Benjamin Leigh Smith

Benjamin Leigh Smith ( born March 12, 1828 in Whatinton, Sussex; † January 4, 1913 in Hampstead ) was a British polar explorer.

Smith was born into a wealthy liberal family. He was the illegitimate fourth son of the wealthy Whig politician Benjamin Leigh Smith (1783-1860) and the milliner Anne Longden ( 1801-1834 ). His older sister Barbara Bodichon (1827-1891) was a leading Victorian women's rights activist.

Leigh Smith studied at Jesus College, Cambridge and graduated in 1857 with a master's degree from. He was now entitled to work as a lawyer, but never practiced this profession from. He was mainly concerned with the natural sciences and upgraded in 1871 a geographic and oceanographic expedition to the ice-strengthened two- masted sailing ship Samson towards the north coast of Spitsbergen. With the help of the Norwegian Eispiloten Andreas Ulve (1833-1896), he was able to ride the entire north coast of the island group until today named after him Cape Leigh Smith in the east of North Country. He mapped several small islands and conducted a series of temperature measurements of sea water at different depths.

On 13 May 1872 he embarked on his second Arctic travel. He examined several volcanic crater on Jan Mayen, before he again went to the north of Spitsbergen. The ice conditions were worse than in the previous year, and Samson was damaged in Wijdefjorden so that Leigh Smith was forced to return to England early. So he escaped the fate of 57 Norwegian sealers that were included in the fall at the output of Wijdefjorden with their six ships from the ice. 17 of them died as they tried to over-winter in the Cape Svenskhuset Thordsen.

In 1873 he had also chartered the steamship Diana to Samson. He wanted to circumnavigate Spitsbergen with two ships and the little- researched reach King Karl Land, but had on the Cape flats in the north of North Country reverse. The fact that he supplied the Finland-Swedish polar explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld, who had wintered at the Mosselbukta with fresh food, he saved the lives of several diseased with scurvy participants of the Swedish expedition.

1880 drove Leigh Smith, this time with the Eira, again according to Jan Mayen and Svalbard. The ice conditions allowed this time no encroachment on the north coast. So he visited Amsterdamøya and the Magdalene fjords and passed on 31 July 1880, the South Cape of Spitsbergen towards the east. On August 14, the Eira Franz Josef Land, where Leigh Smith first landed on the small island of May reached. It was the first time since the Austro-Hungarian North Pole expedition that again an expedition an island Franz-Josef- country entered. Leigh Smith named and then mapped the Northbrook Island with Cape flora, which was the starting point of several Arctic expeditions later. As the ship left the archipelago, the course of 176 km was recorded hitherto unknown coast of the islands McClintock, May, Hooker, Etheridge, Bruce and Northbrook. The Royal Geographical Society awarded him then the Patron's Gold Medal 1881 "for important discoveries along the coast of Franz- Josef- Lands".

1881 Leigh Smith returned to the Eira to Franz Josef Land back. One of the goals was to keep for the missing Jeanette George Washington DeLong out. The Eira came on August 21, off Cape flora between a strong blowing ice rink and the solid Küsteneis and was doing so badly damaged that they sank. However, the team was able to recover some of the charge, including four boats, and to save on Northbrook Island. She built a temporary house and supplemented the scarce supplies with the meat hunted polar bears and walruses. In July 1882, the men rowed in boats 800 km to Novaya Zemlya, where they met with the Willem Barents. Leigh Smith returned to England without having lost a single man during the winter.

At the age of 59 years Benjamin Leigh Smith married thirty years younger than Charlotte sellers. Her son Philip Leigh Smith (1892-1967) married in 1933 the nuclear physicist Alice Prebil ( 1907-1987 ).

Leigh Smith published no details of his scientific work. He also wrote no travel reports or memoirs. So he was already largely forgotten when he died in 1913.

In the archipelago of Franz Josef Land, the Leigh -Smith Island is named after him.