If you think surveyors are the type of people who are content to lead safe and unadventurous lives, you couldn’t be more wrong. For starters, it’s a discipline with many varied branches – there are building surveyors and valuation surveyors, quantity surveyors and land surveyors, to name the most familiar ones. Career paths can take you in many different directions, even including overseas opportunities.
But that’s not all. Here are 3 extraordinary British men who achieved remarkable things, in addition to being professional surveyors.
1. David Scott Cowper
David Cowper was born in 1942 and educated at Stowe School in Newcastle. Although he’s a Chartered Surveyor and a RICS Fellow, his real passion is sailing.
Early sailing achievements
In the 1970s, David Cowper set sail and successfully completed The Observer Around Britain Race and The Observer Single-Handed Trans-Atlantic Race in his boat Airdale. Then, in 1980, he completed the fastest ever solo circumnavigation of the globe in his 41-foot sloop, Ocean Bound, beating Sir Francis Chichester’s 16-metre Gypsy Moth IV record of 226 days by 1 day. In the same year, he was awarded the Freedom of the City of Newcastle.
Being a man of steel and gritty determination, just two years later, he repeated this feat, only this time he sailed against the prevailing westerly winds and rounded all five capes in just 237 days. This beat Chay Blyth’s record by a staggering 72 days.
Circumnavigating by motor boat
Switching his attention to motor boats, in 1984/1985 Cowper became the first person to circumnavigate solo in a 42-foot ex-Royal National Lifeboat Institution Watson wooden lifeboat, named the Mabel E. Holland.
But this was only a prelude to his first solo circumnavigation via the Northwest Passage, which took him 4 years and 2 months to complete. He departed from Newcastle in the Mabel E. Holland in July 1986 and made his way across the North Atlantic, eventually reaching Fort Ross. Here, the Mabel E. Holland remained stuck fast in ice for two years.
In 1988, Cowper finally managed to reach Alaska but had to leave the boat on the Mackenzie River in eastern Alaska, before one of the coldest Arctic winters on record. Finally, on the 10th August 1989, he sailed into the Bering Strait, becoming the first person to complete the passage single-handed as part of a circumnavigation of the world.
2. Frederick William J. Palmer
Frederick Palmer, an Englishman born in 1864, was an outstanding surveyor, civil engineer, and structural engineer, who became known throughout the UK for his splendid design of the King’s Hall in Herne Bay on the Kentish coast.
The Kings Hall, Herne Bay
This theatre, concert hall and dance hall, built as The Pavilion in 1903-1904 and developed as the King Edward VII Memorial Hall in 1913 in memory of the late king, is one of Herne Bay’s most memorable tourist attractions. The Hall’s excavation and the new and fashionable use of ferro-concrete cost £6,000, which was a mighty sum in those days.
Commitment to local infrastructure
As Town Surveyor for Herne Bay Council, and not one to shirk work, Palmer reconstructed all the main roads, rebuilt Hampton Pier and constructed a new sea wall. In fact, he did so much digging that there’s now a museum in Herne to display all of the pottery, stone tools, and historic artefacts found by workmen and builders.
Palmer didn’t mind getting his hands dirty, either, as he ‘sewered’ the entire East Cliff of Herne, which included a 2-foot-six-inch cast iron sewer pipe, laid along the foot of the cliff and another that ran right up the face. He also sewered around nine miles under the streets of West Cliff and East Cliff.
He died in 1947 at the age of 83.
3. Henry Haversham Godwin-Austen
Here’s a man who certainly didn’t sit still. Born in July 1834, Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Haversham Godwin-Austen was an English surveyor, topographer, geologist and naturalist.
The War Years
In the early 1850s, he saw action in the Second Anglo-Burmese war and, while there, he completed the survey on the Irrawaddy Delta. As you do.
After being seriously injured in an attack near Udhampur, he took a year’s leave and returned to England where he joined the second Battalion of his regiment. For three years from 1857 to June 1860 he worked for the Survey of India, mainly around the Kazi Nag, Pir Panjal, and Marau-Warwan regions and played a leading role in the Trigonometrical Survey. He was responsible for mapping Shigar and the lower Saltoro valley as far as the south face of K1, Masherbrum.
Although Godwin-Austen paid particular attention to his survey work, his increasing passion and interest lay in identifying birds. His book Birds of Assam detailed a number of birds for the very first time, and he even drew illustrations of some new bird species.
Climbing to the very top
Not only did Godwin-Austen climb and explore the Himalayan mountains, he also surveyed the glaciers at the base of K2. The name given to the Karakoram peak K2 was Mount Godwin-Austen and the Godwin Austen Glacier was also named in his honour.
Some people view Gladwin-Austen as the greatest mountaineer of his time, and in 1861, he traversed the Skoro La, beyond Skardu and Shigar, where he surveyed the Karakoram glaciers: Baltoro, Punmah, Biafo, Chiring. Here, he climbed to over a thousand metres above Urdukas on the Baltoro Glacier, where he was able to fix the height and position of K2 for the very first time.
And climbing back down again…
Godwin-Austen’s personal life wasn’t without controversy as he was married three times. He also experienced financial difficulties and was forced to sell his collection of birds to the British Museum. However, in 1899, he was declared bankrupt, although by 1902, he had discharged the bankruptcy.
In his twilight years, he converted to Buddhism and erected a small Burmese-style shrine at Nore, his home in Hascombe, Surrey. After he died in 1923, aged 89, the shrine became hidden in the brambles and was only rediscovered in 1962 when the actor Dirk Bogarde became the new owner of Nore.
Bio:
Mike James, an independent content writer and architectural enthusiast – working with London-based Chartered Surveyors http://www.peterbarry.co.uk/
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