George Baden-Powell

Who was George Baden-Powell?

Sir George Smyth Baden-Powell KCMG was a son of Baden Powell, and brother of Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell, Baden Baden-Powell, Warington Baden-Powell, Agnes Baden-Powell and Frank Baden-Powell. After graduating at Balliol College, Oxford, and studying at the Inner Temple, he acted as a commissioner in Victoria, Australia, the West Indies, Malta and Canada.

His mother, Henrietta Grace Smyth, was the third wife of Rev. Baden Powell, and was a gifted musician and artist.

He was Conservative MP for Liverpool Kirkdale from 1885 to 1898.

In 1893 he married Frances Wilson. They had a daughter, Maud and a son, Donald Ferlys Wilson Baden-Powell.

In 1896 he took his yacht Otaria to the island of Novaya Zemlya in the Arctic to observe the total solar eclipse of that year. On his return to Vardø, Norway, he met his friend Fritjof Nansen who had just returned from his three-year drift and trek across the Arctic. Having intended to start a search for him, he put his yacht at Nansen's disposal and they had only reached Hammerfest when the news arrived that the Fram had also arrived back in Norway.