Part I: Seals teeth and whales ears - Scott Polar Research Institute ...

Brian had done some novel work on penguins and on the Wilson's petrel; he was
a bibliophile and an avid collector of polar books. He was responsible for the
organization of the library; incredibly knowledgeable, and methodical, he had
developed a classification system for the library and the reprint collection, which I
was later to find invaluable. Colin had done innovative research on the Weddell and
crabeater seals of the Antarctic, breaking new ground and introducing a more
scientific approach replacing the former anecdotal natural history, which largely
constituted the literature up to then. He had also written a very interesting and
readable introduction to the polar regions, ‘Antarctic and Antarctic’. I found myself
drawn to their work. Launcelot was a charming man, who went on to become
Bishop of Portsmouth and of Norwich, and later as Dean of Windsor a friend of the
Queen and Duke of Edinburgh. Brian, Colin and Launcelot later became mentors,
good friends and supporters.
Towards my first job
Towards the end of the final summer term, before the examinations, I had
already had offers of several jobs. One was in fisheries research at the Lowestoft
Fisheries Laboratory, under Michael Graham, who had visited Cambridge, looking
for recruits and interested me in the possibilities. Another involved research on
larval settling at the Plymouth Laboratory under F S Russell, the Director, who was
building up a world-beating team. A third was research on Hippopotamus biology in
the Gambia as a member of an Oxford and Cambridge student Expedition. Then one
day, as I was walking into a lecture, John Carthy asked if I was interested in going to
the Antarctic to work on elephant seal biology. A physicist, Gordon Robin (later to
become Director of the Scott Polar Research Institute and a good friend), a member
of the Falklands Islands Dependencies Survey (FIDS) had reported large numbers of
elephant seals at Signy Island, one of the South Orkney Islands (earlier reported by
James Marr of Discovery Investigations), and that there was a small breeding
population there in the austral spring. Brian Roberts was looking for a biologist to
go there to work as a member of FIDS. I was a bit surprised that he hadn’t
approached me directly, but perhaps he’d put John Carthy up to it.
I expressed an interest and was later called to London for interview at Queen
Anne's Mansions, near St James's Park. Having negotiated flights of ricketty wooden
stairs in the old building I found the interview room on the very top floor. I was
interviewed by Captain Ted Bingham, RN, Brian Roberts and a chap called Hoff
representing the Colonial Office I think. I suppose the latter was what would be
called a classics generalist; he was anti-science, or at least strongly conveyed that
impression at my interview, and was rather aggressive as I recall, claiming that
scientists were uncultured, illiterate philistines etc. Perhaps he was just trying to
provoke me, but I took a dislike to him and pointed out in response that in my view
scientists - including this one - knew much more about literature and the arts than
arts graduates did about science. Despite this rejoinder, I was offered the job,
starting at the end of October, when I would have two months to prepare, before
departure. The job was "all-found", housing, food and clothing provided and the
salary was £360 a year! This was equivalent to some £8,000 a year today.
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