James Mann Wordie

James Mann Wordie was born on 26 April 1889 at Partick, Lanarkshire, Scotland. He studied geology at Glasgow University and St. John's College, Cambridge. In 1913 he visited the Yukon and Alaska, and the following year joined the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition [Weddell Sea Party], 1914-1916 (leader Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton), as geologist and chief of scientific staff. After Endurance was crushed in the pack ice of the Weddell Sea, the crew lived for six months on drifting ice until this broke up northeast of the Antarctic Peninsula. Proceeding in three open boats, the party of twenty-eight men reached Elephant Island on 15 April 1916. Wordie and his companions were rescued from the island on 30 August 1916.

During the First World War, he served with distinction as an artillery officer. Between 1919 and 1937, he ran a series of expeditions to the Arctic, including Spitsbergen, Jan Mayen, east and west Greenland, and Baffin Island. In 1947 he returned to the Antarctic to advise on the future programme of the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey.

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