Sydney Wignall (16 October 1922 – 16 April 2012) was a British marine archaeologist, climber, explorer and spy.

Biography

He was born in

Wallasey Wallasey () is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral, in Merseyside, England; until 1974, it was part of the historic county of Cheshire. It is situated at the mouth of the River Mersey, at the north-eastern corner of the Wirral Pe ...

on the Wirral as the son of a cobbler, the youngest of four children. He attended Wallasey Oldershaw grammar school, but left at 16 with no qualifications and later became an apprentice electrical engineer. By 1955 he was living in

Colwyn bay Colwyn Bay ( cy, Bae Colwyn) is a town, community and seaside resort in Conwy County Borough on the north coast of Wales overlooking the Irish Sea. It lies within the historic county of Denbighshire. Eight neighbouring communities are incorpo ...

Climbing and spying

He led a Welsh team of climbers to climb the 25,355-foot-high

Gurla Mandhata Gurla Mandhata, also Naimona'nyi or Nemo Nani (), is the highest peak of the Nalakankar Himal, a small subrange of the Himalaya. It is named after king Mandhata of suryavansha of Ikshvaku dynasty. It lies in Burang County of the Ngari Prefectur ...

Tibet Tibet (; ''Böd''; ) is a region in East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are some other ethnic groups such as Monpa people, ...

, in 1955, was sponsored by

Time Magazine ''Time'' (stylized in all caps) is an American news magazine based in New York City. For nearly a century, it was published weekly, but starting in March 2020 it transitioned to every other week. It was first published in New York City on Mar ...

and the

Liverpool Post The ''Liverpool Post'' was a newspaper published by Reach plc, Trinity Mirror in Liverpool, Merseyside, England. The newspaper and its website ceased publication on 19 December 2013. Until 13 January 2012 it was a daily morning newspaper, wi ...

. Unknown by his fellow climbers he was spying for the Indian Army intelligence to spy on the military developments in this part of Tibet. He later wrote about his experiences in the book ''Spy on the Roof of the World''. From the climb he would be able to view the military build up and make notes on its size and scale. Wignall and his party were captured by the Chinese army and held prisoner for two months. During this period the group suffered frostbite and dysentery and were beaten by the guards. There was also psychological torture, but all attempts to break them failed, and they never confessed or released any information. Wignall successfully passed on the information, but never returned to the area or to climbing again.

Marine archaeology

During Wignall's career as a marine archaeologist he made a number of significant finds and contributions to the field. In 1962 he was a civilian under-water photographer working on an RAF dive of a Roman galley near

Sicily (man) it, Siciliana (woman) , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = Ethnicity , demographics1_footnotes = , demographi ...

. He located the vice-flagship of the

Spanish Armada The Spanish Armada (a.k.a. the Enterprise of England, es, Grande y Felicísima Armada, links=no, lit=Great and Most Fortunate Navy) was a Spanish fleet that sailed from Lisbon in late May 1588, commanded by the Duke of Medina Sidonia, an aris ...

the ''Santa Maria de la Rosa i''n 1968, which as off the coast of Ireland. He was also involved in searching for Sir Francis Drake's lead coffin, and the American warship ''Bonhomme Richard'' which sank in 1779, the submarine ''

Resurgam ''Resurgam'' (Latin: ''"I shall rise again"'') is the name given to an early Victorian submarine and its prototype, designed and built in Britain by Reverend George Garrett. She was intended as a weapon to penetrate the chain netting placed ...

'' off Rhyl. and the Confederate blockade-runner ''Lelia'', lost north of Prestatyn in 1865. The search and diving difficulties involved with the ''Santa Maria de la Rosa'' was captured in the book ''Full Fathom Five: Wrecks of the Spanish Armada'' by Dr Martin. In 1970 he helped with the wreck of

ship ''

El Gran Grifón ''El Gran Grifón'' was the flagship of the Spanish Armada's supply squadron of Baltic hulks (built in and chartered from the City of Rostock, in modern-day Germany); see List of Ships of the Spanish Armada. She was shipwrecked on Fair Isle, Shet ...

'' off

Fair Isle Fair Isle (; sco, Fair Isle; non, Friðarey; gd, Fara) is an island in Shetland, in northern Scotland. It lies about halfway between mainland Shetland and Orkney. It is known for its bird observatory and a traditional style of knitting. Th ...

excavated with Colin Martin. Wignall also made contribution through the analysis of finds from his dives. He worked out that the Spanish Amanda shot were weakened in the manufacturing process. The sudden cooling involved weakened and making the shot unstable in flight. Many of the details of his work are stored at

Bangor University , former_names = University College of North Wales (1884–1996) University of Wales, Bangor (1996–2007) , image = File:Arms_of_Bangor_University.svg , image_size = 250px , caption = Arms ...

archives.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wignall, Sydney 1922 births 2012 deaths British archaeologists British spies British mountain climbers Underwater archaeologists 20th-century spies Prisoners and detainees of the People's Republic of China British people imprisoned abroad People from Wallasey