Woman Explorer

Manawatu Times, Volume 61, Issue 9, 11 January 1936, Page 10

Woman Explorer

. EASTER ISLAND ADVENTURE LONDON, Dec. 21. Mrs. Katherine Itoutledge, who has died at the age of 69, was a cousin of Lord Gaiuford and the wife of Mr. William Scoresby Itoutledge, with whom she travelled widely on voyages of exploration that attracted considerable attention. A daughter'of the late Mr. Gurney Pease, and born in Darliugton, she was educated at Somerville College, Oxford. She became an extension lecturer of Oxford University m IS9G, ami at the end of the Boer war travelled throughout South Africa and Rhodesia oil a colonising mission.

In 1906 she married, and for the two following years lived in camp in British East Africa with ner husband, in order to study tho natives. Shortly before the war Mr. and Mrs. Itoutledge built and equipped the schooner yacht Mana, in which two and a half years were spent on a journey of 10,000 miles tor the purpose of an archaeological and ethnological survey of Easter and other islands.

They had some exciting adventures and collected a largo amount of interesting information, Mrs. Itoutledge being particularly interested in the folk-lore of the islands. Of this expedition sho was stewardess as well as scientist, and when off duty read geology and darned socks. The cruise, made almost entirely under canvas, gained the challenge cup of the Royal Cruising Club, which had previously been held by Lord Brassey’s Sunbeam.' In October, 1914, while the work of excavating statues on Easter Island

was in progress, Admiral von Spec’s squadron called for coal and provisions, and it was‘only then that Mrs. Routledge' and the party learned that Germany was at war with England. The Germans stated that Britain, Australia, and New Zealand had become Republic, King George had been deposed, India Was in. flames, and German warships had penetrated to Chatham. In 1421-23 there was another expedition-to French Oceania.

Mrs. Routlcdge collaborated with her husband in the writing of very interesting books on their travels. Seven years ago she. attracted much public attention by isolating herself in her Hyde Park-gardens home as a protest against a sequestration order in respect .of warehoused goods for which she had refused to pay.