Shipwreck at Cape Flora: The Expeditions of Benjamin Leigh Smith, England's Forgotten Arctic Explorer

by P.J. Capelotti

Overview

Gripping tales of survival, exploration, and discovery are told with humour and panache in the ripped-from-the-archives story of Benjamin Leigh Smith, England’s forgotten Arctic explorer.

Benjamin Leigh Smith discovered and named dozens of islands in the Arctic but published no account of his pioneering explorations. He refused public accolades and sent stand-ins to deliver the results of his work to scientific societies. Yet, the Royal Geographic Society’s Sir Clements R. Markham referred to him as a polar explorer of the first rank.

Traveling to the Arctic islands that Leigh Smith explored and crisscrossing England to uncover unpublished journals, diaries, and photographs, archaeologist and writer P. J. Capelotti details Leigh Smith’s five major Arctic expeditions and places them within the context of the great polar explorations in the nineteenth century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781552387054
Publisher:	University of Calgary Press
Publication date:	03/01/2013
Series:	Northern Lights , #16
Edition description:	1
Pages:	300
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

P. J. Capelotti is associate professor of anthropology at Penn State University, Abington College. He is the author of more than a dozen books and his research has taken him several times to Svalbard and Franz Josef Land and twice to the North Pole.

Table of Contents

List of Figures xi

Prologue: Twilight xvii

1 Benjamin Leigh Smith and His Times, 1828-1871 1

2 Expedition One: Svalbard, 1871 51

3 Expedition Two: Jan Mayen and Svalbard, 1872 77

4 Expedition Three: Svalbard, 1873 97

5 The Awakening to a New Life, 1874-1879 123

6 Expedition Four: Franz Josef Land, 1880 151

7 Expedition Five: Franz Josef Land, 1881-1882 173

8 Benjamin Leigh Smith and His Times, 1883-1913 217

Acknowledgments 233

Notes 235

Appendices 251

Select Bibliography 259

Index 265