AAE position: First Officer of SY Aurora for the second two AAE voyages

In their own words

He was a most efficient and conscientious officer and seaman who at first sight might have been taken for the prototype of the perfect “Bucko”, that semi-legendary figure sometimes described as having ‘a jaw like a sea boot’.

— Davis, J.K., High Latitude, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1962, p 196

Fletcher joined Aurora as first mate when she reached Hobart after her first Antarctic voyage, taking over from Toutcher whom Davis considered a ‘hopeless fool’. Davis recorded in his diaries that he was ‘shaping very well indeed … a live man instead of such a hopeless fool as the last man’. [Davis diaries]