De La Motte Edward Septimus George

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Biografie:
Edward Septimus George De La Motte (1901-1958)
The loss of Edward de la Motte in a helicopter accident in French Equatorial Africa on January 27, 1958, will be greatly felt by all who knew him : the helicopter appears to have been struck by lightning and to have burst into flames. The large attendance at the memorial service held at St. Margaret's Westminster, on February 26 was impressive testimony to the high regard in which he was widely held. In the Alpine Club, he was, owing to having lived so much abroad, not generally known. He was educated at St. Bees School, Cumberland, and St. John's College, Cambridge, and was by profession a civil engineer. Many of his early years were spent in South America, in the planning and construction of railways in Argentina, Chile, and in Bolivia, where he became Chief Engineer to the Antofagasta-La Paz Railway a British company. Sailing and mountaineering were his favourite recreations, and it is typical of the man that soon after the outbreak of the Second World War he climbed Illimani (21.000 ft.) in Bolivia, in order to remove from the summit a Nazi flag that flew above a smaller Bolivian flag (A.J. 52. 250); soon he returned to England and joined the R.N.V.R. Later he transferred to the Royal Marines, where he rose to the rank of captain, and was seconded for special duties. In 1947 and 1948 he took charge of the 1.000-mile pipe-line survey from Abadan to the Mediterranean, an arduous task which he maneged with great skill and abounding energy. During the past eight years in West Africa, he completed over 500 miles of railway surveying in very difficult and almost impenetrable forest country, and carried out the building of the Achiasi- Kotoku line, the most important railway link in Ghana. It was in the early stage of a survey, begun in January 1958, for a line in the northern part of the country that he lost his life with four others. He was elected to the Alpine Club in October 1934, his qualification form including the ascent of Aconcagua in 1928, the first ascent of Lanin in 1933, four attempts on Tronador, as well as two full seasons (1929 and 1934) in the Alps. He described some of his climbs in the Andes in the Alpine Journal (45·P. 328, and 46. P. 370), which included, besides that of Illimani, the third ascent of Sajama, 21.400 ft. (A.J. 56. P. 80 ). It gave him a lot of pleasure to have been able to be at home during the Club's centenary celebrations : he arrived too late for the Dinner, but in good time to see over the exhibition of pictures and to be present at the Reception in Lincoln's Inn.
I met him in 1934 at Zermatt when he 'vas completing a month's tour with his guide Xavier Lochmatter. I learned with great interest of his achievements and soon realised that he was a mountaineer of outstanding strength and fortitude : a deep love for uncommon terrain and unexplored height inspired his unusual adventures.' With Richard Moggridge, then an Oxford undergraduate, we four set out in fair weather over the Breuiljoch, intending to reach the Luigi di Savoia hut that evening and traverse the Matterhorn the next day. Snow began to fall as we set foot on the ascent towards the Tete du Lion. Our climb to the hut was not without incident (two in fact), which revealed Edward de la Motte as a cheerful and undaunted companion, whether in retrieving our right way to the Col du Lion, downwards over steep rocks, after being misled in the fog and thickening snowfall by the footprints of an erring party who had preceded us ; or later and after nightfall in rescuing the party, of three young Italians, when we found them cragfast in the Chemenée, unable to move up or down, thus preventing us from using the fixed rope, no iced, for the crucial upper part of the pitch. The whole operation took two hours, involving a brilliant lead by Lochmatter to the right of the fixed rope by the light of a solitary torch. We stumbled up a short snow slope, thankfully groping our way into the hut at 10.40 p.m. That night a blizzard of tragic violence raged (A.J. 47· P. 339). It is typical of Edward that on noticing signs of frostbite on my fingers he instantly went out, returning with a handful of snow, and energetically administered first aid. In my experience few climbers have equalled and none surpassed him in these qualities of skill and care for others. He was a man endowed with immense charm and quiet modesty, an active mind and great integrity so writes another of his friends. The affection and admiration he evoked will always remain with those who knew him, and our sympathy goes out to his wife and young son.
H. W. Turnbull
Count Aldo Bonacossa writes :
I met him for the first time in February 1934· The railway from Buenos Aires to S. Carlos de Bariloche at that time ended abruptly in the middle of the Patagonian steppe ; just a mile further on there was a lonely railway carriage. It was the dwelling of the managing director, Edward de la Matte, a gipsy's roulotte rather than a house, which moved along as the railway proceeded. We wrere in search of my companion Matteoda. He had disappeared with another Italian on Tronador, which dominated wonderfully the background of the immense Nahuel Huapi lake (with me there were the not-yet famous Gervasutti and the painter Binaghi, with whom the year before I had climbed, for the first time in the history of mountaineering, the great icy Northern Wall of the Grande Casse in Tarentaise). Our kind host gave us some information about the routes of approach to the mountain, on which he himself had made an attack, which was unsuccessful owing to the impossibility of his leaving the railway for a long time. He gave us tea, and in those few hours we became friends, as .often happens among people who have the same ideals.
As we resumed our journey on a shattered sort of gondola, I saw him standing for a long while on the platform of his carriage waving to us : he was the living symbol of those tenacious, intelligent pioneers who with their work laid the foundations of British influence. At the unforgettable Centenary Reception I was hailed by a man who was there with a lady ; he was de la Matte who claimed he had recognised me by my 'Roman profile' after twenty-three years ! It was a merry encounter, which ended with a tentative promise on my part to pay him a visit in the Congo where he was going to live, still as a pioneer. And as a pioneer he died.
Quelle: Alpine Journal Vol. 63. Nr. 296, 1958, Seite 112-114


Geboren am:
1901
Gestorben am:
27.01.1958