From Bo’ness to Svalbard: the coal mining ambitions of the Scottish Spitsbergen Syndicate (1909-1952)

The Scottish Polar explorer William Speirs Bruce (1867–1921) is best remembered for his leadership of the 1902–1904 Scottish National Antarctic Expedition. Though that celebrity is well-deserved, a much greater proportion of Bruce’s career was dedicated to the Arctic rather than the Antarctic, and particularly to Prince Charles Foreland and Spitsbergen, the western islands of the Svalbard archipelago (Speak 2003; Williams and Dudeney, 2018). His interest there was sparked by visits in 1898 and 1899 (he had previously worked in Franz Josef Land and Novaya Zemlya) and once back from his Antarctic expedition, in 1906 he again turned his attention northward. He was eventually to visit the islands seven more times between 1906 and 1920, leading expeditions for topographical survey and assessment of mineral resources (Fig. 1).