“HIGH ENDEAVOURS” (The Extraordinary life and adventures of Miles and Beryl Smeeton) by Miles Clark, paperback, Greystone Books, Douglas & McIntyre, Vancouver/Toronto, © 1991, 436 pages with excellent maps. Appendix - extensive details on Tzu Hang

During the 1970s, a phrase - a label actually - spread from some elite California climbers, kayakers and fellow travelers - when they began referring to themselves as “Sport Hogs” - that is, greedy creatures who just couldn’t get enough “sport.”

Not many pages into High Endeavours, you might think “sport hogs” starring Miles and Beryl Smeeton as the original prototypes, for not only did they “adventure travel” all of their adult lives, they did so with an intensity and completeness that probably has no equal. They did it all. The Smeeton’s “hogging” included serious mountaineering, impossibly hard trekking, kayaking unrun Himalayan rivers, sailing all the major oceans, and for Miles, extensive military combat. In the end, they had traversed all the major continents and oceans with Miles even circumnavigating North and South America.

This is a great tale of 20th Century adventure by two extraordinary people. While I found it a difficult book to review due to the complex and overlapping stories, the Smeeton story reads as a real page turner. And for Northwest readers there is an added bonus in the Smeeton’s link with “our own” John Guswell as well as their homesteading period up on Salt Spring island. Author Miles Clark, who was Miles Smeeton’s godson, does a fine job of laying out the complex web of their adventures rather than speculate on the psychological forces that shaped and motivated the Smeetons.

Beryl, born in 1905, and Miles born in 1906, writes Clark, were a couple who did more together than they would have alone. “Far stronger as a couple than individuals. . . (an) extraordinarily harmonious couple...” Clark lays out their story in traditional biographical style, noting that there were three distinct periods in the Smeeton’s lives: 1. Soldiers/Travelers, 2. Farmers/Sailors, 3. Wildlife Conservationists; periods that form the book’s structure. I would have liked a few more clarifying dates, but I managed to keep most of the events at least in rough sequence.

The book opens with family trees reaching back into the 19th century. The introductory pages verge on being stuffy and “raathar” British by focusing on who begat whom and who socialized with whom and who went to which school and who died in which war and so forth. But in and around the starch, Clark spins out the Smeeton’s remarkably parallel early lives.

There was a strong military tradition in both families. Beryl could not remember a family male who had died peacefully in bed! Both Beryl and Miles grew up as active, outdoorsy people. Beryl, fearless, always seeking adventure, stood tall, slim, blue eyed - her father’s favorite child. She proved a real tomboy (“boyish but not unfeminine”) - swimming rivers, climbing hills, cycling and always seeking the most difficult way to do anything. A confident outgoing person, who from early on, loved travel, excitement and new people, Beryl was strong, capable, and quite striking with her long hair coiled up and her often dirty clothing detailed by tasteful jewelry or scarfs. To say she was unconventional and unusual for her period would be conservative. Still, her unconventional ways came from conviction rather than affectation.

Beryl lost her father in WWI, a loss she felt deeply. She and her mother chafed against one another in the best of times and Beryl longed to be free of the Victorian restraints normal for a woman of her station. There was adequate family money to live well, but Beryl had no interest in ordinary society. Still, she moved in the smart circles, even meeting Thomas Hardy and T.E. Lawrence. In her frustration, Beryl came to see marriage as the only escape from her mother and British social mores. So she quickly married Tom Petty, an older, physiologically scarred veteran of WWI who was delighted with her youth and exuberance. Much to Beryl’s secret happiness, he was soon posted to India!

Miles, like Beryl, was slim and tough, and not especially warm toward people he deemed not worthy of consideration, judging people by their achievements (adventures) rather than their station. A friend once wrote that - “I don’t want to sound churlish, but when you were no longer any great use, (to them - the Smeetons) you ceased to be of any interest . . . They just found other people and life went on.”

Miles grew up with horses, sailing, fishing, hunting. After attending Sandhurst he joined his father’s regiment - the Green Howards in 1925. His was the typical young officer’s mixture of discipline, privilege and an unending sporting life - which in his case meant horses and hunting. Reckless, exuberant, dashing with a confident arrogance, Miles had “a tremendous enthusiasm for anything new.” A born warrior, he loved military action and “...should have been dead (many times) but he was never killed because he bore a charmed life.”

Posted first to Jamaica (which he loved) followed by Egypt and Shanghai, the Green Howards moved to Poona, India where Miles met Beryl - then married to the commanding officer. In Poona, Miles led an officer’s life, with much hunting and pig sticking from horses. Asked by Tom Peddie to teach his wife (Beryl) how to ride, Miles happily obliged. Their riding lessons led to climbing nearby hills, exploring old forts, sharing picnics and eventually, an overland trip to England.

Miles needed to return to England and intended to go by ship until Beryl said he ought to go overland. “Oh, I’d give anything to do that (she said) - through Persia and Iraq, across the desert, and up through Palestine, then Lebanon and into Turkey. I can’t think of anything more awful than going by boat.” Miles replied “You know, I really think you’ll have to come with me. Then I might just do it.” After some consideration and unknown arrangements with her husband, she did go with him.

The trip proved just Beryl’s style. “She thought nothing of bedbugs and fleas . . . And relished the whole idea of cheap travel. Every day brought a new challenge, every penny saved a minor victory. To buy some fly-ridden mutton chop in a local bazaar, to wrap beans in a flabby pancake-like bread, to eat this strange meal and to sleep in the open, to see new countries and to meet and talk with the local people, this was for her the very essence of life.” As she later wrote: “This was a time to live every moment, to see everything, to walk miles, to climb, to glorify in the fitness of our bodies and the acuteness of our senses, and to sleep only when we had to, so that we missed as little as possible of this bright and vivid world. . .” Could Jack Kerouac have said it any better?

And of course, they fall in love. “In love? I (Miles) thought I was in Paradise, walking with a golden girl through the mountains and amongst the flowers, with rucksacks in which we carried all our needs on our backs. No past, no future, but only the joy of the day.”

Returning to India in 1935, Beryl decides to end her marriage to Tom Petty. With that decision she begins her extraordinary solo travel period. She returned to England via lowest class trains, walking, hitchhiking, moving family to family through Iran and Russia. She then rendezvous with Miles in Austria to learn mountaineering. And subsequently while climbing on their own, Miles fell into a crevasse followed the next day by their both being caught up in an avalanche that slid to cliff’s edge - the first in a long sequence of close brushes with death that marked their lives.

Soon after, Beryl came into some family money - just enough to support her nomadic life style. That money allowed her to set off across Europe and Russia to Japan. She then walked across Japan in the winter, solo climbing a 5000’ peak along the way. Then to China with a plan to walk into Burma despite the 1937 chaos of warlords, Mao, Chiang Kai-Shek and the invading Japanese. By train, ferries, and finally foot she traversed the “tribute trail” into Burma so that she could explore Buddhist ruins. Unknowingly, she traveled right past the Hong Kong shipyard where the ketch Tzu Hang was being built to the highest standards.

As if such a trek was not enough, she then met Miles in the Hindu Kush for 6 weeks of trekking to remote Zanskar. The trip culminated with a foldboat (“faltboot”) descent of the mighty Beas river, in a (boat) “. . . really only made of bits of plywood. . . Miles was a very curious chap; he often didn’t look very much ahead. He hadn’t looked at the map which showed that the river fell 100 ft every mile for the next bit.” When the boat foundered on the lst day, Beryl saved herself only through her excellent swimming ability. During the trek, Miles proposed marriage. While Beryl didn’t say no, she did defer, citing several adventures she wanted to do first.

So in 1937, she traveled to South America and set off on a 1000 mile walk/horse back ride through Patagonia - then a wild, barely populated land. Accompanied by a series of hired gauchos, she befriended family after family in the outback, providing her with a string of lodgings and recovery stops.

Two years later she did indeed marry Miles and they honeymooned in the English Lake District with several weeks of rock climbing. Rather than return with Miles to India via ship, Beryl opted to drive her tiny Austin mini-van overland via North Africa, unknowingly traversing the same terrain Miles would be fighting across just months later.

While war loomed in Europe, the newlyweds put together a small expedition to climb Tirich Mir, a 25,460’ unclimbed peak in the Hindu Kush. Their favorite porter was Tenzing Norgay, a man who 20 odd years later would become the first to climb Everest. They were stopped by route problems at 23,000 feet, but Beryl had unwittingly set a new woman’s altitude record. An achievement she followed with a 500 mile “walk” across Burma to Vietnam during the “impossible” monsoon season.

Meanwhile, Miles trained with his new Indian cavalry unit in Baluchistan where he managed to do considerable climbing. After a posting to the Khyber pass, his unit moved on to Middle East combat duty as the war spread to North Africa.

Beryl gave birth to daughter Clio in 1941 and not long after, she and her baby traveled to Tasmania to find a subsistence farm. While searching, she made a 650 mile circumnavigation by bicycle leaving baby Clio with relative strangers. But then, young Clio had a tough life! A friend in India once wrote, “. . . I thought she was raving mad. She had this two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, and as a mother, to see that wretched child being forced, screaming and yelling, up the side of Purana Qila (mountain), being told to hang on and climb, because she was being taught to be brave when the child could hardly toddle, it was just astonishing. . . At the end of the day, Beryl rewarded her with a meal which had to have chopped grass on it . . . I’ve never forgotten it . . . I remember thinking how terrible our lawn was, just rotten old Delhi grass. But I watched her go out with a pair of nail scissors and bring some in for Clio’s supper.”

Meanwhile, Miles was part of the desert war against Rommel’s Panzers, distinguishing himself and escaping death time and again. His war service was recognized with the highest praise and he later admitted, that in many ways, it was the highlight of his life.

At war’s end, the Smeetons moved to Salt Spring island in the Canadian Gulf islands. Author Clark marks the move as “. . . The sharpest turning point of their lives. To Beryl, it was the realization of the (subsistence) dream that had seized her . . . in the foothills of the Patagonian Andes. . . For Miles, though, it was altogether a different prospect. From the moment he left Sandhurst, he’d been attended by an army of servants and bearers. For 20 years, meals had simply arrived and been eaten. Horses had been brought, ridden, and then spirited away . . . And now the respect so widely afforded to a British officer - an esteem which Miles had plainly enjoyed - would be rudely stripped away.”

They made a determined effort to subsist - to exist - off the Salt Spring farm but it was clear that they needed extra money, money that existed in England but under the economic freeze of the post-war period, they could not remove from English soil. So they went to London to get it and happened on the idea of buying a boat and sailing back to Salt Spring. Blind luck led them to the 46’ ketch Tzu Hang, a craft that turned out to be the perfect vehicle for their adventures. So they were soon off as rank amateur sailors, first to Holland and then down the Atlantic to round Cape Horn bound for Canada. Fortunately, they were able to procure experienced crew for much of the journey, one that took them over a year to complete.

Two years later, they were again aboard Tzu Hang sailing back to England so that Clio could attend a “proper school.” They met the young John Guswell in San Francisco where he was preparing his little Trekka for a voyage to Hawaii and beyond. The Smeetons also sailed to Hawaii and then on to New Zealand where Guswell joined them for a West-East passage around the Horn to England. This became, of course, the now infamous double rolling and dismasting that nearly cost all three their lives. After the second dismasting, even the Smeetons got the message and arranged for Tzu Hang to travel to London by freighter.

Between 1958 and 1961 they took Tzu Hang throughout Europe, wintering first in Ireland and then Paris followed by a eastward passage that took them across 40 countries during a six year trip to Japan. It was during this long slow passage that they “. . . perfected the art of long-term cruising. . . as simply the cheapest and most flexible means of travel . . . a fascinating way of life.”

Like their friend and contemporary, Bill Tilman, the Smeetons used their boat to get around, not as a cruising end in itself. For example, they took time to climb 13,455’ Mt. Kinabalu, the second highest peak in S.E. Asia, and while wintering in Japan, Beryl did a winter solo climb of Mt. Fuji.

They returned to Canada via the Aleutians in 1965 and not wishing to return to farming, set off the next year for England via the Panama Canal. Two years later, at the age of 63, they rounded the Horn on their way back to Canada, this time to purchase land near Cochrane, Alberta. Selling Tzu Hang to a former crew, they threw themselves into creating a wildlife sanctuary for endangered Canadian species, something, once again, they knew nothing about.

Lots of adventures followed, from pushy Moose to sly foxes to house building. Recognizing their failing knees, they built a house around a fire pole. “Very often, first-time visitors would watch in horror as Beryl swept across the room and threw herself down the stairwell, her conversation never faltering as she disappeared from view. Others . . downstairs, were even more alarmed by the sight of two septuargenatians arriving from the sky.”

Still, even as landlubbers they did considerable water travel - Miles crossed the NW passage aboard a Canadian icebreaker, and in 1979, they crossed the Atlantic as guests aboard their old friend, Tzu Hang.

Soon after that crossing Beryl’s health failed rapidly due to a breast lump she had ignored for years. In October of 1979, Beryl passed away and left Miles behind. But he soon felt she was still “present” and encouraging him to get out and do what needed doing - and he did, all the while missing Beryl because: “She had so many characteristics, but predominantly a great and lasting joy of life, and tremendous courage, physical, moral and mental which never failed her to the very end. . . Life with B was such fun, but I do not think she would think much of me if I couldn’t soldier on.”

A visiting friend noted that Miles in old age “. . . has come to a kind of accomplished compassion . . . He had a very open way, much softer, his mind seemed much more flexible. . . It was as though, out of the whole proof of a life lived - if you like, an odyssey that returns to home - there was about him the stillness of a completed journey.” Miles lived on at Cochrane until Sept. 1987.

I highly recommend this book. I couldn’t put it down once I began reading. What a story!

Miles Smeeton published nine books documenting their adventures. They are, in order of publication dates:
1. Once is Enough, 2. A Taste of the Hills, 3. A Change of Jungles, 4. Sunrise to Windward, 5. The Misty Islands, 6. Because The Horn is There, 7. The Sea Was Our Village, 8. Moose Magic, 9. Completely Foxed.