Jim asked Joanna Kafarowski:

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Joanna Kafarowski Thanks for your question, Jim! It's important to keep in mind the stage Miss Boyd was at in her life. It was 1926 and she was preparing for her voyage to Franz Josef Land. These were still very early days in her career as an explorer which, in my view, didn't truly begin until after the completion of her 1928 expedition. As part of her preparation, she did conduct a lot of research but that research would very likely have been confined to geography of the region, history of polar exploration to this area and botany. It is unlikely that she would have had access to literature on the very recent history of Franz Josef Land itself. As I point out in the book, Franz Josef Land is very remote even in Arctic standards and the fact that Russia had claimed it as their own only six months previously, would likely have been known only by the respective governments and people (like navigators and ice-masters) who worked in the area. As her career as an explorer progressed, Miss Boyd became more sophisticated as a researcher and broadened the scope of the literature she studied prior to each expedition. In my view, she was rarely blinded by passion regarding her preparations for each expedition. Rather, the opposite. She had a passion for the Arctic but she was clear-sighted, meticulous and detail-oriented in her preparations- and this included her research.

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