Frank Napier collection

The collection comprises of correspondence by Napier to Robert Neal Rudmose Brown regarding the Scottish Spitsbergen Syndicate

Frank B Napier served as captain of the schooner Easonian on the Scottish Spitsbergen Syndicate expedition, sailing to Tromsø in 1920. William Speirs Bruce founded the Scottish Spitsbergen Syndicate in 1909 as a mineral exploration company to locate and assay the potential of the Svalbard archipelago for the exploitation of minerals such as coal, gypsum, iron ore, marble and possibly petroleum. The initial work was to be primarily scientific, but good commercial prospects were held out as incentives to shareholders in the company. Despite seven expeditions between 1909 and 1922, the Syndicate conducted no commercial mining operations.

The correspondence to Rudmose Brown is arranged chronologically

By appointment.

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Descriptions compiled by N. Boneham, Assistant Archivist with assistance from R. Stancombe and reference to Arctic, exploration and development c500 BC to 1915, an encyclopaedia by Clive Holland, Garland Publishing, London (1994) and Exploring Polar Frontiers, a historical encyclopaedia by William Mills, San Diego and Oxford, 2003 and 'Robert Campbell' by Douglas Alexander Allan in Year Book Royal Society of Edinburgh, 1956-1957, SPRI Library Shelf 92[Campbell, Robert] and The Polar Record volume 28 number 167 October 1992 p285-292

Clive Holland Manuscripts in the Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge, England - a catalogue, Garland Publishing New York and London (1982) ISBN 0824093941.

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