Obituary
2007; Wiley; Volume: 173; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1111/j.1475-4959.2007.00250.x
ISSN1475-4959
Autores Tópico(s)Polar Research and Ecology
ResumoWalter William Herbert, who died on 12 June 2007 at the age of 72, was a polar explorer in the classic mould, an artist and a writer. Unusually for someone who felt at home in a tent, he excelled in all three fields. Happy to be known as Wally, he kept that name throughout his career. Wally was born in England to an Army family, and went with his family to Egypt at the age of three, and then to South Africa for nine years. After finishing school he joined the Army, where he studied at the Royal School of Military Survey. Afterwards he spent 18 months surveying in Egypt and Cyprus. His life changed when he saw an advertisement for young men to work with the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey (which became the British Antarctic Survey in 1962). Accepted on the basis of his survey qualifications, Wally went to Hope Bay in Graham Land, a station specialising in geology and topographic survey. There he spent the winters of 1956 and 1957, becoming an enthusiastic dog sledge driver whilst mapping uncharted areas. After a number of shorter journeys, the crowning achievement of his stay was a journey with three companions down the spine of Graham Land from Hope Bay to Portal Point. Later when homeward bound, he hitch-hiked solo from Montevideo back to England, where he was employed at the Directorate of Overseas Surveys to work up his survey data. He wanted to continue in Antarctic work, but at the time there was no career structure in polar research, so at the end of his contract he filled in time by lecturing to schools. Salvation came with an invitation to join a physiological research expedition to Spitsbergen and then an invitation to fly to Greenland to buy a dozen sledge dogs for the New Zealand Antarctic Expedition. Thus after a month in Spitsbergen, Wally was off to Greenland. He bought the dogs and flew with them to New Zealand and onwards to Scott Base, the New Zealand research station in McMurdo Sound. Four days after landing, he was once again dog sledging, with three companions and American air support in the Nimrod Glacier area. Winter 1961 followed, during which, as he put it, plans for the next summer ‘began fermenting in my mind . . .’ Wally spent an adventurous summer season with three companions surveying the area between Mill Glacier and Axel Heiberg Glacier. To some extent the season was marred by attempts to control his activities by radio from Scott Base, and not for the last time, he railed against distant authority. However, the highlight was the party's hazardous descent of Axel Heiberg Glacier in 1962 following Roald Amundsen's route. An admirer of the Norwegian, he wrote later that ‘Amundsen . . . had no ulterior scientific motive for his expedition as had Scott . . .’ Wally may have lived to regret using the word ulterior. Indeed, most of his own expeditions made substantial contributions to science. The party's surveys led to the publication of several official map sheets based on their work. Wally's book A world of men (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1968) covered all of his Antarctic adventures between 1956 and 1962. By 1963, he felt hooked on polar travel and conceived the idea of sledging across the Arctic Ocean from Alaska to Spitsbergen to complete ‘the last great journey on Earth’. It was to be by far the most ambitious expedition in his life – and he knew it. Most people steeped in the accounts of Fridtjof Nansen and Robert Peary knew that pack ice was more difficult and more dangerous than any other kind of polar terrain. True, there are no crevasses, but there are pressure ridges, cracks and leads. Plunging into the cold sea can kill unless there are other people on hand to help quickly. The distance alone was formidable. Whereas the straight line distance from Alaska to their first landfall after the North Pole was 3100 km, the drift of the pack ice during the course of the journey meant that the distance actually travelled could be twice that. It became clear that to launch a party onto the Arctic Ocean with no previous experience of travelling on pack ice was foolhardy. Always one for meticulous preparation, Wally set about gaining the experience, and arranged to spend the winter of 1966–7 living with the polar Eskimo at Qanaq in north-west Greenland. Roger Tufft and Allan Gill shared this training expedition with him. Having learned much from the Eskimos during the winter, they set off across Smith Sound together with a party of hunters. Leaving the hunters, they crossed Ellesmere Island to Cape Stallworthy before turning south. By the time they reached Resolute Bay after a demanding journey lasting three months, the party had learned a great deal about Arctic travel. It allowed them to reject some of their preconceptions and to accept much of what they had learned from the Eskimos. There followed long and nerve-wracking months of fundraising and equipment gathering for the Arctic Ocean crossing. The RGS gave its blessing to the plans. The party that finally left Point Barrow, Alaska in February 1968 comprised Wally Herbert as Leader, Dr Roy Koerner, Captain Ken Hedges, Allan Gill and 40 dogs. After many false starts and difficulties in crossing the wide coastal shear zone, the party made good progress until July, when the ice became too thin to continue safely. This had been foreseen, and they set up camp for the summer on 4 July. Supplies were airdropped to them from an RCAF Hercules. It was 4 September before they could move on again. A second airdrop totalling 28 tons took place in late September, allowing the party to erect a hut and establish their winter camp. Koerner kept busy measuring the physical properties of the ice while others sent regular synoptic reports and collected geophysical and bathymetric data. A potentially disastrous break-up of their ice floe occurred in pitch darkness in February 1969, but by then they were preparing to abandon the winter camp and set out for the North Pole. The party reached the pole on 6 April. The news hit the world's headlines and brought congratulatory telegrams from not only Buckingham Palace but also 10 Downing Street. Now began a desperate race to reach Spitsbergen before the break-up of the pack ice, constantly living with the unpredictable drift of the ice. Eventually they were travelling in a westerly direction past the outermost islands of the Svalbard group. Longing to touch land to celebrate the first surface crossing of the Arctic Ocean, Allan Gill and Ken Hedges, in spite of the risk, hopped from floe to floe and landed on Vesle Tavleøya. They only just made it back to camp before a wide shore lead opened. Wally himself was saddened by not having landed on the island, and quietly nursed an ambition to get there one day. Twenty-four years were to elapse before he succeeded. The crossing party took another 12 days to struggle towards a pre-arranged rendezvous with HMS Endurance. By any standards, the first surface crossing of the Arctic Ocean was an epic. It yielded substantial contributions to knowledge in the fields of glaciology, gravity, magnetics, oceanography and meteorology. The Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, called their achievement ‘A feat of endurance which ranks with any in polar history’, and the expedition's patron, the Duke of Edinburgh, numbered it ‘among the greatest triumphs of human skill and endurance’. Wally wrote Across the top of the World (Longman, 1969) and later North Pole (Sackett & Marshall, 1978). Six months after his return he married Marie McGaughey. Within two years they were living, with their baby daughter Kari, on an island off north-west Greenland making a film about the Eskimo hunters, the ‘Ultima Thule’ expedition (1971–3). Marie Herbert wrote about this experience in The snow people (Barrie & Jenkins, 1973), Wally wrote Eskimos (Time-Life, 1976), and Kari Herbert wrote her own account in The explorer's daughter (Viking, 2004). Greenland was again Wally's polar base when, in 1977–9, he, with Alan Gill, attempted to circumnavigate the island clockwise. Living through appalling hardships after leaving Thule, they were forced to give up on reaching Mesters Vig. Subsequently he led filming expeditions to north-west Greenland, Ellesmere Island and the North Pole (but by aircraft). Source: Herbert W 1970 The first surface crossing of the Arctic Ocean The Geographical Journal 136 511–33 From this point on Wally's literary and artistic works began to dominate his career. After three years of research into hitherto unpublished archives, The noose of laurels (Hodder & Stoughton, 1989) offered a scholarly analysis of the rival claims of Frederick Cook and Robert Peary to have been first to reach the North Pole (1908–9). He concluded that it was unlikely that either of them actually got there. Nowadays most historians have concluded that ambition eclipsed their integrity. Wally was an immensely painstaking artist. His works ranged over themes, environments and experiences from his own life. His originals are much prized by polar enthusiasts and his website offers a choice of 73 reproductions. Wally received a knighthood from the Queen in 2000. He had earlier been awarded the Society's Founders Medal (1970), the Polar Medal and clasp, the Livingstone Medal of the RSGS (1969), and medals from the Paris Société de Géographie and the Explorer's Club. Herbert Plateau and Herbert Range in Antarctica, and Herbertfjellet in Svalbard are named after him. He is survived by his wife and their elder daughter. Their younger daughter Pascale predeceased him. Charles Swithinbank June 2007
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