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

Office. Brian and Colin were biologists, (specialising in birds and seals respectively)
and Launcelot was a geologist but had later taken holy orders and was now Dean of
Trinity Hall. All three had been on the British Grahamland Expedition (BGLE), l934-
37, sailing down to the Antarctic Peninsula on the steam yacht ‘Penola’ under the
leadership of John Rymill, and between them there was a fund of fascinating
experience. BGLE was one of the most productive scientific expeditions of that time,
which had set a standard for later work. The talk was all of dog-sledging, polar
equipment, the wildlife, the rigours of the environment and the nature of the men
involved.
Brian had done some novel work on penguins and on the Wilson's petrel and he
was a bibliophile and an avid collector of polar books. He was responsible for the
organisation of the library; incredibly knowledgeable, and methodical; he had
developed a classification system for the SPRI library and established 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 essentially 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 delightful man,
who went on to become Bishop of Portsmouth and then of Norwich, and later as
Dean of Windsor friendly with the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh. Brian, Colin and
Launcelot were later to become good friends, mentors and supporters.
Towards the end of that final summer term at Cambridge, before the
examinations, I had already had offers of several jobs. First, in fisheries research at
the Lowestoft Fisheries Laboratory, under Michael Graham, who had visited
Cambridge, looking for recruits and interested me in the possibilities. Secondly,
research on larval settling at the Plymouth Laboratory under F S Russell, the
Director, who was building up a world-beating team. Thirdly, a study of
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 SPRI 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. This
followed reports by James Marr of Discovery Investigations, but Robin found 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 rickety wooden
stairs in the old building I found the interview room on the very top floor. There I
was interviewed by Captain Ted Bingham, RN, Dr Brian Roberts and an unpleasant
Colonial Office chap called Hoff I think. I suppose the latter was what would be
called a, Arts 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
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