Richard Hingston

Dr Richard GW Hingston, FZS, FRES, FLS, FRGS (1887-1966) was an Irish physician, explorer and naturalist who worked in India with the Indian Medical Service. He attended Cork Grammar School and Merchants' Taylor School, London. Hingston qualified in the Medical School of Queen's College, Cork (now University College Cork) in 1910, where he passed his Final with First Class Honours.

On graduation Hingston entered the Indian Medical Service and retired from it in 1927 with the rank of Major. In 1913 he was naturalist to the Indo-Russian Pamir Expedition, a triangulation project in the Himalayas, mapping the region between India and Russia where he carried out experiments on the effects of high altitude on the human body on behalf of the RAF.  From 1914-1918 he served in the British Forces and was twice mentioned in despatches. He was awarded the MC. From the end of the war until 1924 he commanded military hospitals. In 1924 he acted as Medical Officer and Naturalist to the Mt Everest expedition.  This was the second mountaineering expedition with the express aim of making the first ascent of Mount Everest.

Everest '24 Team. Hingston - back row 2nd.

Richard Hingston was an analytical and dedicated diarist and even during the most trying periods of the Everest expedition he kept a record of events. It is from this diary that the following brief extracts have been taken:

4th June 1924: Norton and Somerville have extablished Camp VI at a height of 27,000 feet... Mallory and Irvine left camp today.  They intend to make an oxygen attempt...

5th June 1924: He (Somerville) and Norton had reached an altitude of 28,000 feet.  Norton had to be left at Camp IV.  He suffered badly ffrom snow blindness...Mallory and Irvine are now making an attempt. And this will probably be the last.

6th June 1924:  I set off at 6am...for Camp IV on an ice ridge at 23,000 feet.... The whole ascent was very wonderful, being practically a climb up a wall of ice about 2,000 feet in height...I had a job of work before me, to get a blind man down the Col...I was glad to get down...and finish the job without injury to anyone...

7th June 1924:...there is no news of Mallory and Irvine. Personally, I have not much hope of their success...

8th June 1924: Eyes again glued to the mountain. There is just a chance of Mallory and Irvine getting to the summit.... There is no sign of their having returned yet to Camp IV.

9th June 1924: Not a sign of Mallory and Irvine...they should have been at Camp IV ths morning, but there is no tracce of them as yet...

10 th June 1924: There can be no doubt - the worst has happened.  Not a sign of Mallory and Irvine.  They must have slipped near the summit and fallen down the face of the mountain.

After Everest he undertook a number of other expeditions. From 1925-1927 he was Surgeon Naturalist in the Indian Marine Survey. In 1928 he was second in command of the Oxford University Expedition to Greenland while in 1929 he was organiser and leader of the Oxford University Expedition to British Guyana. In 1930 he conducted a mission to Northern Rhodesia, Nyasaland, Tanganyika and Uganda in order to investigate methods of preserving the indigenous fauna.  In 1939 he was recalled to military duty in India and remained there until 1946.

After World War II Hingston retired to his home in Passage West, County Cork.

For further details of his Mt Everest  experience see Jim Murphy "Passage to Everst and Beyond" and Mountaineering Ireland (IMEHS Journal Vol 5).

  For accounts of some of his other expeditions see Hingston Collection at UCC.

 

Edward Oliver Wheeler

 Sir Edward Oliver Wheeler MC (April 18, 1890 – March 19, 1962) was born in Ottawa.

His father, Arthur, Oliver, born in Kilkenny, Ireland, was one of the founders and first President of the Alpine Club of Canada and his mother was Clara, a daughter of the Irish- born (Maheralin, Co Down) Canadian naturalist John Macoun. Their only child, Edward Oliver, joined his father’s mountain survey parties at an early age.  His climbing companions were often the famous mountaineers and guides of the day and at age twelve, after making the first ascent of a hitherto unclimbed mountain, it was named Oliver’s Peak accordingly. 

After graduating from Trinity College School in 1908 he entered the Royal Military College of Canada where he excelled academically and in a variety of sports. Commissioned to the Royal Engineers in 1910 he spent the following two years in the Royal School of Military Engineering in Chatham after which he returned to Canada, made the first ascent of Mt Elkhorn on Vancouver Island before going on to India to join the 1st King George's Own Bengal Sappers and Miners and won the M.C and Legion of Honour for service during the first World War.  He joined the Survey of India in 1919 from which he was seconded to the 1921 Mount Everest Expedition led by Colonel Charles Howard Bury, chiefly as surveyor, and was largely responsible for the first detailed map of the Everest region,  making use of the photo-topographical method first extensively used in Canada. His work of five months, both survey and reconnaissance on this expedition, carried out despite the handicap of ill health which he refused to give in to,  constituted a remarkable tour de force.

Howard Bury.
Wheeler.

The young Canadian topographer, working alone in the solitude of the Rongbuk Valley, identified the crucial pass to the ‘North Col’ that today serves as the principal gateway to the roof of the world.

(see Wade Davis: Into the Silence, for a comprehensive account.)

His actual climbing had been done largely in Canada, from the age of 12 to about 20,  and on occasional visits later on leave. He had climbed with Sir James Outram, Val Fynn, Tom Longstaff, A. H. MacCarthy, and sometimes with the guides Edward Feuz and Conrad Kain who referred to him as “one of us” and as a fellow climber of comparable ability, a rare compliment from a guide in those days.

He joined The Alpine Club in 1911 and in 1956 he was made an Honorary Member. 

Everest Team 1921