Community hub
Recent from talks
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
Henry Morshead
Henry Treise Morshead DSO FRGS (23 November 1882 – 17 May 1931) was an English surveyor, explorer and mountaineer. He is remembered for several achievements – with Frederick Bailey he explored the Tsangpo Gorge and finally confirmed that the Yarlung Tsangpo flows into the Brahmaputra River after cascading through Himalaya; also he was a member of the 1921 and 1922 British Mount Everest expeditions and in 1922 he climbed to a height of over 25,000 feet (7,600 m). His death was due to murder and the circumstances remain mysterious.
Born in 1882 and brought up at Hurlditch Court, near Tavistock near the Devon–Cornwall border, Henry Morshead was the eldest son of Reginald Morshead, a banker, and Ella Mary Morshead, née Sperling. He was educated at Winchester College where he did reasonably well and at a second attempt passed the exams to enter the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, to become an officer in the Royal Engineers in 1901. At the Chatham Royal School of Military Engineering he had such a distinguished record that in 1904 he was posted to the Indian Army in the Royal Engineers' Military Works Services at Agra.
In 1906 he joined the Survey of India where, as was often the case, he retained his military status and rank. Apart from his service in the Great War he remained with the Survey until his death. Morshead was based at Dehradun, Uttarakhand, the scientific and exploration headquarters of the Survey of India. He became in charge of the Forest Map Office, then the Computing Office, then the Triangulation Surveying Party. He became knowledgeable in the history of Himalayan exploration, particularly in Tibet. He distinguished himself on several arduous winter Himalayan expeditions. He was tough, well able to live off the land in regions of great heat and danger. Morshead was promoted to captain in 1912 .
On leave in 1916, he met Evelyn (Evie) Widdicombe who was Secretary and Librarian for the Froebel Society for the Promotion of the Kindergarten System. Her family had moved to Canada when Evie was a child where her father, Harry Templer Widdicombe, failed to make his fortune so her mother had returned to England with the children. Her mother had founded a ladies' residential club which flourished. Morshead married Evie in 1917 and they had four sons and a daughter. Two of their sons were killed in World War II.
North of Himalaya, the Yarlung Tsangpo River flows east through the Tibetan Plateau and then turns south into a series of massive gorges in Himalayan mountains. Until the 1880s it was unknown by which route it eventually reached the sea or even whether it debouched to the Pacific or Indian ocean. By 1911 the connection with the Brahmaputra River had become widely accepted but another mystery remained: the river dropped from 9,000 feet (2,700 m) to 1,000 feet (300 m) in a distance of perhaps 100 miles (160 km) which is extremely steep for a river of this size. It seemed there must be a massive waterfall and, indeed, Kinthup had reported one 150 feet (46 m) high.
In 1913 Frederick Bailey, an intelligence officer with the Indian Army, invited Morshead to be the surveyor in an expedition to explore the Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon (Tsangpo Gorge), now known to be the world's deepest gorge. Bailey and Morshead explored from the south with Morshead surveying the entire route and calculating the results as they went so as not to delay progress. By ascending the Dibang River they crossed the Himalayan watershed into Tibet to reach the Dihang River (Brahmaputra) and ascending the Gorge.
When they were at Lagung, just east of Namcha Barwa, they were arrested by the Nyerpa of Pome who took them to Showa on the Po Tsangpo river. After they had been imprisoned for several days they were released. They eventually reached the Dihang river again, this time upstream of the Gorge and just south of Gyala Peri from where they penetrated the massive sweep of the Tsangpo Gorge but only reached Pemakoi-chen where they found the gorge impassible about 45 miles (72 km) upstream of Lagung. They returned to India by turning back and passing through eastern Bhutan. The expedition covered 1,680 miles (2,700 km) on foot and lasted from 16 May to 14 November 1913.
In doing this they proved that the Dibang tributary of the Brahmaputra flows around rather than through the Himalayan mountains and does not connect with the Tsangpo. They also proved conclusively that the Tsangpo–Dihang–Brahmaputra was a single river and for the first time established its accurate course. The highest waterfall they found was 30 feet (9.1 m) and they considered there was unlikely to be a higher fall. For his work Morshead was awarded the Macgregor Medal by the United Service Institution of India. At the time the expedition was regarded as a great feat of exploration and it drew international acclaim.
Hub AI
Henry Morshead AI simulator
(@Henry Morshead_simulator)
Henry Morshead
Henry Treise Morshead DSO FRGS (23 November 1882 – 17 May 1931) was an English surveyor, explorer and mountaineer. He is remembered for several achievements – with Frederick Bailey he explored the Tsangpo Gorge and finally confirmed that the Yarlung Tsangpo flows into the Brahmaputra River after cascading through Himalaya; also he was a member of the 1921 and 1922 British Mount Everest expeditions and in 1922 he climbed to a height of over 25,000 feet (7,600 m). His death was due to murder and the circumstances remain mysterious.
Born in 1882 and brought up at Hurlditch Court, near Tavistock near the Devon–Cornwall border, Henry Morshead was the eldest son of Reginald Morshead, a banker, and Ella Mary Morshead, née Sperling. He was educated at Winchester College where he did reasonably well and at a second attempt passed the exams to enter the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, to become an officer in the Royal Engineers in 1901. At the Chatham Royal School of Military Engineering he had such a distinguished record that in 1904 he was posted to the Indian Army in the Royal Engineers' Military Works Services at Agra.
In 1906 he joined the Survey of India where, as was often the case, he retained his military status and rank. Apart from his service in the Great War he remained with the Survey until his death. Morshead was based at Dehradun, Uttarakhand, the scientific and exploration headquarters of the Survey of India. He became in charge of the Forest Map Office, then the Computing Office, then the Triangulation Surveying Party. He became knowledgeable in the history of Himalayan exploration, particularly in Tibet. He distinguished himself on several arduous winter Himalayan expeditions. He was tough, well able to live off the land in regions of great heat and danger. Morshead was promoted to captain in 1912 .
On leave in 1916, he met Evelyn (Evie) Widdicombe who was Secretary and Librarian for the Froebel Society for the Promotion of the Kindergarten System. Her family had moved to Canada when Evie was a child where her father, Harry Templer Widdicombe, failed to make his fortune so her mother had returned to England with the children. Her mother had founded a ladies' residential club which flourished. Morshead married Evie in 1917 and they had four sons and a daughter. Two of their sons were killed in World War II.
North of Himalaya, the Yarlung Tsangpo River flows east through the Tibetan Plateau and then turns south into a series of massive gorges in Himalayan mountains. Until the 1880s it was unknown by which route it eventually reached the sea or even whether it debouched to the Pacific or Indian ocean. By 1911 the connection with the Brahmaputra River had become widely accepted but another mystery remained: the river dropped from 9,000 feet (2,700 m) to 1,000 feet (300 m) in a distance of perhaps 100 miles (160 km) which is extremely steep for a river of this size. It seemed there must be a massive waterfall and, indeed, Kinthup had reported one 150 feet (46 m) high.
In 1913 Frederick Bailey, an intelligence officer with the Indian Army, invited Morshead to be the surveyor in an expedition to explore the Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon (Tsangpo Gorge), now known to be the world's deepest gorge. Bailey and Morshead explored from the south with Morshead surveying the entire route and calculating the results as they went so as not to delay progress. By ascending the Dibang River they crossed the Himalayan watershed into Tibet to reach the Dihang River (Brahmaputra) and ascending the Gorge.
When they were at Lagung, just east of Namcha Barwa, they were arrested by the Nyerpa of Pome who took them to Showa on the Po Tsangpo river. After they had been imprisoned for several days they were released. They eventually reached the Dihang river again, this time upstream of the Gorge and just south of Gyala Peri from where they penetrated the massive sweep of the Tsangpo Gorge but only reached Pemakoi-chen where they found the gorge impassible about 45 miles (72 km) upstream of Lagung. They returned to India by turning back and passing through eastern Bhutan. The expedition covered 1,680 miles (2,700 km) on foot and lasted from 16 May to 14 November 1913.
In doing this they proved that the Dibang tributary of the Brahmaputra flows around rather than through the Himalayan mountains and does not connect with the Tsangpo. They also proved conclusively that the Tsangpo–Dihang–Brahmaputra was a single river and for the first time established its accurate course. The highest waterfall they found was 30 feet (9.1 m) and they considered there was unlikely to be a higher fall. For his work Morshead was awarded the Macgregor Medal by the United Service Institution of India. At the time the expedition was regarded as a great feat of exploration and it drew international acclaim.