Sherriff George

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Biografie:
George Sherriff (1889-1967)
George Sherriff was elected to the Club in 193 r, and resigned in 1946. It was appropriate that R. C. F. Schomberg should have proposed him, for both were great Asian travellers.
Sherriff entered the R.M.A., Woolwich, and served in the First World War, when he was gassed. Later he served on the North-west Frontier in India, but his great opportunity came in 1928 when he was appointed British Vice-Consul at Kashgar; during his four years there he was able to visit the Tien Shan mountains, and Khotan. He had, however, earlier displayed a bent for mountain travel, in 1924 having visited Baltistan; in 1925 the Shyok River; and in 1927 he climbed in the Southern Alai and Western Kun Lun mountains. In 1929- 30 he again made climbs in the Qungur mountains, Western Kun Lun.
A meeting with the botanist F. Ludlow, at Kashgar, shaped much of his future. In I933, with Ludlow and F. Williamson, he traversed Bhutan from west to east, and went north to the Y amdrok Tso in Tibet. In 1934 he and Ludlow (almost invariably his companion on his travels) travelled through Bhutan to Tsona in South-east Tibet, by Tawang and the Kechen La. 1936 saw them again in Eastern Bhutan and South-east Tibet, and in 1938 came a fine journey, when they followed the Lhasa Trade Route to Chaksam, and then descended the Tsangpo to the mouth of the great gorge at Gyala.
Sherriff returned to military service in the Second World War, but in April 1943 was sent to Lhasa in charge of the British Mission there, staying two years. During this time he married Betty, daughter of Dr. Graham of Kalimpong.
In 1946-47 he was again in South-east Tibet and the Tsangpo Gorges, and in 1949 he was plant collecting in Bhutan in the valleys of the Bumthang Chu and Kuru Chu. His retirement followed after this expedition.
Sherriff was a most modest and self-effacing man, but, with his friend Ludlow he left a fine record of achievements in the invaluable plant collections that are now preserved in the British Museum, Natural History. His colour films taken in Lhasa in 1943-5 are, it is understood, now with Liverpool University. Though not a mountaineer in the strict sense, Sherriff was a great traveller in mountainous regions largely inaccessible to Europeans, and his membership of the A. C. was a matter of distinction to the Club.
T. S. Blakeney
Quelle: Alpine Journal Volume 74, 1968, Seite 141-142


Geboren am:
1889
Gestorben am:
1967