Gino Watkins

Born in London, he was educated at Lancing College and acquired a love of mountaineering and the outdoors from his father through holidays in the Alps, the Tyrol and the English Lake District.

In 1928–9, Watkins made an expedition to Labrador, where he established a base at North West River and explored much previously unmapped territory, including Snegamook Lake.

Watkins led a team of fourteen men to survey the east coast of Greenland and monitor weather conditions there, the information being needed for a planned air route from England to Winnipeg.

[1] In addition to meeting these aims, the expedition discovered the Skaergaard intrusion,[2] and Watkins and two companions, Percy Lemon and Augustine Courtauld, made an open boat journey of 600 nautical miles (1,111 km) around the King Frederick VI Coast in the south of Greenland.

[1] In addition, one of the members of Watkins' expedition, Augustine Courtauld, solo-manned a meteorological observation post in the interior of the Greenland ice pack during the 1930–31 winter, generating the first data set from this previously inaccessible location.