Albert Borlase Armitage was born
at Balquhidder, Perthshire, Scotland on 2 July 1864, his parents
were holidaying there at the time. Albert's parents were Bradford
born Samuel Harris Tatham Armitage M.D. and Alice (formerly Lees)
Armitage from Ashton under Lyne, who had married at St Michael's
church, Ashton under Lyne on 18 June 1857 (info from International
Genealogy index). In 1860 Armitage snr. had been appointed Honorary
Surgeon to the 31st Lancashire Rifle Volunteers.
Albert Armitage had six brothers,
three of whom went to sea. He was the only one of seven boys who
would eventually marry.
SHT Armitage might have been a mason;
I have a copy of Two Years in the Antarctic (by Albert Armitage)
inscribed by SHT Armitage to Sir Edward Letchworth who was the Grand
Master of the English/British freemason in 1905.
His fairly brief childhood was largely
spent in Scarborough where his father had a practice at the time.
It seems likely he had, by today's standards, a rather harsh childhood.
At the age of six he is a boarder at the Clifton Villa school in
Scarborough. At the time of the 1871 Census all his brothers bar
one (Cecil, aged one year) were away from home, presumably at boarding
school, despite the family having a housemaid, a cook and two nurses.
In his biography, Cadet to Commodore, Cassell & Co, 1925, he takes
some pride in his prowess with his fists and relates how he fell
out with one of his brothers and later with his father. By his own
account he was a quick tempered man. Once, by his own account, during
a boxing bout on a P & O vessel he went "berserk" and felled a man
with a massive blow to his heart.
Armitage joined the naval training ship HMS Worcester at Greenhithe
at the age of 14 years and graduated from the same two years later.
"Birdie" Bowers trained in the same vessel some twenty years later.
By this time of his graduation Armitage's parents had moved to London.
His father conducted a distinguished practice from premises on the
corner of North Audley Street and Grosvenor Square into the early
1900s.
Armitage's first voyage was aboard the Plassey, a cargo sailing
ship, which took 158 days to reach Calcutta without sighting land
on the way. He describes the Calcutta docks and the unforgettable
sight of 300 sailing ships berthed four abreast in serried ranks.
On the return leg of his second voyage the Plassey ran ashore in
a storm near Sandgate, there she eventually broke up, still with
some of the crew aboard, who died.
After further experience of sail he joined the P & O company with
whom he remained in employment, apart from his two periods of Polar
exploration, until his retirement in 1924.
Although Cadet to Commodore was expressly written to encourage boys
to go to sea, Armitage's view of his own life seems to be one of
disappointment and frustrated ambition. He complained bitterly of
the time it took for him to have his own command: "twenty eight
years since I was entered on the books as a cadet, twenty one of
which had been, with the exception of such time as my poor person
had been loaned to Polar people, in the service of the P & O. A
long time to wait, to work and strive for (sic). Many grow weary
of waiting; many grow stale and grooved by so many years of little
varied routine; many sicken and die from the result of striving
apparently so fruitlessly, …"
Yet, even aside from his Polar adventures he had a most interesting
life. His first employment with the P & O was aboard the Bokhara,
a 4000 ton vessel which carried livestock and passengers to the
Far East with a cow for fresh milk, an ice-room for fresh meat and
vegetables, no refrigeration, no electric light, just oil lamps
and candles, most of which including those of the passengers had
to be extinguished every night at 10.30 pm.
After eight years service with the P & O he was nominated by the
company for the proposed North Polar Expedition. His initial appointment
was that of Observer for which he was given some training at Kew
Observatory but by the time the Jackson-Harmsworth Expedition set
sail for Franz Josef land he was made second in command of the expedition.
For three years the expedition was cut off from the world on Franz
Josef Land, extensively exploring and surveying the region. He claims
he was the first person to sight Nansen coming in off the Arctic
ocean after his epic journey from the Fram but it was Jackson who
first met Nansen and Johanssen. Armitage remained a most ardent
admirer of Nansen for the rest of his days. According to Armitage
the Jackson-Harmsworth expedition "fell rather flat" achieving very
little other than the slaughter of a great number of bears and other
wild life. "It was one of the worst [experiences] and one of the
best that can be imagined, and affected all my subsequent life."
The main effect of both this expedition and his time with the Discovery
Expedition seems to have been his loss of promotion with P & O,
and this rankled. He certainly lost four years employment with P
& O by virtue of this first expedition. However, this did not deter
him from volunteering for Scott's Discovery Expedition.
Sir Clements Markham and Scott both wanted the expedition to be
manned entirely by members of the Royal Navy but Sir Alfred Harmsworth,
who donated the very large sum of £5000 toward the expedition, made
the condition that Armitage and Koettlitz (also of the Jackson-Harmworth
Expedition) be included as members of the expedition. Armitage got
on very well with Scott during the preparations for the voyage and
his RNR rank of lieutenant ensured that he was made second in command
of the Discovery expedition. However, he later fell out with Scott
and claimed that he and Markham failed to honour a number of promises
they had made. He claimed he was to be given an independent sledging
command in Antarctica, with no restrictions on his sledging, and
he claimed that his pay by the expedition was to commence on the
date he left his P & O ship and continue until he rejoined another
P & O ship. In the event Armitage led one major sledging expedition
onto the Polar Ice Cap over the Western mountains, the first man
ever to do so, thus proving its very existence. This achievement
was later eclipsed by Scott, who with Lashly and "Taff" Evans, sledged
a much greater distance beyond Armitage's furthest west. Scott refused
to allow Armitage a second attempt toward the Pole (the season following
Scott, Wilson and Shackleton's furthest south), and on his return
to Britain Armitage was paid off by the expedition and it took him
nearly nine months to find an appointment with P & O. The Admiralty
wouldn't even sanction his promotion within the RNR from lieutenant
to commander, claiming that he was not yet qualified for that rank.
Armitage financed this uncertain period by giving lectures around
the country on the subject of the Discovery Expedition. He claimed
that, during his absence in Antarctica, six Chief Officers of the
P & O had been promoted over his head, and that he had lost 18 months
seniority. In Cadet to Commodore he wrote, "I did rankle under a
sense of injustice." During this period he also wrote Two Years
in the Antarctic, Edward Arnold, 1905. A row followed with Scott's
publishers because Scott's Discovery Expedition didn't come out
until after Armitage's book. However, according to Armitage, he
was at sea when this happened and he and Scott later met up for
lunch "and all was sunshine." They never met again.
Eventually he was given his own command, the Royal Mail Steamer
Isis, carrying mails between Brindisi and Port Said. And this was
essentially the story of his life until retirement, carrying passengers
and mails on "little ferry boats" across the Mediterranean and later,
in command of the Salsette between Bombay and Aden, living for many
years away from England. Toward the end of the First World War the
Salsette was torpedoed with a loss of life of 14 crew and Armitage
was given command of the Karmala which was used to transporting
cargo and troops across the Atlantic and, later, for repatriating
Australian soldiers.
His last command was the 11,000 ton mail steamer the Mantua on the
Bombay to China run. After over 40 years at sea he was appointed
Commodore and, by the company rules, required to retire at the age
of 60 years, just one year later. A disappointed man.
Armitage's diaries of his time in the Antarctic were sold at auction
for £36,000 in 2004 to a private buyer.
References: International Genealogy Index (IGI)
UK Censuses 1871 to 1901
Medical Directories 1860 to 1905
Armitage, Albert B. Two Years in the Antarctic, Edward Arnold, 1905
Armitage, Albert B. Cadet to Commodore, Cassell & Co. 1925
Andrew Payne, March 2008
Navigator - Jackson-Harmsworth
Arctic expedition 1894
