Warington Wilkinson Smyth

Sir Warington Wilkinson Smyth (26 August 181719 June 1890) was a British geologist. Biography Smyth was born at Naples, the son of Admiral W H Smyth and his wife Annarella Warington. His father was engaged in the Admiralty Survey of the Mediterranean at the time of his birth. Smyth was educated at Westminster School and Bedford School. He then went to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was a member of the Cambridge crew in the 1839 Boat Race and graduated BA in 1839. Having gained a travelling scholarship he spent more than four years in Europe, Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt, paying great attention to mineralogy and mining, examining coal-fields, metalliferous mines and salt-works, and making acquaintance with many distinguished geologists and mineralogists. Smyth married Anna Maria Antonia Maskelyne, daughter of Anthony Mervin Story Maskelyne, of Basset Down House, Wiltshire on 9 April 1864. One son, Herbert Warington Smyth, was also a mining engineer, a traveller, and a Geological Survey adviser to the government of Siam. Another son, Sir Nevill Maskelyne Smyth (1868–1941), won the Victoria Cross at the Battle of Omdurman. Smyth died in his London home in Inverness Terrace, Bayswater, on 19 June 1890, but was buried at St Erth, not far from his country home at Marazion in Cornwall. He is commemorated by a wall plaque in Truro Cathedral, where he had been a founding member of the building committee responsible for its construction.