Malcolm Pringle Smith died early in April, 1941, as the result of enemy action while on a voyage to India, at the age of 43.
He was apprenticed in 1912 to a firm of civil and mining engineers in Glasgow, and in September, 1915, on the completion of his articles he joined Forces and served with the Royal Engineers (Tunnelling Companies) overseas. On demobilization he returned to Scotland, where he obtained further technical training at Glasgow University and elsewhere while working as assistant to the manager of several Scottish collieries.
In 1926 he was appointed surveyor with the African Manganese Co., Ltd., on the Gold Coast, and in 1929 he went to South Africa, where he was manager of the African Lime Works, Ltd., the Manganese Corporation and South African Manganese, Ltd. In 1932 he engaged in experimental work for Liquid Oxygen Explosives of South Africa, and in the following year he was appointed in charge of prospecting and development for Kenya Development, Ltd. For nearly two years from the beginning of 1935, he was employed on the copper and gold properties of Tanganyika Concessions, Ltd., in Uganda and Tanganyika, and in 1937 he was appointed mining engineer on the diamond mines of the Sierra Leone Selection Trust. Two years later he went to Turkey as surveyor and construction engineer to the Turkish Government, on the Murgul copper mine, a position that he held until October, 1940. He was on his way to take up an appointment in India with the firm of John Taylor & Sons, when he lost his life.
Mr. Smith, who held a first-class mine manager’s certificate, the Home Office Surveyors’ Certificate, and Associateship of the Institution of Mining Engineers, was elected an Associate of the Institution in 1928.
Vol. 51, Trans I.M.M., 1941-42, p.338
