‘Shocked and amazed’: remains of British researcher found in a glacier

The remains of a British researcher have been recovered from a glacier in Antarctica, more than 60 years after a scientific expedition went badly wrong.

In 1959, Dennis “Tink” Bell was working for the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey (FIDS), now known as the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), when he died in a deep crack in a glacier on King George Island, off the Antarctic Peninsula.

His body was never recovered.

But in January this year, a Polish team spotted scattered human remains among rocks that had been exposed by a moving glacier.

The parts were later confirmed via DNA testing to be those of the 25-year-old meteorologist.

His brother, David Bell, said: “When my sister Valerie and I were notified that our brother Dennis had been found after 66 years, we were shocked and amazed.”

The remains were transported on the BAS Royal Research Ship Sir David Attenborough to the Falkland Islands, and then taken to London.

David Bell said bringing his sibling home had “helped us come to terms with the tragic loss of our brilliant brother”.

Rod Rhys Jones, chair of the British Antarctic Monument Trust (BAMT), called it “amazing that the Polish team recognised the remains”, which had been shifted around steep terrain by the movement of the glacier.

How the accident unfolded

On 26 July 1959 – deep winter in the Southern Hemisphere – Dennis Bell set out with surveyor Jeff Stokes and dog sleds to carry out survey and geological work.

Bell helped to survey King George Island, which had been largely unexplored, to produce some of the first maps of the territory.

He and Stokes planned to climb a glacier leading to an ice plateau, along with two more researchers, Ken Gibson and Colin Barton, who followed them about half an hour later.