Explorer

In January 1930, Wager was invited by Gino Watkins to join the 1930-1 BAARE (British Arctic Air Route Expedition) Expedition to Greenland. This was the first of four expeditions to East Greenland and one to Everest in which Wager was involved in the 1930s whilst at Reading. It was very generous and far-sighted of Professor Hawkins to support Wager's applications for long periods of leave of absence (without pay) from the university to participate in these expeditions, which were to form the basis for Wager's research at Reading (Hargreaves 1991, P. 27). In all, Wager was absent for about five of the ten years he was at Reading!

Wager's involvement in the BAARE Expedition has been described by Watkins (1932), Deer (1967) and Hargreaves (1991). During the northward voyage of the Quest along the east coast of Greenland in August 1931, at the beginning of the expedition, Wager identified a number of Tertiary igneous intrusive centres stretching from Kap Gustav Holm at 66ºN to Kangerdlugssuaq (meaning large fjord in the eskimo language) at 69ºN (Hargreaves 1991). He also identified and named the Skaergaard Intrusion after the peninsula at the mouth of the Kangerdlugssuaq Fjord (Figs. 1 and 2). The exposure of the rock was excellent and its layering could be easily seen. Wager made this discovery from the deck of the ship because they were unable to go ashore then. At this time, the entire coast of the Kangerdlugssuaq Fjord was photographed from the air (D'Aeth 1932). Many high quality aerial photographs were taken, a few of which showed the Skaergaard Intrusion (Figs 3 and 4). However, these photographs could only be properly interpreted geologically in the light of field evidence. Wager subsequently prepared geological maps of the areas from Angmagsalik to Kangerdlugssuaq and from Kangerdlugssuaq to Kap Dalton (Wager 1934, Plates 11 and 12).

In his obituary of Wager, Deer (1967) wrote that ‘Other geologists would have recognized the presence of the plutonic centres in the area, some would have realized their unique interest but it is doubtful if any other British geologist of the period would have had the necessary toughness, persistence and scientific insight to exploit the discovery to the extent that Wager did'. Brooks (1985) considered that the recognition the importance of the Skaergaard Intrusion at that stage was ‘a stroke of genius.'

In an earlier letter to his father dated August 8 (Hargreaves 1991), Wager had written that this area on the East Coast of Greenland (see Deer 1967) ‘forms an absolute continuation with the work I am doing in Ireland. One could almost believe Wegener and accept his idea that this had recently shifted from Ireland!' Wager (1932) subsequently concluded that the igneous rocks of this region were closely comparable to the Tertiary igneous rocks of the Hebrides, Arran and Antrim but he found new features not yet seen in any of the Tertiary rocks.

Wager was fortunate in 1931 because the ice conditions were favourable and the 65 mile long Kangerdlugssuaq Fjord could be approached by the Quest and the ship's boats (Deer 1967). However, this area is normally treacherous because of the great masses of polar pack ice constantly drifting southwards from the Arctic Ocean (Brooks 1985).

At the end of October, Wager participated in the second relief of the Ice Cap Station, which was located at the highest point on the Ice Cap. This involved a 250-mile return sledge journey (Watkins 1932, Hargreaves 1991). The weather conditions were extremely bad for most of the journey and it took 39 days to reach the station. Because of the shortage of rations, August Courtauld volunteered to remain alone at the station to make the necessary meteorological observations. However, he could not be relieved until the following May! On the way back, Wager and his colleagues encountered terrific blizzards and returned to base on December 19 with practically no provisions left.

Wager also took part in an attempt to climb Mount Forel, the highest known peak in the Arctic at that time (11,500 feet). This involved a 360 mile return journey to get there. However, the party turned back about 700 ft below the summit because of the very steep slope at the top and it would probably have taken two days to cut the ice steps up it. Instead, they opted to spend the time surveying the surrounding country (Brown 1968). Nonetheless, this was still the highest climb in the Arctic to that date (Watkins 1932). They returned to base on June 10, 1931.

In the summer of 1932, Wager returned to East Greenland as part of the Danish Expedition organized by the Scoresby Sound Committee and led by Captain E. Mikkelsen (Deer 1967, Brooks 1985; Hargreaves 1991). During this expedition, he spent about a month working in the Kangerdlugssuaq area in almost continuous good weather extending his investigations northwards to Kap Dalton. For safety reasons, he invited his brother Hal to participate in ths expedition as his geological field assistant, to help carry his rocks and to accompany him in wild places.

In the summer of 1934, Wager was invited by the French explorer, Dr. Jean-Baptiste Charcot, to participate in a cruise of the Pourquoi Pas to the Watkins Mountains and attempt to climb them. Charcot is best known for his 1903-05 expedition to the west coast of Graham Land on the Antarctic Peninsula aboard the Français. However, in 1934, the Pourquoi Pas could only limp to Iceland and was forced to turn back before reaching Greenland (Deer 1967, Hargreaves 1991). Wager subsequently described Dr. Charcot as one of the kindest and most charming men it had been his fortune to meet.

In 1935, Wager organized and led the British East Greenland Expedition (BEGE) 1935-1936 which lasted from July 1935 to September 1936. Wager was personally responsible for organizing the financing and logistics of the expedition. Finance for expeditions in the 1930s was, of course, very difficult to obtain (Deer 1967). Wager was helped in this matter by August Courtauld who had the idea of hiring the Quest himself and joining in with a summer expedition to climb the highest mountain in the Arctic. Courtauld was the elder son of Samuel Courtauld who was chairman of Courtaulds from 1921 to 1947 and was therefore in a position to make this very generous offer. As a result, Wager was obliged to go up to Cuillins in Skye in January, 1935, to give Courtauld and Ebbe Munck some concentrated lessons in climbing with rope and ice axe (Hargreaves 1991).

The party Wager chose for the expedition consisted of Lawrence Wager, Hal Wager, Dr. E.C. Fountaine, W.A. (Alex) Deer, Philip Chambers and the two Wager wives, Phyl and Kit, for the entire expedition plus August Courtauld and Jack Longland, their wives Mollie and Peg, and Ebbe Munck for the summer. Phyl and Kit were the first two British women ever to winter over in Greenland. This expedition is described in considerable detail by Wager (1937), Deer (1967), Brooks (1985) and Hargreaves (1991).

Wager chose Deer for the expedition on the recommendation of James Wordie, Deer's tutor at St. John's College, Cambridge, who had been the geologist on Shackleton's Transantarctic Expedition of 1914-1917 and who had participated in a number of expeditions to the Arctic since the war (Deer 1974). At that time, Deer held the degrees of B.Sc. (1932) and M.Sc. (1933) in Geology from The Victoria University of Manchester and was a 25 year old Ph.D. student working under C.E. Tilley on the Glen Tilt complex of Perthshire at Cambridge. On being asked to go on the expedition by Wager, Deer readily accepted the opportunity to work with so dynamic a personality as Wager but had no idea of the petrological eldorado awaiting him there. Deer was subsequently awarded the degree of Ph.D. by Cambridge University in 1937 based of his thesis entitled ‘1. The dioritesand associated rocks of the Glen Tilt complex, Perthshire. 2. The petrology ofthe Skaergaard Halvoen gabbro complex, Kangerdlugsuak, east Greenland.'

The Quest sailed from Aberdeen on July 5, 1935. They had a very rough trip to Iceland and were very seasick (Hargreaves 1991). Wager was a notoriously bad sailor (Brooks 1985). When they reached Greenland on July 15, the Quest was jammed in by huge icebergs but they gradually managed to manoevre through them but not before the captain had announced that, if they touched a berg with the swell prevailing, the ship would be lost (Courtauld 1936). They later discovered that four Norwegian sealing ships had sunk that night just south of Angmagsalik but that the fifth ship managed to pick up 130 survivors from the ice. The team finally arrived safely at Angmagsalik on July 17.

The first task in Angmagsalik was to select the eskimos who would go to Kangerdlugssuaq with them. They eventually chose two families plus a strong and willing girl known as ‘the horse' making 14 in all. The Wagers wanted contact and friendship with eskimo families who knew about living conditions and travelling in Greenland. The eskimos wanted access to polar bear skins, narwhal tusks and seal skins. This was a symbiotic relationship that appears to have been very successful and together they made a friendly little community. In practice, the eskimo formed an essential part of the expedition. In all, the eskimoes killed 410 seals, 28 bears and 40 narwwahls during their year away (Wager 1937). On the other side, an influenza epidemic at Angmagsalik killed 70 out of the total population of 800 there during their absence (Wager 1937). On this expedition, Wager would have been in the position to follow the example of Gino Watkins of living hard and following eskimo customs in dress and hunting (Hargreaves 1991, Brown 1992).

The Quest arrived at Kangerdlugssuaq on August 4 and Wager had time to choose the site for his prefabricated winter home in Home Bay at the northern end of the Skaergaard Peninsula. They also had at their disposal two wooden houses put up in 1932 during Mikkelsen's expedition (Wager 1937). On August 7, the climbing party consisting of Wager, August Courtauld, Jack Longland, Hal Wager, Fountaine and Ebbe Muncke plus a supporting party of Alex Deer, Chambers and a member of the ship's crew set off to the north in the Quest. They were obliged to start from I.C. Jacobsen's Fjord 90 miles to the southwest of where they had intended because of the heavy pack ice (Deer 1967). Jack Longland, a fellow climber on the Everest Expedition, considered that Wager did a magnificent job of reorganizing the route to what was then considered to be the highest peak in the Arctic. By a very careful study of the aerial photographs and maps he concluded the best chance of getting to the mountain was by sledging (with dogs) from where they were stuck (Hargreaves 1991). The party reached the east side of Christian IV Glacier in eight days and two days later had climbed the 12,200 ft mountain, which was subsequently named Gunnbjorns Fjaeld by the Danish authorities. They started the final assault on the summit at 4:20 AM in order to get better ice conditions, reached the summit at 5 PM and got back to their camp at about 9 PM (Courtauld 1936). Wager's inspired choice of route and tactics over the most uncomfortable terrain brought success against all expectations. The party returned to Irminger Fjord and got back half an hour before the Quest arrived to pick them up and take them to Kangerdlugssuaq. In their absence, Deer and Chalmers had almost completed the winter house (Courtauld 1936). On August 29, they saw the Quest off as it sailed back to England, their last contact with the outside world for a year.

Following the departure of the Quest, the geological programme began in earnest. This has been described in some detail by Wager (1937), Deer (1967), Brooks (1985) and Hargreaves (1991). There were two principal objectives, the main one being the detailed mapping of the Skaergaard Intrusion and the second one the mapping of as much of the area to the east of Kangerdlugssuaq as could be reasonably reached by short journeys. The field programme was extremely demanding and has been described in detail by Wager (1937).

Before the field programme could be undertaken, routes to the inland areas, where the glaciers provide the thoroughfares for travel by dog sledge, had to be reconnoitred and food dumps to support the geological field parties had to be laid down. These were logistical requirements of some magnitude, which took up a considerable amount of expedition time.

The weather was more problematic (Wager 1937). Temperatures ranged from a maximum of about 50°F in July to about -20°F in February. The sun remained below the horizon for about five weeks from the beginning of December but geological samples could still be collected during the four hours of twighlight around noon. Violent föhn winds periodically poured down from the Ice Cap into the huge Kangerdlugssuaq Fjord, leading to sudden increases in air temperature and rapid melting of the snow. In winter the föhn winds could occur at weekly intervals, causing snow and poor visibility (Wager 1937).

The geological field programme was undertaken principally by Wager, Deer, Dr. E.C. Fountaine and Hal Wager working in two two-man teams. Dr. Fountaine was the expedition's doctor, a mountaineer and responsible for any survey work that might be required. Wager kept up the pressure on geological fieldwork throughout the autumn and mapping was continued even in December during short spells when the weather permitted (Deer 1967). However, scientific work was also undertaken at base in winter during periods of bad weather. This included thin sectioning, microscope work, mineral separation and collating the results of field work. Rock sections were also used to direct future fieldwork. In addition, Fountaine began to make the large-scale map that was later used as the base for the detailed geological survey. From December 16-24, Wager and Deer were in Miki Fjord, Irminger Fjord and the mountains to the north and Fountaine and Chambers were out making measurements of the rate of glacier movement at the Friederiksborg Glacier. They arrived back at base on Christmas Eve to celebrate Christmas with the eskimos (Wager 1937). On New Year's Eve, Wager proposed the toast ‘To Greenland, may it never be exploited.' (Hargreaves 1991).

On March 5, 1936, Wager and Fountaine set out to map the nunataks fringing the Ice Cap in the region of the Seward Plateau and the Prince of Wales Mountains (Fig. 5). The journey took 5 weeks. On June 1, Deer and Fountaine started on the second long sledge journey following the same route to Seward Plateau and on to Ice Cap and around the head of Kangerdlugssuaq to the Triangular nunataks and Hutchinson plateau before continuing through the mountain region west of the fjord (Fig. 6). This journey was completed sometime after July 11 but both Deer and Fountaine continued geological work with other parties nearer to base. During the course of these two journeys, reconnaissance mapping of about 10,000 square km was completed (Deer 1967).

In all, 35,000 square km of difficult country was mapped geologically during this expedition with some small areas mapped in detail (Deer 1967, Hargreaves 1991). This was a remarkable achievement accomplished almost entirely by two sledging parties, each of two men. It is clear that Wager was a bit of a slave driver (Deer 1967, Brooks 1985) but he was able to achieve these results through his own drive and enthusiasm, which he passed on to others.

On July 29, 1936, the expedition members were returning to base when they saw the S.S. Saelis in the bay, which they promptly charted to take them home. The Saelis returned on 20 August and they sailed from Kangerdlugssuaq on that day. On the way back, they encountered a tremendous storm on September 16 after calling in at Iceland. During this storm, the Pourquoi Pas ran aground just south of Reykjavik. All hands, including Dr. Charcot, were lost except for one sailor who survived (W.E.G. 1936).

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