leader of the first Mount Everest Reconnaissance Expedition which was organised and financed by the Mount Everest Committee (a joint body of the Alpine Club and the Royal Geographical Society). In 1922 he wrote a full account of the expedition, published as Mount Everest The Reconnaissance, 1921. In 1922 he was awarded the Founder's Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society for his leadership of the expedition.
Jørgen Peter Müller was a Danish gymnastics educator and author.
His book Mit System (My System), published in 1904, was a bestseller and has been translated to English and many other languages. My System explains Müller's philosophy of health and provides guidelines for the 18 exercises that comprise the system, as well as photographic instructions featuring Müller himself. The book was the most successful physical culture book published in Britain during the early twentieth century. Müller moved to London and opened a physical culture institute in 1912.
An old friend of George Mallory's, whom he had known since the climbing days at Pen y Pass in Wales.
Rupert Brooke studied Classics at King's College, Cambridge between 1906 and 1909 where he met and became friends with Hugh Dalton. He became involved in various Cambridge groups, and was widely acknowledged as a handsome and charismatic figure about the university. He was a member of the Fabian Society and the Marlowe Dramatic Society both of which George Mallory was also a member.
Maurice Platnauer was Principal of Brasenose College, Oxford, from 1956 to 1960. He was educated at Shrewsbury School and New College, Oxford. A classicist, he was a master at Winchester College from 1910 to 1915. During World War One he was an officer with the Royal Garrison Artillery and met up with George Mallory. In 1922 he became a Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford. He was Vice-Principal of Brasenose from 1936 to 1956; and Editor of the Classical Quarterly from 1936 to 1947; and an Honorary Fellow of New College from 1957.
Hugh Thackeray Turner was born in Foxearth, Essex, the son of Rev. John Richard Turner (a Church of England vicar) and his wife Harriet.
After leaving Newbery Grammar School he was apprenticed to the architect Sir George Gilbert Scott. In 1877 Turner began work on his own account. He was also employed by Scott's sons, John Oldrid and George Gilbert junior, becoming the latter's chief assistant.
Turner left Scott's office to become Secretary for The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (founded by William Morris in 1877). His job was to investigate, inspect and report on buildings at risk from insensitive restoration. He held the post until 1911.
On 19 July 1888 he married Mary Elizabeth (May) Powell (1854–1907). May became a leading member of the arts and crafts movement in her own right, exhibiting needlework and founding the Women's Guild of Arts with May Morris. The couple had three daughters, the second of whom, Ruth, married George Mallory in July 1914.
In 1898 Turner designed his own home Westbrook in Godalming, which with the assistance of Gertrude Jekyll's assistance was surrounded by a much admired garden.
After a long retirement he died of pyelonephritis on 11 December 1937 in London.
Robert Graves had been a pupil at Charterhouse when George Mallory was a Master there. Mallory introduced him to contemporary literature and took him mountaineering in the holidays.
At the outbreak of the First World War Graves enlisted taking a commission in the 3rd Battalion of the Royal Welch Fusiliers as a second lieutenant (on probation) on 12 August. He was confirmed in his rank on 10 March 1915, and received rapid promotions to lieutenant on 5 May 1915 and to captain on 26 October.
He published his first volume of poems, Over the Brazier, in 1916. He developed an early reputation as a war poet and was one of the first to write realistic poems about the experience of frontline conflict. At the Battle of the Somme, he was so badly wounded by a shell-fragment through the lung that he was expected to die and was officially reported as having died of wounds. He gradually recovered and, apart from a brief spell back in France, spent the remainder of the war in England.
Friend of George Mallory.
Born in Cambridge on 25 March 1887, son of (John) Neville Keynes (1852–1949), lecturer in moral science and later university registrary, and his wife, Florence Ada (1861–1958). His brother was John Maynard Keynes.
He was educated from 1901 at Rugby School, before going to Pembroke College, Cambridge in 1906 (of which he was made an honorary fellow in 1965), to study natural sciences, in which he received a first class (part one, 1909). He graduated MA (1913), BChir (1914), and MD (1918). He also became FRCS (1920), FRCP (1953), FRCOG (1950), and FRCS (Canada, 1956).
On 12 May 1917 he married Margaret Elizabeth Darwin, the daughter of Sir George Howard Darwin and granddaughter of Charles Darwin. They had one daughter, who died in infancy, and four sons.
Lee Keedick acted as the tour manager and press agent for George Mallory's lecture tour of North America and Canada in 1923
Basil Williams was born in London on 4 April 1867, the only son of Frederick George Adolphus Williams, barrister, and his wife, Mary Katharine Lemon. He was educated at Marlborough College and New College, Oxford. He volunteered for service in the South African wars and then spent time working in the education department. After returning to England he dedicated himself to a career as an historian.
In 1905 he married Dorothy Caulfeild. They had two sons, one of whom (John) taught George Mallory to ski.
He died at 46 Amhurst Park, Stoke Newington, London, on 5 January 1950.
Climbing friend of George Mallory (mentioned in 1911 and 1923)
Herbert Leigh-Mallory was a clergyman and the father of George Mallory, Trafford Leigh-Mallory, the World War II Royal Air Force commander, and 2 daughters Mary and Avie. He changed his surname from Mallory to Leigh-Mallory in 1914. He was married to Annie Beridge (1863-1946) and they lived in a ten bedroom house on Hobcroft Lane in Mobberley.
Former Charterhouse pupil of George Mallory's. Part of a climbing party at Pen y Pass in Wales in 1915 before starting an officers' training course at Sandhurst.
Arthur Clutton-Brock was a lawyer and writer and friend of George Mallory and his wife Ruth. George and Ruth first met at a dinner held in the autumn of 1913 at the house of the Clutton-Brocks in Hindhead Road which wound up from the Wey Valley towards Charterhouse where George was teaching. Ruth lived with her father and two sisters at Westbrook, an elegant mansion, on the far side of the Wey Valley.
He was married to Evelyn who was also a friend of both George Mallory and his wife Ruth.
Edward Wymper was a mountaineer who wrote Scrambles Amongst the Alps in the years 1860-1869 which was one of the most popular mountaineering books ever written.