Clements Markham
Clements Robert Markham
Born
20 July 1830(1830-07-20)
Stillingfleet, England
Died
29 January 1916 (aged 85)
London
Education
Cheam School, Westminster
School
Occupation Royal Navy officer, explorer and
geographer
Spouse(s) Minna Chichester
Children
Mary Louise (May) Markham (b.
1859)
Parents
The Revd David Markham and
Catherine Markham
Sir Clements Robert Markham KCB FRS
(20 July 1830 – 30 January 1916) was a Brit-
ish geographer, explorer and writer. He was
secretary of the Royal Geographical Society
(RGS) between 1863 and 1888, and later
served as the Society’s president for a fur-
ther 12 years. In the latter capacity he was
mainly responsible for organising the Nation-
al Antarctic Expedition of 1901–04, and for
launching the polar career of Robert Falcon
Scott.
Markham began his career as a Royal
Naval cadet and midshipman, during which
time he went to the Arctic with HMS Assist-
ance in one of the many searches for the lost
expedition of Sir
John Franklin. Later,
Markham served as a geographer to the India
Office, and was responsible for the collection
of cinchona plants from their native Peruvian
forests, and their transplantation in India. By
this means the Indian government acquired a
home source from which quinine could be ex-
tracted. Markham also served as geographer
to Sir Robert Napier’s Abyssinian expedition-
ary force, and was present in 1868 at the fall
of Magdala.
The main achievement of Markham’s RGS
presidency was the revival at the end of the
19th century of British interest in Antarctic
exploration, after a 50-year interval. He had
strong and determined ideas about how the
National Antarctic Expedition should be or-
ganised, and fought hard to ensure that it
was run primarily as a naval enterprise, un-
der Captain Scott’s command. To do this he
overcame hostility and opposition from much
of the scientific community. In the years fol-
lowing the expedition he continued to cham-
pion Scott’s career, to the extent of disreg-
arding or disparaging the achievements of
other conte