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History Polar Regions

Shipwreck at Cape Flora

The Expeditions of Benjamin Leigh Smith, England's Forgotten Arctic Explorer

by (author) P.J. Capelotti

Publisher
Arctic Institute of North America, University of Calgary Press
Initial publish date
Feb 2013
Category
Polar Regions, Adventurers & Explorers, Human Geography
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781552387146
    Publish Date
    Feb 2013
    List Price
    $39.95
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781552387054
    Publish Date
    Mar 2013
    List Price
    $39.95

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Description

Mentioned in BBC News: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24281727

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Traveling to the Arctic islands that Leigh Smith explored and crisscrossing England to uncover unpublished journals, diaries, and photographs, archaeologist and writer P. J. Capelotti details Leigh Smith's five major Arctic expeditions and places them within the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.

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.

P.J. Capelotti's profile page