Hurley, Frank, 1885-1962

Frank Hurley, born James Francis Hurley in Sydney, Australia, on October 15 1885, was a photographer and cinematographer. He left school without qualifications and worked in a steel mill before completing his education at the University of Sydney. He then worked for a firm of photographers but soon left to join the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, 1911-1914 (leader Douglas Mawson). He took photographs of wildlife and was also a member of the party of three that sledged to the South Magnetic Pole in 1912.

Almost immediately after the return of this expedition, he joined the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition [Weddell Sea Party], 1914-1916 (leader Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton), sailing in Endurance . After the ship was crushed in the pack ice of the Weddell Sea, he and his companions escaped in boats to Elephant Island. A party of six led by Shackleton made the epic journey from Elephant Island to South Georgia to seek help from the Stromness whaling station and in August 1916, Hurley and the remaining members of the expedition were rescued from Elephant Island.

He brought back memorable photographs of the wreck of the Endurance and scenes on Elephant Island together with the documentary film In the grip of the polar ice [This was later titled The Endurance and is now generally known as South ].

During the First World War, Hurley served as an official war photographer in France and in the Middle East. Then followed filming ventures in New Guinea and central Australia as well as lecture tours in America before he returned to the Antarctic with the British, Australian and New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition, 1929-1931 (leader Sir Douglas Mawson). After this expedition, Hurley served as a war photographer in the Second World War.

He published Shackleton's Argonauts, a saga of the Antarctic ice-packs by James Francis Hurley, Angus and Robertson, Sydney (1948). His Argonauts of the South, being a narrative of voyaging and polar seas and adventures in the Antarctic with Sir Douglas Mawson and Sir Ernest Shackleton by James Francis Hurley, G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York (1925).