Loading
HR![]()
author
Hugh Ruttledge
Hugh Ruttledge (1884-1961) was an English civil servant and mountaineer who was the leader of the 1933 and 1936 expeditions to Mount Everest.
Born on October 24, 1884, the son of ...view moreHugh Ruttledge (1884-1961) was an English civil servant and mountaineer who was the leader of the 1933 and 1936 expeditions to Mount Everest.
Born on October 24, 1884, the son of Lt.-Col. Edward Butler Ruttledge, of the Indian Medical Service, he was educated at schools in Dresden and Lausanne, and then at Cheltenham College in England. In 1903 he matriculated as an exhibitioner at Pembroke College, Cambridge, and in 1906 took a second-class Honours degree in the Classical Honours tripos. He passed the Indian Civil Service examination in 1908 and spent a year at the University of London studying Indian law, history and languages, before going out to India towards the end of 1909. He was posted as an assistant in Roorkee and Sitapur and then promoted a magistrate at Agra. In 1917, he transferred to Lucknow as city magistrate, and in 1921 became deputy commissioner there. In 1921, while on leave in Europe, he took up climbing in the Alps.
In 1925, he went as deputy commissioner to Almora in the foothills of the Himalaya, within sight of some of its great peaks, and began to explore the glaciers and peaks on India’s northern frontier.
In 1933 permission was granted to the British by the authorities in Tibet for a fourth British expedition and further attempt on Mount Everest. For his leadership of this expedition, as well as his journeys in the Himalayas, Ruttledge was awarded a Royal Geographical Society Founder’s Gold Medal in 1934.
In 1936 he was selected to lead a second (the sixth British) expedition, which was the largest to date to attempt Everest. Upon returning from the 1936 expedition to Everest, Ruttledge decided that a life at sea would be preferable, and purchased several boats—a 42-foot (13 m) converted Watson lifeboat and later a larger sailing cutter—to pursue this idea. In 1950 he moved ashore, buying a house on the edge of Dartmoor, England.
Ruttledge died in Plymouth, on November 7, 1961, aged 77.view less