Biographies that include the word ‘forgotten’ to describe their subject can provoke the same doubts as a book premised upon a centennial – that the reason for telling the story might be less than compelling. Fortunately that is not the case in this well-written study of Benjamin Leigh Smith (1828–1913), through whom P.J. Capelotti tells an enchanting story of Arctic exploration in the 1870s and 1880s. Capelotti argues that Smith's comparatively small-scale voyages to the Spitsbergen archipelago and later the newly discovered Franz Josef Land proved important both as contributions to geographical knowledge and as demonstrations of the efficacy of a particular mode of exploration.
The first part of the book recounts Smith's somewhat aimless early life, from birth into a Dissenting family in late Georgian England to his first Arctic expedition (at the comparatively late age of forty-three). Smith did not leave much in the way of a personal archive. Capelotti's solution is to locate Smith within the milieu of his time, from his remarkable family (the most notable member being his cousin Florence Nightingale) to the wider zeitgeist in both polar exploration and science. Precisely how this context shaped Smith as an individual is difficult to pin down. Arctic exploration might well have struck Smith as a way to ‘make him[self] famous' (p. 26), particularly given the Victorian fascination with the fate of Sir John Franklin's lost 1845 expedition to the North West Passage. Yet, as Capelotti notes, the ornery reclusiveness that marked Smith later in life was indicative of a conscious rejection of fame – or perhaps, of the loss of control over one's public persona that being a hero entailed.
The heart of the book is its evocative description of Smith's five Arctic expeditions. The first was in many ways the most successful. In 1871 Smith and a hired Norwegian crew sailed clockwise up the west coast of the Spitsbergen archipelago, sighting the far eastern edge of North-East Land (the second-largest of its islands). The expedition produced a host of new cartographic names in addition to records of ocean temperatures and currents; samples from the ocean bottom; and a trove of walrus, seal and reindeer skins. The following year Smith returned to Spitsbergen but could not sail further north or east than the year before. Perhaps the most lasting legacy of the voyage was a meeting with the Swedish geologist Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld, leader of an expedition that subsequently became frozen into the ice that winter, whose participants were mightily glad when Smith returned in the summer of 1873 (in a new custom-built ship) with supplies that enabled their return without major loss of life.
The shipwreck that headlines the book was in many ways the culmination of Smith's career. ‘Gillis Land’, purported to exist to the east of the Spitsbergen archipelago, was a preoccupation for Smith and others during the early 1870s, and the islands now known as Franz Josef Land were discovered by an Austro-Hungarian expedition in 1873. When Smith returned to the Arctic in 1880 he successfully charted much of the southern archipelago for the first time, earning effusive praise from the geographical establishment (not least because Franz Josef Land might provide a staging post for future North Pole expeditions). But when he returned the following summer, Smith's ship was crushed by ice, leaving him and twenty-four shipmates to survive a winter in this desolate land. All members of the expedition (bar its cat) made it back to Europe alive, but the fifty-four-year-old Smith's Arctic career was over. Worth noting are the remarkable photographs and drawings that illustrate these two chapters, which enhance the fine prose descriptions of these desolate islands.
Historians of science will find their interest more piqued than satisfied by this book. Capelotti is correct to highlight Smith's contributions to cartographic knowledge, notably at the north-eastern edge of the Spitsbergen archipelago, and skilfully links debates over how to best reach the North Pole with ongoing debates about whether the high Arctic was covered with smooth ice, rough ice or open water. Smith's programme of oceanographic sampling (particularly temperature profiles) is less thoroughly contextualized. Major contemporaneous events such as the Challenger expedition are not mentioned, and while Capelotti neatly recaps present-day understandings of the complex currents around the archipelago, future researchers might well build on Capelotti's work to link Smith's activities to the nineteenth-century arguments over the nature of ocean currents that Eric Mills has recently analysed so well.
Shipwreck at Cape Flora ends with a reflection on Smith as ‘a carefully opportunistic gatherer of data, not a seeker after a predetermined grail’ (p. 232). His status as a forgotten figure can certainly be attributed in part to his reticent character and dislike of publicity, and Capelotti provides much evidence to support this assessment, while pointing also to a new generation of North Pole-seekers motivated by ‘publicity and money’ (p. 228). Yet Spitsbergen in particular continued to be a place where individuals such as Smith, who blended the categories of sportsman, scientist and adventurer, could quietly probe the boundaries of knowledge. Parallels might even be drawn with the young Cambridge explorers who revived British Arctic exploration during the interwar years of the twentieth century. Like Smith, these were often young men of means, nimble and sometimes innovative travellers for whom the Arctic was far more than a pole or a passage. Capelotti has brought a somewhat forgotten figure into the historical limelight – and also provided a stimulus to further reflection on cultures of British Arctic exploration.
