JAMES FRANCIS HURLEY
( 15/10/1885 - 16/01/1962 )
BORN : GLEBE. SYDNEY. AUSTRALIA
DIED : SYDNEY. AUSTRALIA
NICKNAME : THE PRINCE
DUTY : PHOTOGRAPHER
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Awarded Silver Polar Medal ( clasp only )
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Frank Hurley was the only Australian member of the 1914/16 Expedition. He was the third of five children born to Edward Harrison and Margaret Agnes Hurley and was born at 63 Derwent Street in the Glebe district of Sydney. New South Wales.
He did not have a particularly happy childhood or schooling, which resulted in him running away from home at the age of just thirteen after throwing an ink well at the local school teacher!
He first became interested in photography whilst working at an Ironworks in the town of Lithgow in the Blue Mountains area of New South Wales. His foreman was a keen photographer and Hurley would often accompany him on weekend photographic excursions into the Blue Mountains. By the age of 15 he was hooked enough to invest in his first camera, a Kodak box camera.
He later found work at Sydney docks, but his lack of experience prevented him from pursuing his new found ambition to follow a seafaring career. He settled for a while as a worker in a Telegraphic Office where he was able, with the help of a work colleague, to advance his knowledge of the technical side of photography. His big break came when he met up with one Henri Mallard the manager of Harringtons Ltd, a photographic supply company.
Mallard took a liking to Hurley and admired his photographic skills. Within a year of meeting Mallard, Hurley secured his first paid commission which was for the Edison Phonograph Company. His ambitions to pursue a photographic career had cost him his daytime job, and by the time he reached the age of twenty, he found himself jobless and penniless.
In 1905 he found work as a photographer with Cave & Co, manufacturers of postcard pictures, and in 1908 he became a partner in the new firm of Cave & Hurley. His success was short lived when in 1910 Cave died and the country fell into economic depression. His luck was soon to improve when he applied for the post of expedition photographer with Douglas Mawson’s proposed Australasian Antarctic Expedition. Hurley was only Mawson’s third choice for the post, but thanks to a recommendation by his old friend Mallard, he managed to secure the job on a wage of £6 per week, with no share in pictorial rights.
Mawson’s expedition set sail in the sealer “Aurora” from Hobart, Tasmania on 2nd December 1911. Hurley eventually arrived home in Sydney in March 1913.
His photographs of the expedition and in particular his film “Home of the Blizzard” soon gained world-wide interest. Alas, it was Mawson who reaped the financial gains from Frank’s work.
In early March of 1914 Hurley applied for the position of photographer on Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. Shackleton knew of Hurley’s good work with Mawson, and he got the job and was offered a salary of £6 per week and managed to negotiate a 25% share of picture rights, though it is doubtful that he ever actually received his full share. He joined the Endurance in Buenos Aires on 12th October 1914, four days before Shackleton’s arrival.
Hurley, as expedition photographer, was included in the party chosen by Shackleton to make the intended crossing of the Antarctic continent. Such an event would need to be recorded on camera and film. The journey was never made, and Frank instead, concentrated on recording the daily life aboard the trapped doomed Endurance. He captured some wonderful images of the men and dogs both at work and play. He was so dedicated to his work that he spent three days out on the ice in order to film the last death throws of Endurance.
He was not very popular with most of the crew of Endurance, but performed his duties well. His engineering skills proved invaluable in constructing the mobile stove used on the flow and Elephant Island.
After the expedition Frank arrived in London on 11th November 1916. Many of his still photographs from the expedition soon appeared in National Newspapers. However, in order to make his film footage more interesting to the public, he returned to South Georgia Island in late February 1917 to shoot footage of the islands wildlife and glaciers. With this extra footage the film “In The Grip of The Polar Pack Ice” was released and became a great success. The proceeds enabled Shackleton to virtually pay off all his debts from the exhibition.
Hurley, next joined the Australian army with the rank of Captain and the Army’s Official Photographer. He saw action on the Western Front and Middle East. Whilst in Cairo he met and immediately fell in love with a young opera singer, Antoinette Thierault-Leighton. They married on 11th April.1918. In August that year, Frank resigned from the army and returned home to Australia, where he and his wife settled in the Vaucluse district of Sydney.
In May 1919 Antoinette gave birth to twin girls, which they named Adelie and Antoinette. Their third daughter Yvonne arrived in 1921whilst he was away filming in New Guinea. His son Frank Jnr, was born two years later. In 1929 he joined up with Mawson on again on the British, Australian, and New Zealand Research Expedition to Antarctica.
During the years between the two World Wars, Hurley was involved in the making of numerous films in Australia, America and England, and for a time became a studio camera man in England.
In 1939 when WW2 broke out he was considered too old to resume his position of Official Army Photographer that he had held in WW1. Instead he was given the rank of acting Major with the Cinematographic & Photographic unit and gained the O.B.E. for his work. He returned to Sydney in 1946 after 6 long years away from home.
In 1948 his book “Shackleton’s Argonauts” was published and became a big hit. Other books followed, and in the early 1950’s he turned his attentions to producing picture postcards and calendars.
Hurley passed away in 1962 at his home in Sydney, sat in his favourite armchair.
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Endurance Obituaries Navigation
Introduction
Summary
Bakewell
BlackBorow
Cheetham
Clark
Crean
Gooch
Green
Greenstreet
Holness
How
Hudson
Hurley <<
Hussey
James
Kerr
Macklin
Marston
McCarthy
McIlroy
McLeod
McNish
Orde-Lees
Rickinson
Shackleton
Stephenson
Vincent
Wild
Wordie
Worsley
SS Yelcho
Elephant Island
Endurance Dogs
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