Michael Spender
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Michael Alfred Spender (1906-1945) left Oxford (Balliol) in 1928 with a double first in engineering. He immediately joined the Great Barrier Reef expedition on behalf of the Royal Geographic Society (RGS) spending 12 months surveying and mapping the Australian reefs and observing their tides. In 1930, returning to England, he spent 6 months with the Gramophone Co (His Master's Voice), then, finding this exceedingly boring, left commerce forever to study photographic surveying in Zürich and Berlin (1931-2). He joined three Danish map-making expeditions to South East Greenland in 1932-3, one under Captain Ejnar Mikkelsen and two under Dr Knud Rasmussen.
Whilst organising the 1935 Mt Everest Expedition [1] Eric Shipton spent a weekend discussing food, equipment, etc., with Lawrence 'Bill' Wager (lawrence Wager) who had been to Everest in 1933. While talking about team selection, Wager suggested 'It is a great advantage to include one member so universally disliked that the others, with a common object for their spleen, are drawn together in close comradeship.' Though an expedient employed by most successful dictators, Shipton was astonished to hear it proposed in this context, particularly by someone as temperate and warm-hearted as Wager. Wager went on to say he had found the perfect 'spleen object' in Michael Spender, whom he regarded as a brilliant surveyor and an excellent traveler, but also a man whose overbearing conceit had already made him unpopular on each of his several expeditions – something, happily, he (Spender) did not seem to notice, let alone resent.
Shortly afterwards Shipton was startled to hear that the Committee, on the advice of the RGS, had officially invited Spender to join the expedition as surveyor, with the specific task of completing a stereo-photogrammetric survey of the northern face of Everest. At the time Spender had been in Copenhagen working on the surveying results of the Greenland expedition, on which he had joined Wager, and was in England for a holiday. Kindly the Danish Geodetic Institute released him from his contract. In the event Spender had just three weeks in which to make plans and collect equipment for the Himalayan trip. Dealing with this challenge, as with those of the expedition itself, Spender displayed an energy and enthusiasm which Shipton soon came to respect.
They took with them the RGS's Wild photo-theodolite, used by Major (later Professor) Mason in the Karakoram in 1926; a lighter Zeiss photo-theodolite used in Greenland and adapted to take roll-films, lent by the Danish Geodetic Institute; and the Watts-Leica photo-theodolite, an instrument of great simplicity.
So it seemed that Shipton would be conducting Wager's experiment in human relations after all! He was a little apprehensive, but too intrigued with the idea to raise any objections. But the outcome was very different from what he had expected; for, although Michael Spender could be tactless, quick tempered and not much good at 'winning friends and influencing people', in him Shipton also found an extraordinary originality of outlook, totally unfettered by conventional thought. He was also sensitive and honest enough to be well aware of his faults and reveal a surprising humility. In due course Shipton found Spender was a delightful and stimulating companion and they became close friends.
Perhaps Shipton's liking for him influenced the rest of the party, or they were an exceptionally tolerant lot, or Spender himself mellowed; he certainly did not assume the role of scapegoat. Nor was one needed. The width of their field of operations meant that the 1935 party was frequently split into small units, each with its separate objective. There was remarkably little friction. In any case, another of the expedition members, Dan Bryant made dissension difficult to sustain, for any ostentation or humbug became the target of his gentle mockery, which discouraged anyone from taking himself or his grievances too seriously.
In 1937 Spender joined Shipton and Tilman again, on the expedition to the Shaksgam River Valley on the northern side of the Karakoram, described in Shipton's Blank On The Map. The fourth member of the expedition was John Auden, brother of the poet W H Auden. During this expedition they crossed Wesm (later to be known as Spender's) Pass.
In Upon That Mountain Shipton wrote: 'It would be difficult to find two people less alike in their intellectual make-up than Tilman and Spender. Yet I regard each in his way as the best companion I could wish for. Their own relationship was a curious one. Neither appeared to take the other particularly seriously, though I detected a strong mutual esteem. Far more flammable was the relationship between the two scientists [Spender and Auden], and it was generally prudent to keep them separated as much as possible. This was odd in a way because each was untiring in his cooperation in the work of the other. Perhaps it was because they both had unusually hearty appetites, or perhaps because both had brothers who were celebrated poets. I find that scientists often are rather intolerant of one another.'
Spender spent parts of 1938-9 in Zürich with the Wild instrument company. The latest massive Wild Autograph machine for mapping and plotting precise measurements in three dimensions from air photographs was bought by the Aircraft Operating Company, which Spender joined. There was only one other Wild Autograph in the UK. In December 1939 he was asked what information he could get from a set of small high level (34,000 feet) air photos, to which he answered "I'm getting quite a lot out of them. I can plot and measure anything as long as I can see its outline." More photos arrived the next day. So began his work in wartime photo-intelligence.
'Before long', wrote Constance Babington-Smith in Evidence in Camera, 'he was to become one the greatest influences on the development of interpretation in the early part of the war.' Photo-intelligence grew fast and one of the many people brought in to it by Spender was 'Bill' Wager.
In July 1941, as the RAF sought to bureaucratize its rapidly expanding photo-intelligence operations, Spender, along with some other leading spirits of the early regime of photo-intelligence, was effectively squeezed out of the RAF. After spells at the Admiralty and the BBC, he rejoined the RAF at the bottom in January 1943. On 3 May 1945, serving as a Squadron Leader in photo-intelligence with 34 Wing, 2nd Tactical Air Force, the plane in which he was travelling from München-Gladbach, Germany, to the airfield at Eindhoven, Holland, hit a tree after take-off; he died two days later.
The obituary by Shipton in the Geographical Journal (Nov-Dec 1945) ended, 'There was no man in whose company I found more pleasure or with whom I would rather have shared the deep and varied experience of an exploratory journey.'
