(Antarctica, Southern Ocean, Falkland Islands, Scientific Ex...

Hammer

£170

(Antarctica, Southern Ocean, Falkland Islands, Scientific Expeditions.) Eustace Rolfe Gunther: 'Notes and Sketches Made During Two Years on the 'Discovery' Expedition 1925-1927', Oxford, Holywell Press, 1928, colour frontis depicting Mt. Paget and Allardyce Range, South Georgia, plus 24 pages of b/w illustrations from photographs and numerous in text b/w ills. from sketches, maps, charts etc, as called for, 52pp, 4to, (28.5 x 22cm), original printed wraps. Eustace Rolfe Gunther (1902-1940), biologist and oceanographer, was born at Heacham, Norfolk, the elder of the two sons of Robert William Theodore Gunther, Oxford University reader in the history of science and his wife Amy, née Neville-Rolfe. Appointed by the Discovery Committee as their youngest zoologist in 1924, he worked in the London office with Kemp and Hardy on the preparations, especially for the ship's library, for the Discovery's two year expedition (1925-27) to the South Atlantic. Based in South Georgia in 1926 and 1927, he assisted with plankton surveys and attempts at whale marking, after each season he spent time in the Falklands. In 1930 he sailed south again as senior scientist on the William Scoresby. During this commission he investigated the behaviour of the Peru Coastal Current followed by a trawling survey of the Patagonian continental shelf from 53°-42°S. He was based in Stanley and returned there between cruises.
His third visit south was for whale marking near South Georgia from December 1936-February 1937. He visited many Falkland settlements, West Point and Hill Cove, riding to Fitzroy, collecting pebbles at Pebble Island and writing diary style letters home (1500 quarto pages in 1925-27) which described every detail of Falkland and ship life. A keen naturalist and observer, he painted watercolours and drew throughout his time there, with an insistence on scientific accuracy. It shows in his drawings of whales in the Discovery Report Vol XXV and in the illustrations to Notes and Sketches reprinted from the Draconian. After returning to England, as a member of the Territorial Army he was called up at the outbreak of war. He died at the age of just 37 when he was tragically accidentally shot while on active service in May 1940 near North Walsham, Norfolk, where he was stationed. Gunther was awarded the Polar Medal, bronze, posthumously in 1944. Scarce