Could Frank Hurley have been using one of these to take his pictures on the Endeavour with Shackleton?

This is a Watkins Bee Meter, invented by Alfred Watkins.

Whilst researching the book "Herefordshire Then & Now" I purchased some books written by Alfred Watkins, photographer, author, historian, antiquarian, councillor and the Hereford born inventor of the Bee Meter, the first light meter to become a world wide success.

It is well known that English photographer Herbert Ponting used a Watkins Bee Meter whilst working in the Antarctic with Captain Robert Scott. It is my belief that Australian photographer Frank Hurley also used one whilst working in the Anartctic with explorers Captain Douglas Mawson and Captain Ernest Shackleton.

It was this sentence that got me thinking...

This statement is in a book entitled; "Photography; the Watkins Manual of Exposure and Development (1919)", the book is written by Alfred Watkins.

The photographer on the Mawson and Shackleton Polar Expeditions was Australian Frank Hurley. Unfortunately there is no first hand documentary evidence to support that Hurley indeed used a Watkins Bee Meter.

On board the Endurance was a talented Australian photographer named James Francis ('Frank') Hurley. Shackleton had partly financed the expedition through advance sales of photographic, film and story rights. This was to be Hurley's second trip to Antarctica, as he had previously documented an expedition led by the Australian explorer Douglas Mawson. The 1913 film that Hurley made about Mawson's journey had drawn him to Shackleton's attention.

Frank Hurley © Scott Polar Reasearch Institute.

The inventory for Frank Hurley's photographic equipment when he joined Ernest Shackleton's crew on the Endeavour does list "light meters" but doesn't specify the name or make.

But why would Watkins not name Hurley, as he had very much publicised the Bee Meters use by Herbert Ponting with Captain Scott's ill fated expedition to the Pole?

Although Hurley is now recognised as one of the great Polar photographers of that bygone age, at the time Alfred Watkins wrote his book in 1919, Hurley was being given negative press for his coverage of the First World War, he used composite images for photomurals to "convey drama of the war on a scale otherwise not possible" using the technology available at the time. This brought Hurley into conflict with the authorities on the grounds that "montage diminished documentary value".  Charles Bean, official war historian and journalist labelled Hurley's composite images "fake".

Hurleys image of The Endurance trapped in ice. © Scott Polar Research Institute.

That to me says why Watkins would not specifically name Hurley as a user of the Bee Meters, not the best sort of publicity one would want for an ambassador of a product.

Despite several emails to the museum's in Australia which deal with the Hurley collections, all attempts to further support the theory have come to a dead end.

At present the wreck of the Endurance still lies at the bottom of the Weddell Sea. In 2010 David Mearns, a wreck hunter announced a new plan to search for the wreck. The plan is sponsored by the National Geographic Society but is subject to finding sponsorship for the balance of the US$10 million estimated cost. A 2013 study by Dr Adrian Glover of the Natural History Museum suggests the Antarctic Circumpolar Current could preserve the wreck on the seabed by keeping wood-boring "ship worms" away.

So you never know, perhaps deep under the ocean in the Weddell Sea among Hurley's equipment with the wreck of the Endurance is a little pocket watch sized light meter invented and designed in a small workshop in Hereford, by a man called Alfred. . 

Pictures by Muhammed

When I first met Muhammed he was rather taken with my camera equipment, I couldn't resist and let him use one of Nikon DSLR's.

These are his pictures...