Edward Adrian Wilson

CHELTENHAM CHILDHOOD

Edward Adrian Wilson was born on 23 July 1872 at Montpellier Terrace, Cheltenham, second son and fifth child of a respected Cheltenham medical practitioner Edward Thomas Wilson (1832-1918). As a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, his father pioneered the development of isolation fever hospitals, district nurses and a clean drinking water supply for Cheltenham. He helped to found the Delancey hospital, the local Municipal Museum and the Cheltenham Camera Club. He was also President of the Cheltenham Natural Science Society, publishing numerous scientific papers.

Edward Adrian Wilson was educated at Cheltenham College and studied natural science and medicine at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge and St. George's Hospital, London. At Gonville and Caius College the college's flag which Wilson took to the South Pole is preserved.

Watercolour of Cheltenham by E. Wilson

He always excelled in art and through his teenage years he taught himself to become a quite remarkable field naturalist. In 1898, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and spent several months convalescing in Norway and Switzerland, giving him the opportunity to hone his skills as a watercolour artist and wildlife illustrator.

THE FIRST EXPEDITION

After qualifying in medicine in 1900, Wilson practised at Cheltenham Hospital, where in 1901 he was appointed Junior House Surgeon. Later in the same year he was selected to join the British National Antarctic Expedition, 1901-1904 under Captain Robert Falcon Scott on the RRS Discovery, as junior surgeon and zoologist. The RRS Discovery was the last wooden three-masted ship to be built in the British Isles, and was launched on 21 March 1901, designed for Antarctic research.

Less than a month before his departure to the Antarctic, he married Oriana Souper. Whilst on this expedition, he accompanied Scott and Ernest Henry Shackleton on a major sledge journey, exploring inland across the Ross Ice Shelf toward the South Pole. On 30 December 1902, the party reached 82° 17'S, their farthest south. Wilson's abilities in accurately illustrating both topography and wildlife on the expedition were invaluable and his skills as confidant and mediator were equally valued.

Antarctic landscape by E. Wilson

On his return to England in 1904, Wilson wrote up and published his zoological data, and was commissioned to illustrate books on British birds and mammals. He was appointed as principal field-observer, anatomist and physiologist to the Board of Agriculture's investigation into the cause of grouse disease on British moor lands.

In 1909, Wilson was again approached by Scott to accompany him on the British Antarctic Expedition, 1910-1913, as chief of the scientific staff. During the winters at Cape Evans on Ross Island, he sketched and painted many Antarctic landscapes, the majority of which are now held in the archives of the Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge. Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum has also a small gallery of his drawings and other possessions in a section dedicated to his life. He led a winter sledging journey with Henry Robinson Bowers and Apsley Cherry-Garrard to Cape Crozier to collect emperor penguin embryos, and was selected by Scott for the long sledging journey to the South Pole.

South Pole expedition Jan 18 1912 Edward Wilson first from the left

TO THE SOUTH POLE

For the trip to the Pole in 1911, Capt. Scott decided to supplement sledge dogs with a team of Siberian-bred ponies. Fearing that the ponies would freeze to death, Scott could not launch his mission for the Pole until November -- late in the Antarctic spring. Scott's party of fourteen men departed on November 1. As they made their way south, the men slaughtered the ponies and cached their meat at depots for the return trip. On December 9, the last of the ponies was slaughtered. Two days later, two men led the dog team back to the camp at Cape Evans; the rest of the trip would require man-hauling. Prior to the journey, Scott had decided that when they reached 85¼ S, only eight men would continue on while the rest would return to the coast -- so on December 22nd, four more men headed back to Cape Evans. In early January of 1912, when they reached 87¼ 35', Scott chose the men who would continue with him on the final leg of the expedition: Edward Wilson, Henry Bowers, Lawrence Oates, and Edgar Evans.

As these five men approached the Pole, they grew excited, as they had not seen any sign of Amundsen's team. They had no way of knowing that the Norwegian Roald Amundsen had already reached the Pole on December 14. On 17 January 1912, Wilson, along with Scott, Henry Robinson Bowers, Lawrence Edward Grace Oates and Edgar Evans, attained the Pole. On the return journey, the weakened party faced exceptionally unfavourable weather and sledging conditions. Wilson died with Scott and Bowers in late March 1912, laid up in a blizzard 11 miles short of One Ton Depot. News of the tragedy did not reach Britain until February 1913. In 1914 Wilson's memorial was unveiled in Cheltenham's Long Garden in the Promenade.