William Spotswood Green

  William Spotswood Green was born 10 September 1847 in Youghal, Co. Cork,  the only son and eldest  of six children of Charles Green, JP, merchant of Youghal, and his wife Catherine Frances, daughter of Walter Fitzsimons. 

Educated at Rathmines School, Dublin (1859–61),  Midleton College (1861–7), and TCD (1867–71), he spent his childhood in the family home on the seafront in Youghal, where an obsession with boats, the sea, and fishing began.

His first written observations on natural history date from this period and include records of distribution of molluscs in Youghal Bay. 

His first climbing expedition abroad was in 1869, when, at the age of 21, he went to Switzerland with his friend J.S.Lyle.  He intended to climb Monte Rosa but his guide accidently burned the soles of his only boots.  He recorded little about this expedition except to say that 'I returned home feeling that a whole new world had opened up for me'.

The following year he was in Switzerland again with Lyle and his own cousin Henry Swanzy.  As well as doing a long walk of about 100Km they climbed Monte Rosa, Aiguille Bricola, Sparrenhorn, Finsteraarhorn and returned to Ireland on 31 of August.

After graduating in 1871 he took off to Norway's Lofoten area that was then largely unexplored and later became a popular mountaineering destination.  He had set his sights on climbing Higravstinden but seems to have made the first ascent of  a lower summit.

On Aoraki

Ordained deacon of the Church of Ireland in 1871 and to the priesthood the following year and was appointed curate of Kenmare  from where he moved to Carrigaline  in 1878.

Aoraki, or Mount Cook (3,754m) as it was then called, is the highest summit in New Zealand and this is where Green focused his attention.  Along with two Swiss guides he reached, almost, to the summit in what turned out to be an epic of survival in extreme weather conditions. in 1882.

Returning to Ireland he wrote an account of the expedition  (The High Alps of New Zealand) and lectured on it to the Royal Irish Academy (R.I.A) and the Royal Geographical Society (R.G.S).

In olden time the new light was carried into our own island and to the recesses of the Alps by Irish missionaries. In our own day they are resuming their post as handers-on of the torch. One of the most powerful preachers in Europe of that devotion to high mountains which has been not one of the least consolations to many for all the crowding and complexities of modern life has been Mr. John Ball. And now the first to introduce practical mountain worship in its developed form ...has been an Irish clergyman. Mr. Green succeeds St. Gall. The Alpine Club and the author may both be congratulated on the literary result of this their first missionary enterprise in the Antipodes             (D.W Freshfield in a review of Green's book in Alpine Journal)

Green's cousin and climbing partner of earlier years was a member of the British As sociation for the Advancement of Science and attended its convention in Western Canada.  He returned with tales of magnificent and almost untouched mountains.

In 1888 the cousins made up what was perhaps the first solely Irish expedition team to explore and map any mountain range outside of Europe.  To Green, it must have seemed as if he was upholding the standard of Ball, Tyndall and Adams-Reilly during the Golden Age of Alpinism.  (R.W Sandford).

Selkirks.

                                                                        

As part of their surveying they climbed as many summits as they could in the time available and named Mounts Dawson, Fox, Donkin, Deville, Macoun and Perley Rock.   Two peaks were later named Mount Green and Mount Swanzy.

His account of the expedition was published as 'Among the Selkirk Glaciers', in 1890 and was the first book written about the Canadian mountains and his description of the 'perfect alpine paradise' led many European climbers to head for the Canadian west which resulted in a burgeoning climbing fraternity in that country.

He is credited with recommending the location for a small chalet to the Canadian Pacific Railway that would grow to become the Chateau Lake Louise hotel.

Another aspect of his life was that he made a notable contribution to the Irish sea-fishing industry.

For on overview of his life see here (DIB)

Detailed accounts of his mountaineering in:

In Search of Peaks, Passes and Glaciers,  Frank Nugent (The Collins Press); and

William Spotswood Green, Paddy Leahy, Vol 4, IMEHS Journal of Mountaineering Ireland

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Richard Cotter

It was in the latter half of the 19^th century, during and after the 'Golden Age of Alpinism' that the exploration of the Alps reached its climax. Invariably, this drive to climb mountains was undertaken by people of substantial means. It required considerable resources to finance travel to the Alps, to spend at least a couple of weeks there and then pay the fees of the local guides and porters in order to attempt a particular climb. These local men who lived in the mountains and were familiar with the terrain may, themselves, have had little inclination to reach summits but through their work with the wealthy 'tourists' they soon became accomplished mountaineers in their own right. Their services as guides allowed them to become summiteers without having the wealth of their employers.

Richard Cotter

It seems unlikely that any Irish man would fit into this category. The impecunious John Tyndall must be ruled out. On his first visit to the Alps he 'got by very cheaply' but by the time he was attempting summits he had significant funds at his disposal.

It is Richard (Dick) Cotter who fits the bill perfectly. He was born in 1842 in Macroom, possibly in the townland of Coolnafiddane (Coolinadane), but in 1849 he was on an emigrant ship, the Bridgetown, from Cork to New Orleans, where they landed on 26^th December 1849 with his mother and siblings along with 260 other passengers. There seems to be some uncertainty about his family – the ship's passenger list indicates that his mother and two sisters accompanied him. Another source claims that he had three brothers before he left for the USA. A father is not mentioned and it seems likely that the family was traveling to join the father, who had already emigrated.

The complete family appears in the US census for 1850 in Springfield, Ohio. The father, James, is a labourer, aged forty four, and Richard, recorded as aged ten, is attending school. The mother, Mary was thirty three and there were three siblings, Ellen (aged 8), John (aged 4) and Mary (aged 2), all born in Ireland What happened to them after that in unclear but James C. Sutton, a rancher and businessman, is recorded as having 'taken Richard from an orphans home in St Louis and gave him a home and such education as the Sutton children received.' He may also have adopted Richard's siblings. At the age of eighteen Richard asked Sutton for permission to go west and seek his fortune in the gold mines, as some of the Sutton boys had already done.

Cotter on tent.  USGS

He didn't succeed in 'striking it rich' but was hired instead as a 'packer' on the California Geological Survey, from 1860-64, under Josiah Whitney its director and they were among the first non native people to visit the now famous Yosemite Valley. Initially he didn't show much skill in the work of packing the mules but learned quickly and became a firm friend of Clarence King, a member of the survey team.

In King's 'Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada' he describes his friend as 'our man-of-all work, to whom science already owes its debt'. As to his character he was 'stout of limb, stronger yet of heart, of iron endurance and of a quiet unexcited temperament...I felt that Cotter was one comrade I would choose to face death with, for I believed there was in his manhood no room for fear or shirk'.

Mt Tyndall from
Shepherd's Pass

Mt Tyndall

 This opinion was tested in 1864. It was during 'the first extensive exploration of the hitherto vaguely known regions of the High Sierra' when together, Cotter and King set out on a five day expedition from the survey's base camp in the Sierras to attempt to climb the highest peaks in the region. The summits had been declared impossible and inaccessible by the pair's companions. Undaunted, they set out with improvised rucksacs, each carrying forty pounds of supplies. They reached what appeared to be the highest summit after much tribulation only to see that there was another, higher peak ( later named Mt Whitney). By their records theirs was, to then, the highest mountain measured in the country. They returned to the camp but not before each had put his life in the hands of the other on the steep granite walls of the Sierras. As King recalled in his book, 'in all my experience of mountaineering I have never known an act of such real, profound courage as this of Cotter's.' 

 Their summit they named Mt Tyndall after the celebrated Irish alpinist. They had been familiar with Tyndall's Alpine exploits through his writing and King wrote to Tyndall informing him of their feat and the naming of the mountain in his honour, even inviting him to visit their camp in the Sierras.......

When the Survey of California was completed in 1864 Cotter joined the Western Union Telegraphic Expedition to British Columbia and Alaska from 1864 to 1867. This was the attempt to provide a telegraph link between Europe and America via Alaska and the Bering Strait. Cotter worked on the Russian American (i.e Alaskan) section of the expedition and wrote a report from Norton Bay on its progress in the Spring of 1866. They had worked through the severe conditions of the Alaskan winter unaware that the work was being superseded by the transatlantic cable that was completed in July 1866.The Russian American project was abandoned in 1867. Despite its apparent failure it has been regarded as the major reason for the purchase of Alaska by the United Sates....

 In a local newspaper article of 1923, L.A. Osborn described the 'Passing of the Placer Miner' noted that 'Cotter lived in a little, low, log cabin..(in Jimtown)...he was the most fearless, bluff, outspoken man I ever knew. He had a deep religious tinge under all his high-fallutingness. He never drank...and has never received credit enough...(for his exploration of the Sierras and Alaska)'.

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Gravestone.  Findagrave.com

Signature. Smithsonian Inst.