Miles Smeeton (1906–1988) and Beryl Smeeton (1905–1979) were an outstanding couple of travellers, pioneers, explorers, mountaineers, cruising sailors, recipients of numerous sailing awards, farmers, prolific authors, wildlife conservationists and founders of the Cochrane Ecological Institute, a Canadian non-profit charity responsible for successfully reintroducing the swift fox to Canada.
Brigadier Miles Richard Smeeton, DSO, MBE, MC was born in Yorkshire, England, in 1906, and was educated at Wellington and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst.
During the Second World War he served with the 3rd Indian Motor Brigade in the Western Desert and commanded Probyn's Horse in action against the Japanese in Burma in 1945.
He was awarded the Military Cross for gallantry at Bir Hacheim on 27 May 1942 and the Distinguished Service Order for successful leadership during skirmishes at Shande and Ywadan on 3 and 5 March 1945, respectively.
In December 1956 Miles and Beryl departed Melbourne on Tzu Hang to visit Clio at school in England, intending to follow the old clipper route.
They accomplished the first successful reintroduction of a North American extirpated carnivore back to its home range, the swift fox.
In 1982, Nance sold the ship, and she is reported to have been bought later by a drug dealer, who used her for smuggling marijuana from Colombia to the United States.
In 1990, she was destroyed by a bulldozer on a landfill in San Juan, Puerto Rico, allegedly the day before a man arrived who had raised funds to rescue her.