Augustine Courtauld

During the pioneer powered flights over the Atlantic Ocean in the 1920s, it was already clear that an all-ocean route was suboptimal, especially when flying from east to west.

Courtauld volunteered and served as a solo observer at this post for a five-month tour of duty during the height of the 1930–1931 winter.

Watkins and other expedition members relieved him on 5 May 1931, just as Courtauld's fuel was running out, partly because two of his tins of paraffin had leaked.

[3] Later in the expedition, together with Percy Lemon and Gino Watkins, Courtauld made an open boat journey of 600 nautical miles (1,111 km) around the King Frederick VI Coast in the south of Greenland.

On 21 October 1959,[7] his widow married the Conservative Home Secretary Rab Butler, whose wife, August's cousin, Sydney Courtauld had died in 1954.

[8] On 28 May 2011 a joint British-Russian team of alpinists climbed a previously unconquered peak (~3150m), de facto the last remaining unclimbed summit in the vicinity of Gunnbjørn Fjeld in the Watkins Range in Greenland.

[11] Courtauld was the subject of a 2017 episode of the Futility Closet Podcast,[12] chronicling his time at the Greenland weather station.