Antarctic veteran dies

Press, 1 February 1984, Page 4

Antarctic veteran dies

Mr Eric Webb, the long-est-surviving member of Sir Douglas Mawson’s 1911-14 Australasian Antarctic Expedition, has died. He was 94. Mr Webb was born in Lyttelton and was educated at the Borough School and Lyttelton District High School. In recent years he had lived in Britain. He trained as a pupil teacher before attending Canterbury University Col-, lege where he trained to be a civil engineer. Before becoming chief magnetician on the Australasian Antarctic Expedition when he was 22 he did magnetic observations for the Carnegie Institute in Washington. He was one of four New Zealanders with Mawson and was based at Cape Denison on Adelie Land, said to be the windiest place

on Earth, where winds blow to 320km/h. With two Australians, Messrs Bob Bage and Frank Hurley, he came within 80km of the South Magnetic Pole in 1912. They manhauled sledges 960 km through blizzards and subzero temperatures. Three years earlier, on the Shackleton expedition the South Magnetic Pole had been established at 72deg. 25min. After returning from the expedition Mr Webb spent a year preparing his thousands of observations for analysis. When he left to serve in Egypt and France with Royal Australian Engineers during World War I the analysis of his work was continued by 12 women mathematics and physics students at Canterbury University College.

The results of this work were published in 1925, 10 years later. In 1977 a special reunion was arranged by the University of Canterbury and Mr Webb met the five surviving members of this team — known as the “Mawson Club” or “Mawson’s magnetic ladies.” In the war Mr Webb reached the rank of major and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order and the Military Cross. He worked as an engineer in Britain, India, British Columbia, and Australia, where he helped with the construction of the Snowy River scheme. He became a world authority on hydro-electric schemes and in Labrador he assisted with the planning of the Churchill Falls hydroelectric power project, the largest such'project in the

Western world. In 1976 Antarctic scientists at the Royal Society in London sent Mr Webb a letter of admiration for the quality of his magnetic recordings. The letter was signed by leading figures in Antarctic research, such as Sir Vivian Fuchs and Dr Gordon Scott, director of the Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge. In it they said they aimed to follow the example of Mr Webb. The curator of the Lyttelton Museum, Mr Baden Norris, said Mr Webb was a “brilliant, unassuming man” who regarded his major role in the plotting of the magnetic pole as a very small chapter in his life. Mr Webb is survived by a daughter in England and a son in Canada.