8 June 2014
By William O’Chee
The 8th June marks one hundred years since George Mallory and Sandy Irvine disappeared just below the summit of Mount Everest. HTBS contributor William O’Chee explores the background to this expedition, and its curious mix of rowing and espionage.
Throughout the ages, across many cultures, the summits of mountains have always been the homes of gods. In the Andes, Incas sacrificed maidens to their mountain deities. The ancient Greeks believed that Zeus held court on Mount Olympus, while Leto made her own abode atop Mount Ida.
If the gods resided on the peaks of mountains, then those who aspired to reach those peaks have always been accorded a veneration befitting those who might commune with the divine.
In the popular mind, no mountain is as revered the world’s highest, Mount Everest, even if other peaks may be more challenging to climb. There is something special about standing on the highest spot in the world.
When Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay reached the summit of Everest in 1953, days before the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, it was treated as a great triumph for the British Empire. However, in 1924 another British expedition sought the same glory for the Empire (and more), at the cost of two climbers, George Mallory and Andrew ‘Sandy’ Irvine. Their deaths remain shrouded in mystery to this day.
Before Irvine set foot anywhere near Everest, he was already famous as an oarsman, and a figure of no small wonder at Oxford University.
Some commentators, most notable the Canadian Wade Davis, have reflected unfavourably on Irvine’s academic credentials for entry to Oxford. Irvine had initially applied to Magdalen College in 1921, where his older brother, Hugh, was studying history. However, Sandy Irvine failed the entrance examination and was rejected. This is attributable to the fact that while he was gifted in the sciences, he struggled in languages, particularly French and Latin, which were obligatory then for matriculation.
Irvine was not the only one to fail his entrance examination for Magdalen, of course.
Gully Nickalls, the son of the great Guy Nickalls and a talented oarsman himself, had failed his School Certificate at Eton. Nickalls spent 1918 serving in the Rifle Brigade as a junior officer before being demobbed and applying to Magdalen College in 1920, where he failed the entrance examination. By his own admission, the entrance papers were far beyond his capabilities, and there was the suggestion that he placed 46th out of 48 applicants for only eleven places.
Nickalls confessed that he resorted to sobbing histrionically in front the President of Magdalen, Sir Herbert Warren, until the great man said: “Of course, I can’t help feeling flattered that you want to come up to Magdalen so much. I’ll see what I can do.” Nickalls received his place two weeks later.
By contrast, Irvine spent the Summer at a crammer, and was accepted at Merton College at the end of that year, despite an indifferent result in his examination.
The criticism of Irvine’s academic qualifications is not only unfair to Irvine but fails to properly understand the nature of Oxford in the inter-war period.
Evelyn Waugh, who matriculated on the same day as Irvine in January 1922, famously portrayed Oxford as being populated by athletic “hearties” who were largely uninterested in study, or sensual, hedonistic aesthetes. Without doubt both types existed in abundance, but at its best Oxford has always found a place for the truly gifted. Irvine was undoubtedly that.
At the height of the First World War the 15-year-old Irvine devised and patented an interruptor gear that allowed a machine gun to be fired through the propellor of an aircraft. With aplomb, he submitted this, and the design for a gyrostabiliser for aircraft, to the War Office while still at school. This alone should have secured him a place at the university. His prowess as a schoolboy oarsman was therefore more a bonus than a deciding factor.
That said, Irvine was an oarsman, and a fine one.
His arrival in January 1922 meant he had missed the previous Michaelmas Term trials for the Oxford Blue Boat, as well as the Trial Eights race. Nonetheless, his presence immediately attracted the attention of O.U.B.C President, David Raikes, who was also at Merton.
Raikes was another of those men who had gone from Public School directly to the war. Arriving at Oxford in 1919, Raikes was a 22-year-old retired Major with a Distinguished Service Order, and a Military Cross and bar. The 1921 O.U.B.C. Report said of Raikes: “Wherever he is in the boat, he never relaxes for a single stroke, and doesn’t stop till he’s dead.”
Without doubt Raikes knew how to work and would have recognised in Irvine a kindred spirit. As a result, Irvine was drafted into the two seat of the 1922 Oxford Blue Boat. He was the third Merton man in the crew after Raikes and Geoffrey Milling.
On paper, the 1922 Oxford crew should have been a short-odds bet to win, as it contained two members of the silver medal winning 1920 Great Britain Olympic eight – Sebastian Earl, Gully Nickalls – and three other returning Blues. However, Oxford had to call their spare oarsman into the boat not long before the race to replace their four man, who had torn a back muscle. Cambridge made the most of their opportunity and won by four and a half lengths.
By the time he had won his Blue, Sandy Irvine had only been at Oxford for a term, and he had tasted little of the broader life of the University. Then as now, Oxford was unapologetically social. Each College had one and sometimes more, dining societies, which have no true comparison, except at Cambridge.
Dining societies in Oxford arose late in the 18th century and early 19th century and offered chosen undergraduates the opportunity to dine and drink in civilised fashion, even if their postprandial activities could sometimes be rather boisterous. Each dining society has its own uniform of evening dress with tailcoats with coloured lapels, coloured waistcoats, and often garish bow ties.
Merton College’s dining society was the Myrmidon Club, named after the comrades of Achilles in the Iliad. Geoffrey Milling was a member of the Myrmidon Club and invited Irvine to be his guest at one of the club twice-termly dinners. With his athleticism, charm, and natural exuberance, Irvine was soon after invited to join the club.
Here Irvine became closely acquainted with the club’s President, George Binney, who had organised the 1921 Oxford Arctic Expedition to Spitsbergen. The expedition was organised in conjunction with the Alpine Society and the Royal Geographical Society. Binney’s 1921 expedition suffered from difficulty to make its way through the pack ice, and so another expedition, better provisioned, and manned was planned for 1923.
Despite the rigour that went into the planning of the 1923 expedition the choice of members was undertaken with the studied casualness which typifies so much of Oxford’s social life. It would have seemed natural to Binney therefore, to select Irvine and Milling for the expedition. They were strong and fit; both were Merton men; and they were fellow members of the Myrmidon Club.
All of this was happening while the Oxford Blue Boat was in the final stages of training for the 1923 Boat Race, and the inclusion of Irvine and Milling in the expedition was somewhat absurdly decided on the Wednesday before the race. Noel Odell, one of the 1921 team, and a member of the Alpine Club, took both men to dinner at Putney and invited them to join the expedition. He wrote afterwards of Irvine: “He seemed at once to typify all that I was looking for and all that is so essential in the make-up of one that is to be not nearly a useful, but also a genial, companion under the train conditions of the Arctic.”
Although Irvine and Milling were now committed to Spitsbergen, Irvine still had a Boat Race to row
Gully Nickalls, who had developed a good friendship with Irvine the year before, was elected President of Oxford for the 1923 Boat Race, and enlisted the coaching team of ‘Beja’ Bourne, Ewart Horsfall and ‘Tarka’ Gold, an illustrious cohort if ever there was one. Irvine was the only Merton man in the crew, which was stroked by ‘Pussy’ Mellen, with Gully Nickalls behind him in seven.
Rowing on the Surrey station, Oxford found themselves rowing in disturbed water at the start due to the wash of a passing steamer, but were a quarter of a length up at the Mile Post, and three-quarters of a length to the good at Hammersmith Bridge. This lead had gone out to two lengths by Chiswick, when all hope would have seemed lost in the Light Blue boat. Unbelievably, Cambridge crew fought back over the last part of the course, pushing Oxford all the way to the line, where the Dark Blues won by three-quarters of a length.
Part II will be published tomorrow.