Fawcett’s Antarctic Acquaintances

By Stephen Haddelsey

Despite Colonel Fawcett’s well-known dislike of the Antarctic as a drain on possible sources for expedition funding, there is new evidence that he was at least on speaking terms with two Britons who were intimately connected with major Antarctic expeditions of the ‘heroic age’.

The quotes from Mackintosh's diary are courtesy of the Mackintosh family 

In March 1911, Percy Harrison Fawcett boarded the RMSP ‘Oruba’ en route to his fifth expedition to the ‘Roof of the World’. Also on board were Frank Bickerton and Aeneas Mackintosh. The former was soon to join Douglas Mawson’s Australasian Antarctic Expedition (1911-14) in the capacity of engineer. Mackintosh, meanwhile, had recently returned from Ernest Shackleton’s British Antarctic Expedition of 1907-09. Now, the two men had joined forces in a bid to locate the famed pirate treasure of Cocos Island, some 400 miles from the Pacific coast of Costa Rica.

In partnership with two philanthropic English ladies, Mrs. Barrie Till and Miss Davis, their intention was to devote any treasure they discovered to the founding of a new London orphanage. In his diary entry for 1^st March 1911, Mackintosh recorded his being introduced to Fawcett by Bickerton:

Bickerton has not quite got his sea legs, but our arrival at Cherbourg at 7pm set him on them again. Here we had a walk on deck and he introduced me to a Major Fawcett who is going out on the Bolivian Boundary Survey. I found him a most interesting man to talk to and he told me all about Cocos Island, also of a Jesuit treasure in Bolivia which I intend to hear more about tomorrow...

The only other reference to Fawcett in Mackintosh’s diary occurs on Tuesday 21^st March, when Mackintosh and Bickerton traveled from Panama to Balboa in the afternoon to see Major Fawcett off on board the "Aysen". Furthermore, when they talked, hidden treasure was the subject of their conversation!

Frank Bickerton in France in the year 1940 when he was serving with the RAF

Unfortunately, the diary doesn't make it clear how Bickerton and Fawcett met. However, both men were Fellows of the Royal Geographical Society, both were acquainted with Edward A. Reeves, the Society’s Map Curator and Instructor in Surveying, and both were Devon men – Fawcett having been born in Torquay while Bickerton spent his childhood and early manhood in Plymouth.

Captain Aeneas Mackintosh later led Shackleton's Ross Sea party on the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914-16. He died while depot laying on this expedition.

After his return (empty-handed) from Cocos Island, Bickerton immediately volunteered for Mawson’s Australasian Antarctic Expedition. As expedition engineer, he was responsible for the maintenance of the first aero plane to be taken to Antarctica and was heavily involved in the expedition’s pioneering use of wireless telegraphy. 

He also led the three-man sledging expedition that discovered the first Antarctic meteorite on 5^th December 1912. Like Mackintosh, Bickerton was recruited for the ITAE but, after testing equipment with Shackleton in Norway (May 1914), he decided to join the war-effort and fought as a fighter pilot over the Western Front.

Stephen Haddelsey is a relative of Frank Bickerton’s and is currently working on a biography of the explorer.