Felix Wedgwood

Arthur Felix Wedgwood (18 July 1877 – 14 March 1917) was an English author, mountaineer and soldier who died on active service during the First World War. Background He was born at The Upper House in Barlaston, Staffordshire, a scion of the Wedgwood pottery family. He was the youngest son of Clement Wedgwood and his wife Emily Catherine (née Rendel) daughter of James Meadows Rendel. His elder brothers who survived childhood were Francis Hamilton Wedgwood, Josiah C. Wedgwood and Ralph Wedgwood. Wedgwood was educated at Newcastle High School, Clifton College, and Trinity College, Cambridge. Felix and Ralph Wedgwood (who also attended Trinity from 1895) are mentioned in Period Piece, the childhood memoir by their second cousin Gwen Raverat (1885-1957). After university, he worked as a civil engineer specialising in the purchase and recovery of shipwrecks. Mountaineering travels Wedgwood was an amateur mountaineer, and travelled to South America and to Canada. In 1905 he sailed from Southampton to Buenos Aires. While in Argentina with the Swiss guide Hans Kaufmann, he suffered frostbite on Aconcagua. In 1908, having travelled onto Canada, he, Joseph William Andrew Hickson, Edward Feuz, Jr and Gottfried Feuz climbed Mount Assiniboine. Although they summitted, they were assailed by a storm on the descent. In Canada, he met his future wife, Katharine Longstaff; she was the daughter of Llewellyn W. Longstaff, and sister of a fellow climber Tom Longstaff. She named Wedgwood Peak for him, having been the first to summit it.