Happy Adventurer: An Autobiography

By Adm. Lord Mountevans

First published in 1951, this is the autobiography of Admiral Lord Mountevans, and it is indeed a tale of high spirits. The writer has a fine sense of adventure, and he revels in the excitement of the incredibly beautiful scenes which were frequently encountered. As he states himself in the opening—“If I had my life over again I certainly wouldn’t change it, because it has been full of excitements, hazards and adventures, in peace as well as in war”—the reader is left with the impression that Admiral Lord Mountevans would certainly do it all again if he could, and knows that he or she is getting an authentic picture of real happenings.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Papamoa Press
• Release date: Jan 12, 2017
• ISBN: 9781787208230

Adm. Lord Mountevans

ADMIRAL EDWARD RATCLIFFE GARTH RUSSELL EVANS, 1ST BARON MOUNTEVANS KCB, DSO, SGM (28 October 1880 - 20 August 1957), known as “Teddy” Evans, was a British naval officer and Antarctic explorer. Seconded from the Navy to the Discovery Expedition of the Antarctic in 1901-04, he served on the crew of the relief ship when he was offered the post of second-in-command on Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated expedition to the South Pole in 1910-1913, as captain of the expedition ship Terra Nova. Mountevans accompanied Scott to within 150 miles of the Pole, but owing to illness narrowly survived the return journey. He then toured the country giving lectures before returning to naval duties as a commander in 1914. He spent WWI as a destroyer captain, becoming famous as “Evans of the Broke” after the Battle of Dover Strait in 1917. He commanded a cruiser at Hong Kong in 1921-22 and was awarded a medal for his role in rescuing passengers from the wrecked-vessel Hong Moh. He then spent several years commanding the Home Fisheries Protection Squadron before being given command of the modern battlecruiser HMS Repulse. He later commanded the Australian Squadron and the Africa Station before becoming Commander-in-Chief, The Nore, one of the Navy’s senior Home Commands. In early 1939 he was appointed Civil Defence Commissioner for London during the preparations for WWII. He officially retired from the Navy in 1941, but remained in a civil defence role throughout WWII. He was raised to the peerage in 1945, sitting in the House of Lords as a Labour member. Lord Mountevans died in Golå, Norway in 1957, aged 76.

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Text originally published in 1951 under the same title.

© Papamoa Press 2017, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

HAPPY ADVENTURER

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY

BY

ADMIRAL LORD MOUNTEVANS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

DEDICATION 4

CHAPTER 1—THE MUTINY IN THE WORCESTER 5

CHAPTER 2—THE START OF A SEA CAREER 8

CHAPTER 3—SEA DAYS AND SHORE DAYS 12

CHAPTER 4—THE MORNING SAILS 15

CHAPTER 5—HAPPY VOYAGE 18

CHAPTER 6—THE GREAT WHITE SOUTH 21

CHAPTER 7—THE DISCOVERY RELIEVED HOME AGAIN 27

CHAPTER 8—TO THE PACK ONCE MORE 31

CHAPTER 9—ANTARCTIC DAYS 37

CHAPTER 10—RECONNAISSANCE 41

CHAPTER 11—START OF THE LAST JOURNEY 44

CHAPTER 12—GOODBYE 47

CHAPTER 13—NEVER SUCH HAZARDS... 50

CHAPTER 14—JUST IN TIME 57

CHAPTER 15—SAD RETURN 60

CHAPTER 16—WAR! 64

CHAPTER 17—THE BROKE 68

CHAPTER 18—BREATHING-SPACE 72

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 74

DEDICATION

DEDICATED

To

Air Chief Marshal Sir Frederick William Bowhill,

G.B.E., K.C.B., C.M.G., D.S.O.,

and

Captain J. G. S. Doorly

Two boyhood friends in whom I have never lost faith

CHAPTER 1—THE MUTINY IN THE WORCESTER

IF I had my life over again I certainly wouldn’t change it, because it has been full of excitements, hazards and adventures, in peace as well as in war.

Before I was ten years old I had run away from home three times, mainly because I wanted to go to sea and was too impatient to wait until I had reached the age of thirteen, when, in my boyhood days, I could have joined H.M.S. Britannia at Dartmouth as a naval cadet, provided I passed high enough in the competitive examination—which, when the time came, I narrowly failed to do. However, I did manage to join the Thames Nautical Training College H.M.S. Worcester at Greenhithe one bleak winter’s day when the Thames was so full of ice that at certain states of the tide it was possible to walk from the ship to the shore.

We learnt a great deal in the Worcester, including the value of physical fitness and the importance of fending for ourselves—we were certainly not spoon-fed. It was here that I made lifelong friendships—and for that reason I have dedicated this book to Air Chief Marshal Sir Frederick Bowhill and to Captain J. G. S. Doorly, both of whom started their sea careers in the Worcester with me.

Doorly, coming from Trinidad, joined a month or two later than Bowhill and myself, and his hammock was slung next to mine. This was a great advantage to me, for he had an irrepressible humour, which he imparted to me. I found character and courage in both Doorly and Bowhill, and in Doorly quite outstanding talent for music and athletics; to see him run and jump was, to use an Americanism, an eye-full. He had the graceful motion of a reindeer.

Bowhill and I, learning that the Admiralty had granted half a dozen cadetships to be competed for by the training-ships Worcester and Conway, each determined to have a try for one, and were admitted to the Navy Cabin, where we had a lot of extra instruction in navigation, mathematics and physics. In the Navy Cabin were four other boys, one of whom, Shakespear, was the son of a Colonel of Marines. He was reckoned to have the best chance of all of us to win one of those coveted cadetships, but personally I backed Bowhill, the industrious, reliable young Scot whom I later christened Old Integrity. My own nickname in the Worcester to begin with was Sleepy, a name I lived down when, after being bullied rather brutally, I hit back so hard that my older, much bigger aggressor had a black eye, which contrasted with his pale face and red hair so that everybody noticed it. To make matters worse, I went up to him on the upper deck and challenged him to fight. He laughed and replied, good-humouredly, Look, don’t you think I’ve had enough! After that we became good friends.

The Worcester turned out a lot of Arctic and Antarctic explorers, and became, in fact, a cradle for happy adventurers. In the early summer of 1895 we Worcester boys saw the Windward proceeding up the Thames on her way home from the frozen North. She was in charge of Lieutenant A. B. Armitage, an old Worcester cadet, who came down to the ship and told us all about the Jackson-Harmsworth Arctic Expedition which had rescued Dr. Nansen and his companion Johansen in the Polar ice-pack, when they were on the verge of death by starvation.

The late Captain Robert Falcon Scott had a penchant for Worcester boys, and his second-in-command in his first Antarctic expedition was Armitage, who navigated the Discovery. In Scott’s last expedition he had Lieutenants Bowers, Bruce and myself, while in the two Antarctic Relief Expeditions Doorly and I managed to get ourselves appointed while still almost in our teens.

But to get on with my training-ship days, Doorly’s hammock was numbered 74 and my own 76. My former enemy, with the red hair, slung in hammock 72, the other side of Doorly—I’ll refer to him as G. G.

It was G. G. who started the Worcester mutiny. What we mutinied about, goodness only knows! G. G. thought the petty officers, who were mostly ex-chief petty officers from the Royal Navy, had too much power over us, and that we cadets were too servile. Anyway, at 9.30 p.m. one early summer evening shrill siren whistles from the forecastle divisions gave the signal for the mutiny to begin. All except two of us turned out and stampeded wildly round the lower deck, shouting, cheering and booing.

The two who took no part were my friend Doorly, whose duty sense kept him in his hammock, and a thin little cadet, called Pitt, who remained fast asleep throughout the din. (Pitt, like the rest of us, had a nickname, a most appropriate nickname for this skinny little specimen: he was called the Bottomless Pit.)

All the masters and petty officers and instructors tried to control us, and the Captain really took command. Singling out my friend, the red-headed G. G., and one or two others as the ringleaders, he ordered them to fall in on the half-deck, and placing the gym instructor and one or two tough seamanship instructors in charge, got the rest of us, big and small, in time, up to the half-deck, and kept us there for an hour or so, clad in pyjamas and shivering. The most troublesome, including G. G., were sent on to the upper deck with their hammocks slung over their shoulders.

Those who know the Thames estuary, with its uninviting ozone, mud, marsh and swamp, can imagine how the courage oozed from their cooling bodies after an hour and a half of this!

Next day, and for some few days to come, we wore our belts reversed, with the anchor of the brass buckle upside down, which G. G. informed us was considered a traditional sign of mutiny.

Rations were cut down, plum-duff for dinner was stopped, and our mess-room manners were