Andrew Irvine

Irvine was born in Birkenhead, Cheshire, one of six children of historian William Fergusson Irvine (1869–1962) and Lilian Davies-Colley (1870–1950).

His father's family had Scottish and Welsh roots, while his mother was from an old Cheshire family.

He was a cousin of journalist and writer Lyn Irvine, and also of pioneering female surgeon Eleanor Davies Colley and of political activist Harriet Shaw Weaver.

He was educated at Birkenhead School and Shrewsbury School, where he demonstrated a natural engineering acumen, able to improvise fixes or improvements to almost anything mechanical.

During the First World War, he created a small stir at the War Office by sending them a design for a synchronisation gear to allow a machine gun to fire from a propeller-driven aeroplane through the propeller without damaging its blades, and also a design for a gyroscopic stabiliser for aircraft.

He was also a keen sportsman and particularly excelled at rowing.

Andrew Comyn "Sandy" Irvine (8 April 1902 – 8 or 9 June 1924) was an English mountaineer who took part in the 1924 British Everest Expedition, the third British expedition to the world's highest (8,848 m) mountain, Mount Everest.

While attempting the first ascent of Mount Everest, he and his climbing partner George Mallory disappeared somewhere high on the mountain's northeast ridge.

The pair were last seen alive a few hundred metres from the summit, and it is unknown whether one or both of them reached the summit before they perished.

His prodigious ability as a rower made him a star of the 1919 'Peace Regatta' at Henley with the Royal Shrewsbury School Boat Club, and propelled him to Merton College, Oxford, to study engineering.

The expedition's leader, Noel Odell, and he discovered that they had met before, in 1919 on Foel Grach, a 3,000-foot-high Welsh mountain, when Irvine had ridden his motorcycle to the top and surprised Odell and his wife Mona, who had climbed it on foot.

Subsequently, on Odell's recommendation, Irvine was invited to join the forthcoming third British Mount Everest expedition on the grounds that he might be the "superman" that the expedition felt it needed.

He was at the time still a 21-year-old undergraduate student.

At Oxford, he joined the Oxford University Mountaineering Club, and was also a member of the Oxford crew for the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race in 1922 and a member of the winning crew in 1923, the only time Oxford won between 1913 and 1937.

Irvine had an affair with a former chorus girl named Marjory Agnes Standish Summers (née Thompson).

Marjory was married to the steel magnate Henry Hall Summers and was 33 years younger than her husband.

Summers was one of the sons of founder John Summers, of John Summers & Sons, a steel company.

While Irvine was on Everest, Henry began divorce proceedings against Marjory.

In 1923, Irvine took part in the Merton College Arctic Expedition to Spitsbergen, where he excelled on every front.

Irvine set sail for the Himalaya from Liverpool on board SS California on 29 February 1924, along with three other members of the expedition, including George Mallory.

Mallory later wrote home to his wife that Irvine "could be relied on for anything except perhaps conversation".

During the expedition, he made major and crucial innovations to the expedition's professionally designed oxygen sets, radically improving their functionality, lightness, and strength.

He also maintained the expedition's cameras, camp beds, primus stoves, and many other devices.

He was universally popular, and respected by his older colleagues for his ingenuity, companionability, and unstinting hard work.

The expedition made two unsuccessful attempts on the summit in early June, and time remained for one more before the heavy snowfall that came with the summer monsoon would make climbing too dangerous.

This last chance fell to the expedition's most experienced climber, George Mallory.

To the surprise of other expedition members, Mallory chose the 22-year-old inexperienced Irvine above the older, more seasoned climber, Noel Odell.

Irvine's proficiency with the oxygen equipment was obviously a major factor in Mallory's decision, but some debate has occurred ever since about the precise reasons for his choice.

Mallory and Irvine began their ascent on 6 June, and by the end of the next day, the pair had established a final two-man camp at 8168 m, from which to make their final push on the summit.

What time they departed on 8 June is unknown, but circumstantial evidence suggests that they did not have the smooth, early start that Mallory had hoped for.

Odell, who was acting in a supporting role, reported seeing them at 12:50 pm—much later than expected—ascending what he believed was the Second Step of the northeast ridge and "going strongly for the top", although in the years that followed, exactly which of the Three Steps Odell had sighted the pair climbing became extremely controversial.

Whether Mallory and Irvine reached the summit before they died has been the subject of debate.

Upon hearing of Irvine and Mallory's disappearance, a family friend wrote: "One cannot imagine Sandy content to float placidly in some quiet back-water, he was the sort that must struggle against the current and, if need be, go down foaming in full body over the precipice".

Arnold Lunn, one of Irvine's friends, wrote: "Irvine did not live long, but he lived well. Into his short life he crowded an overflowing measure of activity which found its climax in his last wonderful year, a year during which he rowed in the winning Oxford boat, explored Spitsbergen, fell in love with skiing, and – perhaps – conquered Everest. The English love rather to live well than to live long".

The Swiss manufacturer's name matched those of a number supplied to the 1924 expedition, and since only Mallory and Irvine had climbed that high along the ridge route, it must have belonged to one of them.

Noel Odell, the last man to see Mallory and Irvine on their ascent in 1924, offered a more benign explanation: that the ice axe had merely been placed there on the ascent to be collected on the way back since the climbing ahead was almost entirely on rock under the prevailing conditions.

In 1933, nine years after the disappearance of Mallory and Irvine, Percy Wyn-Harris, a member of the fourth British Everest Expedition discovered an ice axe around 8460 m, about 20 m below the ridge and some 230 m before the First Step.

It was found lying loose on brown 'boiler-plate' slabs of rock, which though not particularly steep, were smooth and in places had a covering of loose pebbles.

Hugh Ruttledge, leader of the 1933 expedition, speculated that the ice axe marked the scene of a fall, during which it was either accidentally dropped or that its owner put it down, possibly to have both hands free to hold the rope.

Mallory's body was found in 1999, but Irvine's body has never been found.