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. . 

A Photographic Tribute To Alfred Watkins. Part One; The Old Standing Crosses Of Leominster Priory.

   I was Christmas shopping in Hereford with the children the other day. I'm sure I had heard the name Alfred Watkins some where in the murky mists of time. But it had never really connected with anything. That was until I was exploring the back streets around Hereford Cathedral. I turned a corner into St John's Street and there was a little blue plaque on the wall that said "Alfred Watkins 1855-1935 Pioneer Photographer Antiquarian Lived Here 1920-1935". Then I went around another corner and came upon the house of Henry Bull the naturalist. I was flabbergasted.
   So when I got home I started Googling as one does now. He truly was a pioneer! He patented the first light meter in 1890. This was called the Watkins Bee Meter, in the first year he sold 1,400 meters at a guinea each. It was that good Herbert Ponting used one for his exposure readings on the fateful trip to the Antarctic with Captain Scott in 1910-1912.
   He started out working for his father and eventually running The Imperial Brewery, it was sold in 1898 for £64,000 making Alfred totally independent.A lifelong interest in photography started in his late ’teens with little more than a pinhole camera, developing his wet glass-plate negatives in a small tent before they had a chance to dry. Alfred Watkins spent over sixty years photographing events throughout Herefordshire and the neighbouring counties. First by horse and trap, then by one or other of his favourite steam cars and later by his Wolseley Stellite, he travelled to the most remote parts of the county taking photographs of items which caught his interest with his massive plate camera,.
   Watkins became a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society in 1910 and was awarded the society’s 11th Progress Medal for his research work. The following year he completed his all-embracing reference work Photography; its Principles and Applications — the ‘bible’ for amateur photographers for a couple of generations. In later life he experimented in colour photography and had a hand-turned cine camera.
   The Woolhope Naturalists’ Field Club was formed in 1851 Watkins regularly attended the Club’s meetings, in Hereford during the winter months and out and about in the County and further afield in the summer. Club Transactions were illustrated almost entirely by Watkins’ photographs. Rare shots include buildings long since demolished, historic trees and diverse countryside activities. He became a County Magistrate in 1907 and served on the Bench for many years. In 1914 he became County Councillor for Tupsley and was eventually made a County Alderman. His efforts were responsible for the riverside path below the old General Hospital and, as committee chairman, the design of the War Memorial in St.Peter’s Square.

Grave of John Ward and Sarah Ward, grandparents to the Herefordshire Charles Kemble acting dynasty

   He was also an antiquarian who insured that fine photographic records exist of many archaeological sites that have since been lost including sections of Hereford’s City Walls, Craswall Priory, St Giles Chapel and many others. He also published a theory about "Ley Lines" (Prehistoric trading routes based on straight lines between a variety of sighting points. Of great significance, these original markers were subsequently re-used and their sites marked by later, but still historic features.) This was a subject that was to occupy him for the rest of his life as he attempted to convince others of his theories. In rapid succession he published The Ley Hunters Manual, Early British Trackways, Archaic Tracks around Cambridge, and, still in print after some 78 years, The Old Straight Track.