Wreck found near North Pole recalls courageous exploits of Florence Nightingale’s cousin
RUSSIAN divers have confirmed that a wreck found off Franz Josef Land, the land mass closest to the North Pole, is the ship of the little-known British explorer, Benjamin Leigh Smith.
The remains of the 130ft Eira steam yacht, which were discovered in the Arctic archipelago where Leigh Smith and his men survived 10 months of brutal cold before miraculously returning home in 1882, may be the northernmost shipwreck ever found.
Scientists from St Petersburg’s Maritime Heritage Association found the wreck via sonar last year near Cape Flora, which Leigh Smith named after his cousin, Florence Nightingale.
Last month, the scientists again made the 2,000-mile trip to the most northern land mass in Eurasia, which lies about 550 miles from the North Pole. Descending to 60ft in water slightly colder than freezing, divers retrieved artefacts confirming the wreck was the Eira, among them a piece of a rum flagon with the name of a wine and spirits shop in Peterhead, Scotland, where the ship was built.
Born in 1828, Leigh Smith worked as a barrister in London before leading five expeditions to the Arctic. He mapped much of Franz Josef Land and brought back specimens for the British Museum and Kew Gardens, as well as live polar bears for London Zoo. Sheltering behind Cape Flora in August 1881, the Eira’s crew failed to see a mass of icebergs sweeping in from the Kara Sea, and the ship was crushed.
The expedition’s 25 men were stranded for the winter with only a few rowing boats. Luckily, they included hunters from the Shetland Islands, and they survived for 10 months eating seals, walruses and polar bears. After the ice cleared, they fashioned sails out of tablecloths and made it across 200 miles of rough sea to Novaya Zemlya, Russia, where a British rescue party found them.
Charlotte Moore, a great-great-great niece of Leigh Smith, said she hoped the wreck’s discovery would raise his profile. “He deserves to be higher up in the pantheon of Arctic explorers,” she said.