“Waiting for His Majesty’s Royal Reprimand”

This edition of Tell Us Something was recorded on February 18th, 2014 at the Top Hat Lounge in Missoula, MT. The theme was “What Are You Waiting For”.

Georges de Giorgio shares his story “Waiting for His Majesty’s Royal Reprimand”. It’s 1947 and Georges is in Antarctica, 17 years old, George V’s ships to come and tell them they were not welcome in the Falklands. Admiral Bird, Georges’ captain, forbade liquor on board, so Georges and his 20 year old female partner in crime commandeer a small wooden dingy and are offered Scotch by the British sailors. His Majesty’s ship Fitzroy.

Georges de Giorgio – was born in a car wreck in France on the way to Italy in 1928. George’s father moved the family to Chile at the age of 4 where he grew up working in his father’s wooden ship boatyard.

In 1947 at the age of 17, Georges joined an American Expedition to Antarctica becoming the youngest person to ever spend a year there. Georges lived a month alone on the Palmer Peninsula plateau, was the first to cross from the Atlantic to Pacific by dogsled with a joint British/American party, and has a mountain named after him, de Giorgio Mountain.

Georges then spent the next 30 years sailing the world’s oceans. Georges was the navigator on the ship Mischief for the famous English explorer HW Tilman. He also hunted for Sir Francis Drake’s lost treasure on Robinson Crusoe Island.
George was recently featured in a documentary on the expedition to Antarctica called The Ends of the Earth, Finn Ronne’s Antarctica. Learn more about the expedition and documentary here: www.ronneantarcticexplorers.com.

For the past eight years, George worked at the Lewis and Clark interpretive Center and Cascade Historical Society in Great Falls.