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

 

Howard-Bury

 Charles Kenneth Howard-Bury was born in London on 15 August 1883,

C K Howard Bury
Courtesy: Alpine Club

where his mother, Lady Emily Alfreda Bury likely preferred the maternity services of London and the society image of her child being born there.  His father, Captain Kenneth Howard, grandson of the 16th Duke of Suffolk and Berkshire had married in September 1881 and assumed the name of Bury by deed-poll.

The parents were a well travelled couple - the father having served in India, Canada, Australia and
Ireland and the mother had chalets in the Italian Dolomites.  There was a sister, Marjorie, born in July 1885, who died of typhoid at Charleville Castle, the family home in Tullamore, aged twenty two.  Captain Howard died that year and and a relative was appointed as guardian to Charles - this was Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, Lord Lansdowne who, as well as being a prominent politician, owned vast estates in Co Kerry.

Charleville Castle

  Charles spent much of his childhood on the Lansdowne estates in Dereen, Co Kerry, before attending school at Eton College in Berkshire, as had his father. After that he attended the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst and in 1904 joined the King's Royal Rifles.  He suffered a rebuke of Lord Curzon for entering Tibet illegally in 1905 due to delicate international relations. Between 1906 and 1912 he travelled widely in India and Tibet, learning some of the local languages. His army career came to an end that year when he inherited Belvedere, a large estate on the shore of Lough Ennel in Westmeath.

Belvedere House
(Brian Shaw cc2 Geograph

)

1913 saw him embark on a six month long hunting trip to the Tien Shan mountains from which he brought back a young bear that lived at Belvedere up to the 1950s and acted as a wrestling parner for him there.  On the outbreak of the Great War he rejoined his regiment and remained at the front throughout the war, saw action at the Somme, experienced the horrors and devastation of battle until his capture during the Spring Offensive of 1918.

After the war the question of Everest was being considered by the Alpine Club and the Royal Geographical Society.  In 1920 no one from the western world had been closer than 40 miles from the mountain.  From his travel experience, through contacts made in India and from his diplomatic abilities Howard Bury was instrumental in arranging the permissions necessary for the organisation of an expedition '...to proceed through Tibet for the exploration and ascent of Mount Everest....it was due to your tact and address that the negotiations on our behalf achieved their object... (Younghusband, President, RGS).

General Charles G. Bruce was the choice of the Everest Committee as leader of  the expedition. His unavailability meant that someone else had to be chosen.  Howard Bury had the necessary abilities and experience and his appointment was announced on 24th January 1921.  It may have helped that he offered to pay his own expenses.

Everest 1921 team.

The primary aim of the expedition was a reconnaissance for an attempt on the summit the following year and this aim was comprehensively achieved - it.."made an original survey at a scale of 4 miles to an ich of an area of some 12,00square miles; a detailed photographic survey of 600 square miles of the environs of Mt Everest had been worked out..." (Howard Bury Everest - The Reconnaisssance')

Howard Bury & Wheeler

Detailed accounts of the expedition are available in many places, most natably in Into the Silence by Wade Davis.

His Tien Shan expedition:  Mountains of Heaven  (ebay)

Biographical details : here and on his early life.

He died in September 1963.