Bill Tilman was an explorer extraordinary

Press, 27 December 1980, Page 12

Bill Tilman was an explorer extraordinary

By

ALEC FORREST

London Press Service

A writer of adventure stories could hardly find a more remarkable character on which to fix his imagination than Harold William (“Bill”) Tilman — explorer, mountaineer, soldier, and small-boat navigator.

Tilman became a legend in his lifetime. His disappearance at the age of 79, after sailing from Rio de Janerio in September,

1977, on ari expedition to the . Antarctic, left him with no known grave — but universally admired and respected for his lifelong ’ love of pitting his skills-against odds in outlandish places. Now, in “High Mountains and Cold Seas,” J. R. L. Anderson, himself the author of 12 top-class de-tective-adventure novels, has knitted together the strands of Tilman’s extraordinary life in 360 pages of detailed, and absorbing narrative. . As Anderson says: “The world likes its Einsteins to be mathematicians, its Shackletons to be identified, with the Antarctic, its Livingstones with Africa. Tilman travelled and ex-plored-wherever he could, from the Congo forest and the fever-ridden marches of Assam to the high slopes, of the Himalaya, from China to Chitial, from Baffin Bay to Patagonia. There is a case for regarding him as the greatest individual explorer of the twentieth century.” What emerges preeminently is . Tilman’s almost incredible hardihood, coolness, and selfconfidence in whatever hazards faced him. Born at Wallasay, Cheshire, in north-west England, on February 14, 1898, the younger son of a prosperous Liverpool merchant, Tilman was educated at Berkhamsted School; near London, his headmaster being the father ofnovelist Graham Gfeerie. Trained as a soldier, he won medals for gallan(ry in both world wars, showing a hatred of Staff jObsTand paperwork and wanting always to be in the front-line.

After the .First. World

War, he took up coffee farming in Kenya. While there he met Eric Shipton, nine years his junior but an experienced mountaineer, whose influence encouraged Tilman to match wits and stamina against daunting peaks. In March,

1930, the two men climbed Kilimanjaro (6007 m). They ignored its main peak, Kibo, and in a more testing rock climb they,

reached the saddle between Kibo and its neighbouring peak of Mawenzi after struggling up slopes of ice-covered volcanic rock in a snowstorm. In 1933, not liking steamer travel and hoping to find an alternative route to Europe, Tilman crossed Africa from east to west by bicycle. He started from Kampala in Uganda where he bought a push bike for $6 and two spare inner tubes. The 4800 km “pedal” took him 56 d ays, during which, amid many ups and downs, and travelling almost with no kit and living mainly on bananas, he crossed the Ugandan frontier into what was then the Belgian Congo, rode across French Equatorial Africa, entered the French Cameroons, and finally hit the west coast at Kribi. There he put himself and bike on a train to Douala, 110 km away, to embark for England. Earlier, he had had a bad accident in the English Lake District. While climbing with his friend, Dr John Brogden, and Vera Brown, a schoolmistress, on Dow Crag, Coniston Old Man, Vera suddenly slipped, dragging Tilman with her. She dangled over a deep gully and Tilman ■ fell about three metres. The doctor could not hold the rope and all three then dropped about 18m. Dr Brogden was killed. >«-: ■ Recovering consciousness, Tilman, bleeding and with f r a c t u r e d -'vertebrae, crawled bn hands and knees across more than 6knr of rough hillside to Coniston village. Through his courage a rescue party reached Miss Brown, in time to save her life.

Told by his doctors that he could never climb again, Tilman responded, after being nursed that summer by his mother and sister, by setting off on a climbing tour of the French Alps. He could not straighten his back. No matter. He engaged a guide for 10 days, lived rough, and scaled numerous peaks. He came home, as Anderson says, “ramrod straight.” This absolute dependence on willpower to overcome physical injury or pain ruled his life. Parachuted when 45 into partisan territory in Northern Italy in September, 1944, he again injured his back through a bad drop. Unable to stand properly, on the first day he staggered 48m, made 275 m the next day, and on the third day “walked” 800 m and climbed a hill to survey the country.

As he said: “If one has to move after a fall, it’s better to do it before the body begins to protest." The Italians, after the war, honoured him with the freedom of Belluno.

In 1934, Shipton invited Tilman to spend five months in the Himalayas. There he discovered his element, revelling in “an orgy of mountain climbing.” Shipton’s party, while reconnoitring a route to ascend Everest, climbed 26 peaks each more than 6100 m high in two months. Tilman scaled 17 of them. Yet, when Hugh- Ruttledge selected climbers for the 1936 Everest expedition, Tilman was turned down because his altitude sickness ceiling appeared to be 7000 m.

Charact ristically, he set out with his own expedition to Nanda Devi, and with N. E. Odell, a Cambridge geologist, reached its summit (7817 m). This is widely regarded as the greatest of all climbing feats accomplished between the two

world wars. In 1938, Tilman himself was appointed leader of the British Everest Expedition, but the attempt ran into impossible conditions. In truth, he had little patience with big expeditions, or with the modern climber’s reliance on such aids as oxygen, rock drills, aluminium ladders, and pitons. All he required were stout boots, thick woollen stockings, rope, and an ice axe. To travel light he sometimes limited, himself to a single shirt for a three-month joust in the mountains. A small, compactly built man, he had a happy relationship with Sherpas. His somewhat shaggy appearance prompted them to name him Balu Sahib (Mr Bear). He was among the first climbers to win their trust treat them as friends. He climbed on occasion with Sherpa Tensing Norkay, whose renown became worldwide when in 1953 he and Edmund Hillary gained the summit of Everest.

The Himalayas rewarded Tilman with many of his greatest experiences.

When Shipton was consul at Kashgar, the two friends again set off on expeditions. Tilman always underrated his personal achievements; he hated self-aggrandisement and was a reticent, deeply private man. He recorded tracks made by yetis, the “abominable snowmen”; surveyed and mapped hitherto inaccessible regions; collected beetles, including a species unknown to science; and found spiders. living at 6705 m. His explorations in the Himalaya range earned him the Royal Geographical Society’s Founder’s Medal for 1952. He never felt or admitted being too old to climb, but he found seafaring an alternative challenge in his fifties. It became his main preoccupation for the next 25 years.

He first bought a 48-year-old Bristol coastguard cutter Mischief. The boat was his constant companion for 14 years until lost in the ice off Jan Mayen in the Arctic. On an early expedition, he sailed her through the Magellan Strait to Calvo Fjord in eastern Patagonia.

From there, he and two of his party made a double crossing of the ice cap to Lake Argentine — a fearsome six-week journey through blizzards, across crevasses, and appallingly exposed, for which they took minimal rations — and came down to their last day’s supply before being picked up. The boat’s name, despite her disastrous end, lives on because of geographical sites commemorating her — Mount Mischief on Baffin Island in the Arctic. Mon du Mischief in the French Crozet Islands in the South Indian Ocean, .and Cap Mischief on Kerguelen Island in the Southern Ocean — with Glacier

Tilman not far off. Altogether, he sailed 183,000 km in Mischief, mostly to desolate, inhospitable, and often unmapped places. After her loss he bought other boats, Sea Breeze and Baroque. For his sailing exploits, the Cruising Club of. America awarded him its Blue Water Medal. He also received the Goldsmith Award of the Royal Cruising Club. Tilman wrote 15 books, the earlier of which, “The Ascent of Nanda Devi’ and "Snow on the Equator,” both published in 1937, were near best sellers in' their day. He was also a prolific lecturer. .

At one session, a cadet shot up a hand and asked: “Please sir, how do I get on an expedition?” “Put on your boots and go’’ was the immediate reply. That answer typified Tilman’s attitude to life. If he wanted to' do something, requiring above all physical action, although he was an immensely widely read man, he wasted no time in second thoughts.