July 2: Royal Geographical Society

In the afternoon, we visited the Royal Geographical Society (RGS).

Statue of Ernest Shackleton outside the RGS. 

There's a statue of David Livingstone on the other side of the building.

The RGS was founded in 1830, according to its website, to "promote the advancement of geographical science." The RGS collects data from field expeditions. In its earlier days, it sponsored major expeditions (led by Shackleton, Scott, Livingstone, and Hillary, to name a few), so it has special collections of those. The RGS still funds some expeditions. It also publishes materials and provides educational programs. Staff members even write educational inserts for cruise companies.

We were brought into the Society's library, which has been in its current location since 2004. There used to be separate libraries for maps, pictures, books, etc., with separate catalogs for each. Now, all the collections are housed together, organized into one catalog (which is available online), and the staffs have been brought into one library.

The library houses well over 2 million items (they really don't know because there are just so many), comprising around 1 million maps, 500,000 images, 250,000 bound volumes, and 500 boxes of archived materials. 

Eugene Rae, the Principle Librarian, talked us through a "hot and cold showcase" set out on the tables in the library, so named because the display had artifacts from African expeditions on one side and polar expeditions on the other. We were not allowed to take photographs of the collection, so I only have the images above of the outside of the building. I was so disappointed, because I would have loved to have shown my brother pictures of:

-  A compass used by David Livingstone during an expedition to find the source of the Nile.

- The hat Livingstone was wearing when he was found by Henry Stanley in 1871.

- Stanley's hat from that meeting, along with a pair of his boots from his expedition to find the source of the Congo in 1874.

- A sextant used by John Hanning Speke when he discovered Lake Victoria and the source of the Nile.

- A pair of Inuit boots and sun visors brought back by William Parry from an expedition to find the Northwest passage in 1924.

- A fox collar used by the McClintock Arctic Expedition, whose purpose was to track down the lost Franklin Arctic Expedition. The idea was that McClintock's men would catch foxes, put these collars on them, and somehow the foxes would help them find the lost explorers. Yeah...it didn't work.

- Ernest Shackleton's balaclava helmet from his 1901-1904 expedition to the Antarctic.

- The Bible Shackleton had with him during his 1914 expedition.

- Some items (boots, wristwatch, penknife) found on the mummified remains of George Mallory, who died near the top of Mount Everest in 1924. His body was discovered by an American film crew in 1999. 

 

Eugene said that he learns about items in the collection as he lends them out (many of these artifacts travel the world as parts of various exhibits). It must be amazing to have this, sort of, "history of adventure" at your fingertips all the time.