Harrac goes south

In September 1977, at the age of 79, the famous explorer and mountaineer, Bill Tilman set sail from Southampton on the boat of his young protégée, Simon Richardson, to sail to Smith Island in the South Shetland Islands, some 65NM off the coast of Antarctica. Their plan was to sail to Rio de Janeiro, and then to the Falklands where they would collect their New Zealand climbers for the ascent of Mount Foster, a hitherto unclimbed peak on Smith Island.

Their trip across the Atlantic to Rio was uneventful. Simon wrote to his friend, Christopher Lloyd from Rio: ‘The day we arrived here was perhaps the greatest day of my life…if everything ended now, life would have been worth that day’. They set sail from Rio and were never heard of again. When they failed to appear at the expected time in the Falklands the authorities were alerted and a fruitless search of the South Atlantic began.

A perilous undertaking

Simon was my friend and was 26 when he disappeared. We had met as nineteen-year-olds and