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 Everest and Beyond" and Mountaineering Ireland (IMEHS Journal Vol 5).

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

 

Ireland and the Greater Ranges - (Early 20th C)

] Towards the end of the 19th century European mountaineers began to consider the world's Greater Ranges (Himalayas, Andes, Caucuses) as destinations for their craft.  Initial European activity in the Himalayas largely involved the British East India Company mapping the region for military and strategic reasons in the Survey of India         

Irish people, as part of the British Raj, carried out a variety of mountain activities during the second half of the century (see here) in India. 

The climbs of the British climber W.W. Graham in 1883 are often considered the first true mountaineering exploits in the Himalayas.

 An early attempt on a major peak was made by Albert F. Mummery who died in 1895 while attempting Nanga Parbat.

 Sir Martin Conway led an expedition to the Karakoram in the  Himalayas in 1892/3.  The ensuing book ( Climbing and Exploration in the Karakoram Himalaya  was illustrated by the Irish artist A. D. Mc Cormick.  He later accompanied Clinton T. Dent to Central Caucasus.

The higher of the two summits of Mount Elbrus in the Caucasus was first climbed in 1874 by a British expedition led by F. Crauford Grove.

The Survey of India, through the Great Trigonometrical Survey, first identified Mount Everest (then Peak XV) as the world's highest mountain in the 1850s, thanks to the work of Indian mathematician Radhanath Sikhdar, with final height confirmation coming from later surveys, leading to its naming in 1865 after former Surveyor General George Everest, despite local names like Chomolungma (Tibetan) and Sagarmatha (Nepali) existing. 

Interest in climbing the world's highest mountain culminated, in 1921, with the British Reconnaisance Expedition.

Bury (top) Wheeler (below)

This expedition was led by Charles Kenneth Howard-Bury from Mullingar, Ireland.

Also on this expedition was Edward Oliver Wheeler, a Canadian, whose father was born in Kilkenny, Ireland an whose mother (Clara) was the daughter of John Macoun, born in Maheralin, Co Down.

The subsequant 1924 Everest attempt saw the disapearance of George Mallory and Sandy Irvine during their summit attempt, which was witnessed by Richard Hingston, the medical officer of the expedition. Born in London, from about age eight spent most of his life and was educated in Cork.               See Jim Murphy's 'Passage to Everest & Beyond'  for greater details and Vol 5 of IMEHS Journal.

In 1925 the 4th ascent of Aconcagua, the highest mountain outside the Himalayas, was achieved by

Mervyn Ryan,

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Mapping of Ireland

Recorded mountains
 to 1700

 The mountains of Ireland appeared and were named on maps of the island as early as 1572.

John de Courcy has detailed the summits that appear on maps up to 1700.

(see Mountaineering Ireland. IMEHS Journal, Vol 2, 2005)

Charles Vallencey produced a military survey
of parts of the island around 1780.

Various land owners produced estate maps of their property and it was William Edgeworth, who had been involved in the Bogs Commission survey, that produced a trigonometrical survey of Co Longford and part of Roscommon. With him, 'native Irish cartography attained a new high level'.  Alexander Nimmo, for the same survey, produced a comprehensive map of the Kerry region in 1811.

                    

                                                      

See Finnian O Cionnaith Land Surveying in Ireland 1690-1830  for details of earlier surveyors.

      

In 1824 the six-inch Ordnance Survey mapping of Ireland was begun under Thomas Colby. As a consequence the surveyors were the first group to systematically get to all the significant mountain summits on the island. 

Principal triangulation
with dates.

 There is hardly a prominent peak that does not bear evidence of this in the ubiquitous 'trig pillars' that are familiar to hikers and are the result of 'retriangulation' carried out in the 1950s and '60s. 

Ireland was the first country to be completely mapped at a scale of  6 inches to a mile.

Much discussion  took place as to the merits of contour lines or hachuring to represent altitude and slope and it was not until about 1890 that the complete hill edition was produced.

A full account of the operation and proceedings of the OS in 19th Century Ireland is given by 

JH Andrews in  A Paper Landscape.

Thomas Colby was the director of the OS in Ireland  and John O' Donovan played 

John O'Donovan

an important role in the toponymical aspects of the survey.  'The OS made a crucial contribution to scholarship. Its work on antiquities, the Irish language and literature was of immense importance because it studied...sources (many for the first time) using the new scientific methodologies of contemporary European scholarship.'  G.M Doherty The Irish Ordnance Survey

Of course, the surveyors climbed the mountains for professional reasons rather than for recreation.  However, their activities may have had an influence on a generation of people that became interested in the activity of surveying, some of whom carried this interest abroad to Europe and North America and carried out surveys of their own in these places.  Among such people were John Palliser, Anthony Adams Reilly, Edward Oliver Wheeler and there will be more about these to follow.

A fascinating 'biography of the Ordnance Survey' is Map of a Nation by Rachel Hewitt (Granta, 2010)

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