In part 1 of this article (Polar Record, Vol 20, No 124, January 1980, p 3–17) we examined the troubled course of relations between captains Horatio T. Austin and William Penny during the early stages of their expeditions in search of Sir John Franklin in 1850–51. In this second part, we shall examine the climax of their uneasy cooperation, namely a prolonged dispute which took place throughout the course of 11 August 1851; then we shall look at the consequences of this dispute after their return home to Britain, including the setting up of the Arctic Committee to resolve the differences between them, and the controversial aftermath of the committee's inquiry.

On 27 September 1919, having destroyed most of their military equipment to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Bolsheviks, the last of the allied troops involved in the ‘Intervention’ at Arkhangel'sk led by General Edmund Ironside were evacuated from the city by sea. The White forces of General Yevgeniy K. Miller were then left to face the Bolsheviks alone (Strakhovsky, 1971, p 229; Silverlight, 1970, p 256; Maclaren, 1976, p 121; Halliday, 1961, p 208). The outcome was inevitable and could only be a matter of time, but when the final collapse of the White regime in Arkhangel'sk did occur, it was accompanied by one of the most bizarre episodes in Arctic marine history.

Benjamin Leigh Smith was born on 12 March 1828 at Whatlington, East Sussex, a son of Benjamin Smith (1783–1860). The family into which he was born carried a strong independent line of thought and adherence to often unpopular views from one generation to the next. William Smith, our subject's grandfather, was a staunch supporter of William Wilberforce and his advocacy of the abolition of slavery. William also supported the views of the American rebels and refused to seek compensation for the loss of family estates in Savannah after the Declaration of Independence. William's son Benjamin, a friend of Thackeray and Member of Parliament for Norwich, 1834–37, was a radical politician and advocate of the repeal of the corn laws. Benjamin senior, a convinced Unitarian, had strong views on the education of his children, and when very young they were taught in what, even now, might be regarded as a progressive manner. A committee, headed by Smith and Lord Brougham, gave funds for the Westminster Infant School which provided elementary education for about 100 poor children in the neighbourhood. Whenever young Benjamin and his brothers and sisters were in London they attended this school which was run by James Buchanan: he had begun life as a weaver in Lanarkshire, and ran the school with the aid of his wife on Swedenborgian principles. There was no corporal punishment; outbreaks of indiscipline were overcome by Buchanan calling all the children to dance together to the sound of his flute. The lack of conventional discipline scandalized the committee and they all withdrew their support leaving Smith to foot the bill. He generously gave £1000 for building baths and a small theatre at the school. Progress was made nonetheless, and Benjamin Senior was sufficiently impressed to invite this unconventional pedagogue to the family estates and continue his children's education during the holidays.

Three field experiments in widely separated parts of the Arctic were carried out during 1979 to complete a study of the interaction between ocean waves and sea ice in the marginal ice zone. The aim of the project is to determine the distribution of floe sizes that is generated by a given incident wave field, and this requires measurements of wave decay, of the bending and body responses of floes, and of the strain necessary to cause fracture. The first series of experiments was carried out in 1978 (Wadhams, 1979) off Labrador and east Greenland. The 1979 series consisted of participation in a University of Washington cruise aboard the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) ship Surveyor to the Bering Sea; participation in the ground truth component of the Sursat remote sensing experiment off west Greenland; and finally a main summer experiment at Mesters Vig, east Greenland, in the same location as the 1978 main experiment. The Office of Naval Research (ONR), Washington DC, funded the study, and the two Greenland experiments were carried out in cooperation with the Electromagnetics Institute, Technical University of Denmark (TUD), Lyngby, with Danish government finance.

The second year of the three-year programme of geological investigations in eastern North Greenland has been successfully completed by the Grønlands Geologiske Undersøgelse (GGU) [Geological Survey of Greenland], in close cooperation, for logistic purposes, with the Geodætiske Institute (GI) [Danish Geodetic Institute] and the Royal Danish Air Force. This programme is the culmination of many years’ planning and the results from it are to be used in the compilation of sheet 8 of the 1:500 000 Greenland geological and Quaternary map series (Watt, 1976), in addition to more detailed maps of specific areas at 1: 100 000.

The Polish Academy of Sciences supported two scientific expeditions to Antarctica during the austral summer, 1978–79: an expedition to H. Arctowski station on King George Island in the South Shetland Islands, and an expedition to A. B. Dobrowolski station at Bunger Oazis on Knox Coast, East Antarctica.