Smith, Benjamin Leigh, 1828-1913

Benjamin Leigh Smith was born on 12 March 1828 at Whatlington, Sussex. He was educated at the Nonconformist Bruce Castle School and, in 1848, was elected a pensioner of Jesus College, Cambridge, becoming the first dissenter to receive a BA degree. He was called to the bar at the Inner Temple in 1856, but never practised.

Smith embarked on his first voyage to the Arctic in 1871 when he sailed in the ketch Samson to Svalbard on the British Exploring Expedition, reaching latitude 81° 24 minutes North and making accurate surveys of several small islands for the first time. He returned to Svalbard in Samson the following year, first visiting Jan Mayen where the expedition made a brief survey before proceeding to the northwest coast of Spitsbergen to hunt whales. In 1873, Smith took the steamer Diana on the British Exploring Expedition to explore in waters north of Svalbard. After delivering supplies to Nils Otto Gustaf Nordenskild's expedition at Mosselbukta, Diana was beset for a short time off Kapp Platen, thus preventing further progress. The expedition returned to Dundee in September with a variety of natural history collections and observations.

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