Members of British Graham Land Expedition

Photographs of nine members of the British Graham Land Expedition with John Rymill in the centre. Others are I F Meiklejohn, Q Riley, J I Moore, A Stephenson, E W Bingham, W L S Fleming, W E Hampton, B B Roberts.

These men comprised the shore party, which was equipped with a light aircraft, dog teams and motor boats for inshore navigation.The British Graham Land Expedition (BGLE) of 1934-37 was developed on a modest scale. John Rymill, the leader, proposed to explore and accurately survey South Graham Land - the Antarctic Peninsula. It was intended to explore the area which Hubert Wilkins had flown over in 1928. Rymill was joined on this expedition by a number of his companions from earlier expeditions in Greenland.

The men were experienced dog-handlers and familiar with ice conditions from their previous work in Greenland. Hampton and Rymill were both experienced pilots, with Hampton a qualified aeronautical engineer. Quintin Riley was in charge of the small boats; Bingham was in charge of the dogs.

Following on from the methods established in Greenland, coastal surveys by motorboat were supported by aerial photography. The Fox Moth aircraft also helped to establish advance bases, to reconnoitre ice conditions and search for possible harbours. With this knowledge Rymill could work out future plans.

The early work of the BGLE established that the reports of previous explorers about the land/sea/ice distribution to the south were inaccurate and so it was decided to explore the area more thoroughly. A base was established in the Argentine Islands. The survey work was rigorously methodical: every 48 to 80 kilometres astronomical fixes were made and the intermediate detail was completed with plane-table and compass traverses, and the distances measured by sledge-wheel.

The base was then moved south to Marguerite Bay, and aerial flights and land surveys with the dog teams continued. The channels discerned by Hubert Wilkins in his 1928-29 flights were disproved. Rymill and Bingham also made a land traverse of the peninsula, again confirming that the channels did not exist.

The work of the British Graham Land Expedition was an outstanding success. Concentrating on a small area of the Antarctic and using aerial surveys backed up by careful land surveys, the expedition proved that Graham Land was a peninsula, not a series of islands. King George VI Sound was discovered and miles of coastline were charted. It was the last of the small privately funded expeditions to the Antarctic.

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