 During his Spitsbergen visits with Prince Albert in 1898 and 1899 , Bruce had detected the presence of coal , gypsum and possibly oil . In the summers of 1906 and 1907 he again accompanied the Prince to the archipelago , with the primary purpose of surveying and mapping Prince Charles Foreland , an island unvisited during the earlier voyages . Here Bruce found further deposits of coal , and indications of iron . On the basis of these finds , Bruce set up a mineral prospecting company , the Scottish Spitsbergen Syndicate , in July 1909 . 
