Expedition To Honor Dead Explorer

It was a tragic and mysterious end: the loss of England's greatest living explorer, H.W. Tilman, and his young crew in a converted tug, En Avant, in the waters off Antarctica.

Now, 13 years later, a British expedition has left for the same unexplored island in the Antarctic Circle, Smith Island off the South Polar Peninsula, to complete the grand scheme conceived by Tilman's 25-year-old expedition leader, Simon Richardson.

Warrant Officer John Kimbrey and nine other servicemen set off recently for Port Stanley in the Falklands with a plaque they hope to leave on Smith Island. Its message is simple: ``In memory of the men of the 1977 Smith Island expedition in En Avant which was lost, put here by the men of the 1990-91 Joint Services Expedition which they inspired.''

Tilman was certainly an inspirational character, both in the example of his life and through his numerous accounts of his travels.

Names such as Ernest Shackleton and Robert Scott are included in the roll-call of Britain's most brilliant and determined 20th-century explorers. But of all of them one name, that of Tilman stands out as a byword for a certain kind of taciturn and phlegmatic English endeavor that spanned oceans, jungles and great mountain ranges.

His was an extraordinary career: five decades of shoestring self-sponsored expeditions that came to an end in 1977 when Maj. ``Bill'' Tilman, 79, and five companions disappeared en route to the

ice-covered hulk of Smith Island.

One of the last links with the Victorian gentlemen explorers, his stamina, vision, blunt manner and hatred of publicity were famed throughout the mountaineering and sailing communities.

Commissioned into the Royal Artillery in 1915, Tilman was seriously injured on the Somme, where he won the Military Cross. During World War II, he parachuted behind enemy lines in Albania and Italy.

Despite his distinguished career as a soldier, exploring was his true passion, and he spent the 1930s and 1940s at the forefront of British mountaineering, wandering the Himalayas and in 1936 setting the altitude record for his first ascent of Nanda Devi. Denied the opportunity to climb on the 1936 Everest expedition because he was judged to have acclimatized too slowly, Tilman returned two years later to lead his own unsuccessful attempt.

His exploration of the Himalayas with Eric Shipton has never been surpassed, but despite their years of climbing together Tilman resolutely refused to call his companion by his first name.

Shipton tackled him just once on the issue on a belay ledge in the Himalayas.

``Tilman,'' said Shipton, ``We have climbed many mountains together in Africa and Asia. We have depended on each other in many dangerous situations. You have saved my life. I have saved yours. Is it not time you called me Eric?''

``No,'' replied Tilman.

Later Shipton tried again and asked Tilman why, to which his companion stated bluntly: ``Because it's such a damned silly name.''

Unable to continue climbing to such a high level after the war, Tilman turned his attention to the seas, sailing 114,000 miles before he lost his first boat, Mischief.

Simon Richardson, who persuaded Tilman to come out of retirement for his last voyage, was from a mold similar to his elder mentor and became close to him.

It was Richardson's idea to launch a Tilman-style adventure, without sponsorship and creature comforts, sailing from Southampton to Smith Island, where they anticipated having to climb ice cliffs from the boat to make their landing. Once there they planned to survey the island, where Tilman was to have celebrated his 80th birthday, and then attempt the first ascent of the island's 7,000-foot Mount Foster.

Against this background the style of John Kimbrey's expedition could hardly be further from the hard-boiled asceticism of Tilman and his young protege . Kimbrey's expedition will fly to Port Stanley, where it will meet up with HMS Endurance. From there they will be flown by helicopter on to Smith Island, where they will fix the plaque.

``They would have roared with laughter,'' says Simon Richardson's mother, Dorothy. ``Simon would never have called the way they are going - in such comfort and safety - exploration.''

Simon's really was an expedition. He paid for it all with his own money. He bought an old tug and stripped it down. In his last letter home, he said that if he never got any farther then it would still have been worth it.

But Dorothy Richardson and the families of the other men lost on En Avant believe Kimbrey's trip will serve as a memorial to efforts of the crew of that earlier expedition.

``When I got the letter from John Kimbrey telling me what he was planning with the plaque, it felt as though somehow Simon had been handed Smith Island and that his name would be linked forever with the place. I think all the other families feel the same.''