The Boat-Yacht of the Eira

A cabinet card showing an exhibit at the Great International Fisheries Exhibition, which was held in South Kensington between 12 May and 31 October 1883. One of the many world’s fairs that took place in the second half of the nineteenth-century, the exhibition was the largest special event held anywhere in the world up to that point.

The Eira, an elegant steam yacht with a 50 hp engine, was commissioned by the English yachtsman Benjamin Leigh Smith, an Artic explorer who between 1871 and 1882 undertook five scientific expeditions to Svalbard and Franz Josef Land in the Russian Arctic. She made one successful voyage to Franz Josef Land in 1880 but the following year, on 14 June 1881, she and her crew left Peterhead on another expedition to Franz Josef Land that almost ended in disaster. The ship became trapped in the ice and sank and the men were forced to winter on the ice at Cape Flora. They eventually managed to escape in four small boats, including the one seen in this photograph.

See Reynold’s Newspaper, 27 August 1882, for a first-hand account of the expedition.

An extensive printed caption verso gives details of the ordeal. It reads: ‘The boat-yacht of the ‘Eira’ which saved the crew, and also the celebrated dog ‘Bob.’

‘The Yacht ‘Eira,’ owned and commanded by E. [sic] Leigh Smith, Esq., left Aberdeen in June, 1881, for Arctic Regions, with a crew of 25 men and one dog, ‘Bob’; were 14 months away, and after the yacht was crushed to pieces by pack ice in Franz Joseph Land, the crew took to four boats (one now exhibited). They spent 12 months there, and wintered in a small hut, 12 ft. by 10 ft., and lived principally on walrus and bears, which were decoyed by ‘Bob,’ the dog, near enough for shooting by the crew. The Yacht’s boat is described by Andrew Valentine, one of the crew, as having journeyed 800 miles through pack ice in 43 days, at the end of which they reached Nova Zembla, and found the Yacht ‘Hope,’ which was in search of them. They had but one day and a half’s provisions when discovered, and lost almost everything by the destruction of their own yacht, the ‘Eira,’ which happened in 1 ¼ hours.’

The remains of the Eira were discovered off Northbrook Island in August 2017.

Photographed by the London Stereoscopic Company.