The Coldest Coast

This book describes the 1873 voyage of the British explorer Benjamin Leigh Smith, based on the diaries and photographs of Lieutenant Herbert C. Chermside, who joined the expedition of the seas around Svalbard. Chermside's photographs, long believed lost, have recently been uncovered in Sweden and are being curated there by the Grenna Museum. The three unpublished diaries of Herbert Chermside were lent to the Scott Polar Research Institute in 1939 by Mrs. Benjamin Leigh Smith. For the first time, Chermside's diaries are published in their entirety, with the original photographs shown alongside modern images of the same locations. This includes the first photographic record of the north coast of Svalbard, images that are today being used as comparative data for the study of climate change in the archipelago. The diaries have been fully transcribed and edited. Introductory chapters are included, written by specialists in the history of exploration, history of science, and the history of photography from Penn State University, the University of Gothenburg, and UiT, the Arctic University of Norway, as well as contributors from the UK and Germany.

This volume is published in association with Grenna Museum, which will present Chermside's photographs in a 2022 exhibit on Leigh Smith and A.E. Nordenskiold.

With previously unpublished 1873 expedition diaries and recently discovered photos by Herbert Chermside Includes first photographic record of the north coast of Spitzbergen Introductory chapters by specialists in exploration history, photographic history and history of science In association with Grenna Museum in Sweden

Auteur

Dr. P.J. Capelotti is Professor of Anthropology and Research Associate at the Polar Center at Penn State University, in Abington, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. He is author or editor of over two dozen publications on history historical archaeology, including "By Airship to the North Pole: an archaeology of human exploration" (1999), "Sea Drift: Rafting Adventures in the Wake of Kon-Tiki" (2001), "Life and Death on the Greenland Patrol" (2005), "The Whaling Expedition of the Ulysses" (2010), "Shipwreck at Cape Flora: The expeditions of Benjamin Leigh Smith, England's forgotten Arctic explorer" (2013) and "The Greatest Show in the Arctic: the American exploration of Franz Josef Land, 1898-1905" (2016).

Contenu

1. The 19th century exploration of Spitzbergen by Susan Barr.- 2. Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld and the Swedish expedition of 1872-73 by Urban Wråkberg.- 3. Axel W. Engvall and Leigh Smith's rescue of Nordenskiöld by Anders Larsson.- 4. Alfred Eaton and the biological collections of Leigh Smith's 1873 expedition by C.L. Devlin.- 5. Chermside's observations of marine mammals during a Spitzbergen hunt by C.L. Devlin.- 6. Chermside's Arctic birds by Magnus Forsberg.- 7. The discovery of Chermside's Spitzbergen photographs by Håkan Jorikson and Anders Larsson.- 8. Chermside's Spitzbergen imagery, then and now by Tyrone Martinsson and Andreas Umbreit.- 9. Chermside's diary of Leigh Smith's 1873 expedition edited by P.J. Capelotti.