Allan Bryant Crawford

Who is Allan Bryant Crawford?

Allan Bryant Crawford was a British surveyor, meteorologist and polar historian born in North Wales in 1912. After training in engineering, he joined the Norwegian Scientific Expedition to Tristan da Cunha in 1937-38 as surveyor, producing the island's first topographic map. He returned to Tristan during the Second World War as a meteorologist for the Royal Naval shore station, later overseeing its weather service for the civilian administration. In 1947-48 he led a party of the South African naval expedition that established a permanent meteorological station on Marion Island, and he subsequently served as a reserve meteorological officer with the South African Navy, taking part in voyages to remote sub-Antarctic islands, including South African and joint British-South African visits to Bouvet Island in 1955 and 1964. During the 1964 landing, Crawford's survey party discovered an unidentified, apparently abandoned lifeboat in a lagoon on the island, a mystery he later described in detail in his writing. He devoted much of his later life to documenting Tristan da Cunha's history, becoming the founding president of the Tristan da Cunha Association, and he died in 2007.

Sources: tristandc.com, "Tristan da Cunha Allan Bryant Crawford 1912-2007" · Polar Record 43(227), Obituary (2007), Cambridge University Press · Allan B. Crawford, Tristan da Cunha and the Roaring Forties (Charles Skilton, 1982)