REAR-ADMIRAL EVANS

Southland Times, Issue 21853, 2 November 1932, Page 7

REAR-ADMIRAL EVANS

PROMOTION ANNOUNCED. (United Press Assn.—Telegraph Copyright.) (Rec. 11.40 p.m.) London, November 1. Rear-Admiral Evans, formerly of H.M.S. Broke, has been promoted to the rank of Vice-Admiral. The promotion of Rear-Admiral R. G. R. Evans, V.C., better known as “Evans of the Broke,” to the position of Vice-Admiral, reminds New Zealanders that he has something in common with the Dominion, having visited Wellington and Christchurch on several occasions in connection with Antarctic exploration, and finally because he married a Christchurch lady, daughter of a well-known Christchurch lawyer, the late Mr T. G. Russell. Unfortunately she died in 1913 without issue, and three years afterwards he married a beautiful Dane from Christiania, by whom he has two sons. It has not fallen to the lot of many men in this workaday world to experience the amount of adventure that has fallen to the lot of Admiral Evans. Even .as a boy at school he was not content with the humdrum, but was everlastingly seeking hazards which often led he and his brothers into deeper waters than they had thought for. They experienced adventures in the East End of London, skirmishes in South London, and explorations in many other parts as thoroughly carried out as were Stanley’s in Darkest Africa. There were three brothers in most of these adventures, of which Evans was the middle spoke in many incidents. His schooldays were filled with ups and downs,” particularly that period when he attended the Merchant Taylors Lower School, as well as later at Warwick House School, from which he graduated into the Royal Navy as a sturdy little ruffian in 1897. His adventures then began afresh, having for their venue many parts of the Mediterranean during the period of the war between Greece and Turkey. The greatest happenings in his life of adventure, however, apart from those associated with the Great War, were when he sailed the South Seas in the Morning, under Captain William Colbeck, to seek Captain Scott and the Discovery. The Morning paid a call to Now Zealand during the-course of this journey, and it was during this period that Captain Evans made friendships in Christchurch which still continue. How the Morning found the Discovery and succoured her is ancient history, ns is Evans’s final visit to the Antarctic as commander of Scott’s last expedition. The story of this last visit to the icy wastes of the South Pole has been read over and ovei- again, and many people remember Evans returning to Lyttelton with the sad announcement that Scott had fallen before the icy blasts of an inhospitable land. When the Great War broke out, Evans was farming in Canada, but he answered the call and joined up with his o]dtime mistress to harry the Germans in the English Channel. As leader of the Dover Patrol, commanding such ships as the Broke and the Swift, all fast destroyers, he and his ships earned a name which will go down in history as an epic of those strenuous days. The war over, Evans continued in command of the “little ships” carrying out police work in the China Seas, but those days are over now and bis lot is cast among the armoured leviathans.