Who is John Rymill?

That's a fair question.  Peter Rymill has kindly provided the information below:

John Rymill, born at Old Penola Station, South Australia, in 1905, was recognised as having ‘organised an expedition which revolutionised Antarctic exploration.’ [i] He was the first to combine successfully the traditional techniques of the heroic age of polar exploration, which included husky-powered sledges and sailing ships, with the modern technology of radios, tractors and an aircraft.[ii] 

Rymill had grown up self-reliantly in the South Australian bush, and trained as a pilot and surveyor in England, before winning a place on Gino Watkins’ Greenland Expeditions (1930-32), during which he gained invaluable experience in the techniques of Arctic travel and survival from the highly proficient local Eskimo (Inuit) people.[iii] He assumed command of the expedition when its leader was killed in a hunting-kayak, and immediately began to plan the British Graham Land Expedition to the Antarctic.[iv] 

His sixteen-man team was to mount an assault on the last remaining major geographical feature on the Earth’s surface to defy human discovery. Sailing in its small, 150 tonne, 32 metre, three-masted schooner, the Penola, and with the aid of a 130 h.p. De Havilland Fox Moth biplane and nearly 100 huskies, the expedition completed an unsurpassed programme of science, survey and discovery. After three years (1934-37), and having sailed over 43,000 km, Rymill brought his entire team home safely.[v]

 One member recalled that it had been ‘a remarkably happy expedition under a leader whom all of us liked and greatly respected.’ [vi] 

From 1934 to 1937 Rymill’s Expedition accurately surveyed nearly 2,000 km of the unexplored Graham Land coastline, establishing that it was not an archipelago as previously thought, but in fact the Antarctic Peninsula.[vii] Rymill also discovered King George the Sixth Sound which he named after the newly-crowned King, showed that Alexander Land was actually an island, and made the first land crossing of the Antarctic Peninsula.[viii]

The citation for the Centenary Gold Medal of the American Geographical Society, awarded to John Rymill in 1939, states: 

"The survey work of this expedition constitutes probably the largest contribution to accurate detailed surveys of the Antarctic continent made by any expedition." [ix]

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