ANDREW IRVINE - The North-West Hero

ANDREW IRVINE - The North-West Hero Lost on Mount Everest

By Margaret Brecknell

One of North-West England’s most intrepid explorers was born 120 years ago this month. Andrew Comyn Irvine, known to his family and friends as “Sandy”, was born on the Wirral peninsula in Birkenhead on 8th April 1902. He showed much promise as a budding engineer, mountaineer and all-round sportsman, but tragically did not live long enough to fulfil his potential. The story behind his disappearance and presumed death while on an expedition to Mount Everest in 1924 has intrigued generations of climbers ever since.

Irvine was one of six children of businessman, William Fergusson Irvine, who was also a well-regarded local historian, and his wife Lilian. He was born into an affluent family and was educated at a local preparatory school before, in 1916, being sent to board at one of the country’s top public schools, Shrewsbury School. Here he excelled at rowing and was a member of the Shrewsbury crew which was victorious at the Henley Peace Regatta in 1919.

From Shrewsbury he went on to study engineering at Merton College, Oxford, as well as continuing his success in rowing. He competed in the Boat Race, receiving a highly coveted “Oxford Blue” in the process, and was a member of the Oxford University crew that won the race in 1923.

As well as this sporting success, there were also hints of the epic adventure that was to come. In 1919, when he was still a schoolboy, Irvine is reported to have driven his motorcycle to the top of Foel Grach, a 3000-foot mountain in Snowdonia. At the summit he encountered a mountaineer called Noel Odell, who had just climbed it on foot.

During the summer of 1923 Irvine encountered Odell again quite by chance when the pair both took part in an Arctic expedition organised by Merton College to cross the remote Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, which is situated just a few hundred miles from the North Pole. The more experienced Odell was hugely impressed by the initiative and allround ability which Irvine displayed in the challenging Arctic conditions.

Irvine was still studying at Oxford and just twenty-one years of age when, only a few months later, he was chosen to be a member of the third British Mount Everest Expedition team, whose aim was to make the first successful ascent of the world’s tallest mountain. His selection was greeted with surprise, as he was by some distance the party’s youngest and most inexperienced member, but his inclusion owed much to Noel Odell. The older man had also been chosen for the expedition and aware that its leaders were keen to include a younger man who would add some youthful strength and resourcefulness to the mix, he had personally recommended Irvine for the role.

According to an article for The Times written by the expedition’s leader, General Charles Bruce, Irvine was regarded “as the experiment of the expedition”. Bruce added that, “His record at Spitsbergen last year and his really remarkable physique, to say nothing of his reputation as a general handyman, justify the experiment we are making in exposing one of his tender years to the rigours of Tibetan travel”.

Irvine was, no doubt, flattered to be chosen and probably relished the prospect of the adventure before him, but he may have also been glad of an opportunity to escape the country for a while at a time when a scandal was brewing. In the months leading up to his departure he had formed a relationship with a married woman called Marjory Summers, who was the stepmother of one of his closest friends from his days at Shrewsbury School. Shortly after Irvine’s departure for Everest, Marjory’s husband began divorce proceedings. The subsequent case was well-documented in the press. In a veiled reference to Irvine, a report in The Times related that Marjorie’s husband had been “very much upset about her friendship with a young man, now dead, who had been a great friend of her husband and herself”.

On 29th February 1924, Irvine set sail from Liverpool on board the SS California, together with three of the other expedition members including the country’s most famous mountaineer, Cheshire-born George Mallory. In a letter to his wife written www.lancmag.com during the long sea journey, Mallory famously remarked that Irvine “could be relied on for anything except perhaps conversation”.

The four men joined the other members of the expedition in the Indian city of Darjeeling at the end of March and the party set off for Mount Everest. Journeying though West Bengal and Tibet, the expedition arrived some weeks later at its chosen Himalayan base camp, which was situated in the Rongbuk Valley, close to a Buddhist monastery. For British expeditions during this period, Everest was only accessible from the north out of Tibet, as the southern side in Nepal was closed to Westerners.

In early June two unsuccessful attempts were made on the summit, in each case without the use of oxygen equipment. With the monsoon season now fast approaching, there would probably only be time for one last attempt. The vastly experienced George Mallory had already taken part in one of the unsuccessful missions, but now decided to make one more try using oxygen bottles. To the surprise of some other expedition members, he chose the youthful and inexperienced Irvine to accompany him. rest of us”, adding that he was “mild, but strong, full of common sense, good at gadgets”. Irvine had shown his mechanical genius throughout the trip by making vital repairs to the expedition’s equipment, as well as some innovative modifications, notably to the oxygen apparatus. The oxygen tanks used in the 1920s were cumbersome and extremely heavy to carry, but with some clever adjustments Irvine had been able to reduce the overall weight of each set of equipment by some five pounds. Even allowing for this, the apparatus still weighed in at a hefty thirty pounds, which was an enormous amount to carry on one’s back at such high altitude.

During the expedition Irvine had proved himself to be an invaluable and highly regarded team player. He was described by fellow expedition member, Howard Somervell, as “neither bumptious by virtue of his “Blue”, nor squashed by the age of the

Irvine’s ability to repair on the spot any malfunctions in the notoriously unreliable oxygen equipment played a big part in Mallory’s decision to choose him for the final attempt on the summit. In an interview years later Noel Odell confirmed that Irvine had been chosen because he had “done a lot of the last stages on work on the apparatus they were taking”.

Crucially, too, despite Mallory’s earlier cutting remark about Irvine’s lack of conversational skills on board ship, the two appear to have become much closer during the course of the expedition. In one letter home from Tibet, Mallory commented that Irvine had been doing “excellently up to date” and was proving to be “a very fine fellow” who “should prove an excellent companion on the mountain”.

On the morning of 6th June, following an early breakfast of fried sardines, Mallory and Irvine set out for the summit armed with what by today’s standards would be regarded as the most primitive of equipment.

Noel Odell was the last person to see the two climbers alive in the early afternoon of 8th June, catching a tantalising glimpse of them just 800 feet from the summit before clouds obscured his view. In an account written not long after the fateful mission, Odell recalled,

“At 12.50…there was a sudden clearing of the atmosphere, and the entire summit, ridge, and final peak of Everest were unveiled. My eyes became fixed on a small snow crest beneath a rock step in the ridge, and the black spot moved. Another black spot became apparent, and moved up the snow to join the other on the crest. The first then approached the great rock step, and shortly emerged at the top; the second did likewise. Then the whole fascinating vision vanished, enveloped in cloud once more.”

Having seen the two men, Odell continued up to the camp high on the mountain, from which Mallory and Irvine had set out for the summit. He discovered in the small tent some spare components from the oxygen apparatus, suggesting that Irvine had made some last-minute adjustments to the equipment before setting off. Odell then retreated to the camp at the North Col, slightly further down the mountain.

Two days later Mallory and Irvine still hadn’t made it back to the camp at the North Col and, fearing the worst, Odell was tasked with climbing back up to the pair’s last camp higher up the mountain. He later wrote that, “I reached the tentlet of the camp in the afternoon, only to find everything as I had left it previously, and as Mallory and Irvine had left it on the morning of their climb”. With no sign of Mallory and Irvine having returned there, the remaining expedition members were compelled to accept that the two climbers had been lost.

Speculation has long existed that the two climbers did, in fact, reach the summit before perishing on the mountain. A month after their disappearance MP, Sir Martin Conway, who was a well-respected mountaineer in his own right, was asked to evaluate evidence from the expedition and concluded that Mallory and Irvine had indeed made it to the top of Mount Everest. Noel Odell, the last man to see them alive, was also of the same opinion.

However, no material evidence was subsequently discovered to substantiate this claim and it would be another 29 years before Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay made the first known successful attempt on the summit of Mount Everest.

It is said that for years Irvine’s mother, Lilian, left a light on at the Birkenhead family home each night in case he returned home. Over the years several expeditions have been mounted in an attempt to locate the bodies of the two missing climbers. Irvine’s final resting place has never been found, but, in 1999, Mallory’s body was eventually discovered high up on the mountain, effectively frozen in time as a result of the constant sub-zero temperatures at such high altitude. Intriguingly, the photograph of the climber’s wife, Ruth, which he had promised to leave at the summit, was not found on him. This again raises the question of whether the two men did, in fact, make it to the top of Everest.

The search for Irvine’s body goes on. The Birkenhead-born man is known to have carried a camera with him on his final mission. Bearing in mind the well-preserved condition in which Mallory was found, experts are now hopeful that if Irvine’s last resting place is ever located and the camera is found on his person, it may still be possible to produce printable images from it. This may, in the end, provide a definitive answer as to whether the two climbers did reach the top of Mount Everest.