OFFICERS OF THE EXPEDITION 49 



to join the Jackson-Harmsworth Expedition to Franz-Josef 

 Land. The expedition was absent for four years, and on its 

 return Armitage's services were not only gratefully recognised 

 by his employer, but were acknowledged by the Royal Geo- 

 graphical Society, which presented him with its Murchison 

 Award. After this he had returned to his ordinary duties as 

 first mate on one of the P. and O. Company's ships until 

 January 1901, when his services were again lent for Polar work, 

 and he joined our expedition as navigator and second in com- 

 mand. Armitage was an excellent practical navigator, and of 

 the value of his Polar experience I shall speak later on. He 

 was thirty-seven when he joined us. 



Another member of our community who had seen Arctic 

 service was our senior doctor, Reginald Koettlitz. Koettlitz 

 was English in all but name, as his father, a minister of the 

 Reformed Lutheran Church, had married an English lady and 

 settled at Dover in the 'sixties. He had been educated at 

 Dover College, and thence passed to Guy's Hospital. After 

 qualifying he had settled down in the quietest of country 

 practices, where he remained for nearly eight years, and might 

 have remained to the present time but for a sudden impulse to 

 volunteer his services as doctor to the Jackson-Harmsworth 

 Expedition. This act had made him a wanderer, for after four 

 years in the Arctic he accompanied expeditions to Abyssinia, 

 Somaliland, and Brazil ; and finally, with experiences gathered 

 in many parts of the globe, he applied for and received his 

 appointment as medical officer to the Antarctic Expedition. 

 As his medical duties were expected to be light, he also acted 

 as botanist to the expedition. As far as the land flora 

 was concerned, this post was something of a sinecure, as the 

 Antarctic lands produce only some poor forms of mosses and 

 lichens, but Koettlitz had also to study and collect the various 

 marine forms of plant life which are known to science under 

 the name of phyto-plankton. 



Our biologist, Thomas V. Hodgson, was a native of Birming- 

 ham. With a strong desire to quaUfy in medicine and natural 

 science, he had been obliged to spend many years in business. 



VOL. I. E 



