W. H, Wilcockson — Coal in S^itshergen. 531 



ft. in. 

 Pure coal ...... 3 



Coal slate ...... 1 



Pure coal ...... 1 6 



while at Advent Bay there are two intermediate beds, aggregating 

 2 feet, separating three coal-seams which together have a thickness 

 of 5 feet. 



The coal areas in "West Spitsbei'gen are nearly all included in an 

 irregular quadrilateral, 100 miles from east to west by 130 miles 

 from north to south, the boundary extending from the Brogger 

 Peninsula on the west coast to Wiche Bay on the east, thence south 

 to Whales Bay and across to the west coast again at Dunder Bay. 

 In addition, coal claims have been taken up at Hope Bay and all 

 over Prince Charles Foreland and Barents Island. The coal districts 

 on the main land are all situated either near open sea or near 

 navigable waters in Ice Fjord and Bell and Lowe Sounds, where the 

 coal can be loaded directly on to the ship. They are owned by 

 several different nationalities in the following proportions: — 



Square miles. 



The British claims are situated on Prince Charles Foreland and at 

 Kings Bay and Brogger Peninsula, around Bell and Lowe Sounds, 

 in the district west of Wiche Bay, at Hope Bay, and on Barents 

 Island. The Norwegian and Russian claims are on the south shore 

 of Ice Fjord, the Swedish in Buntzow's Land at the head of Ice 

 Fjord and at the head of Lowe Sound, and the German near 

 Kings Bay. 



The chief British company operating in the islands is the Northern 

 Exploration Company, which owns 2,000 square miles of claims and 

 which instigated the large expedition organized by Sir Ernest 

 Shackleton, which has recently returned to this country. Another 

 British company is the Scottish Spitsbergen Syndicate, of Edinburgh, 

 which puts forward claims to the Buntzow's Land district, at present 

 occupied by the Swedish Spitsbergen Company, There are also 

 two large Norwegian companies, one of which recently acquired the 

 American Arctic Coal Company's mine at Advent Bay. 



The last-named company, which began work in 1904, had an 

 annual output of about 50,000 tons, and this together with some 

 coal mined by a British company at Green Harbour, also on the 

 south side of Ice Fjord, was the whole output of the islands till 

 the outbreak of war in 1914: at that time development on a much 

 larger scale was planned, but was unavoidably postponed, so that 

 the total output for 1917 was only 100,000 tons, all of which was 

 exported to Norway and Sweden. 



The coal reserves of the islands have recently been estimated at 

 8,000,000,000 tons, a figure which is probably considerably below 

 the mark, if the reports of the Swedish company may be trusted. 



