#canadian arctic expedition

[jesslovesboats]

Happy Karluk Rescue Day! The survivors of the Karluk were rescued from Wrangel Island on this day 109 years ago. The first rescued were Maurer, Munro, and Templeman, who were rescued from the smaller camp at Rodger's Harbour, a few miles from the others.

Immediately after being rescued, all three of the men from Rodger's Harbour asked for cans of sweetened condensed milk.

The rest of the survivors saw the ship shortly thereafter, right when they were getting ready to sit down for a meal. They did not know that the three from Rodger's Harbour had already been rescued, or that they were about to be reunited with Captain Bartlett

These photos are from when all the survivors, including Captain Bartlett, were reunited on the Bear and had a chance to clean up. By and large these people were not friends and were VERY tired of each other, but they were all smiles for the rescue photos (except Fred Maurer and Clam Williams in the group photo for some reason? So pensive...)

The Karluk set sail with a crew of 25. Only 14 of them came home, and they survived thanks to the selfless actions of Captain Bob Bartlett and Kataktovik, his often-overlooked Inuit companion on the journey to Siberia. Stefansson had written them off as dead, but thanks to Bartlett, 14 of them got another chance at life. Not all of them made wise choices going forward (FRED), but they made it home to their families, no thanks to Stef.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading about my boys!

All screenshots and quotes are from The Ice Master by Jennifer Niven, all photos are in the public domain and were accessed through the Library and Archives Canada online portal

[thepastisalreadywritten]

12 June 2024

Wreck hunters have found the ship on which the famous polar explorer Ernest Shackleton made his final voyage.

The vessel, called "Quest," has been located on the seafloor off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.

Shackleton suffered a fatal heart attack on board on 5 January 1922 while trying to reach the Antarctic.

And although Quest continued in service until it sank in 1962, the earlier link with the explorer gives it great historic significance.

The British-Irish adventurer is celebrated for his exploits in Antarctica at a time when very few people had visited the frozen wilderness.

"His final voyage kind of ended that Heroic Age of Exploration, of polar exploration, certainly in the south," said renowned shipwreck hunter David Mearns, who directed the successful search operation.

"Afterwards, it was what you would call the scientific age. In the pantheon of polar ships, Quest is definitely an icon," he told BBC News.

The remains of the ship, a 38m-long schooner-rigged steamship, were discovered at the bottom of the Labrador Sea on Sunday by a team led by The Royal Canadian Geographical Society (RCGS).

Sonar equipment found it in 390m (1,280ft) of water. The wreck is sitting almost upright on a seafloor that has been scoured at some point in the past by the passing of icebergs.

The main mast is broken and hanging over the port side, but otherwise, the ship appears to be broadly intact.

Quest was being used by Norwegian sealers in its last days. Its sinking was caused by thick sea-ice, which pierced the hull and sent it to the deep.

The irony, of course, is this was the exact same damage inflicted on Shackleton's Endurance - the ship he used on his ill-fated Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914–1917.

Fortunately, the crews of both Endurance, in 1915, and Quest, in 1962, survived.

Indeed, many of the men who escaped the Endurance sinking signed up for Shackleton's last polar mission in 1921-1922, using Quest.

His original plan had been to explore the Arctic, north of Alaska, but when the Canadian government withdrew financial support, the expedition headed south in Quest to the Antarctic.

The new goal was to map Antarctic islands, collect specimens and look for places to install infrastructure, such as weather stations.

Shackleton never made it, however, struck down by heart failure in the Port of Grytviken on the British Overseas Territory of South Georgia, the last stop before reaching the White Continent. He was just 47 years old.

After his death, Quest was involved in other important expeditions, including the 1930-31 British Arctic Air Route Expedition led by British explorer Gino Watkins, who himself tragically died aged 25 while exploring Greenland.

Quest was also employed in Arctic rescues and served in the Royal Canadian Navy during WWII, before being turned over to the sealers.

The RCGS team members carried out extensive research to find Quest's last resting place.

Information was gathered from ship's logs, navigation records, photographs, and documents from the inquiry into her loss.

The calculated sinking location in the Labrador Sea was pretty much spot on, although the exact co-ordinates are being held back for the time being.

A second visit to the wreck, possibly later this year, will do a more complete investigation.

"Right now, we don't intend to touch the wreck. It actually lies in an already protected area for wildlife, so nobody should be touching it," associate search director Antoine Normandin said.

"But we do hope to go back and photograph it with a remotely operated vehicle, to really understand its state."

Alexandra Shackleton is the explorer's granddaughter and was patron to the RCGS survey.

"I was thrilled, really excited to hear the news; I have relief and happiness and a huge admiration for the members of the team," she told BBC News.

"For me, this represents the last discovery in the Shackleton story. It completes the circle."

The explorer continues to spark interest more than a century after his death.

Hundreds of people visit his grave on South Georgia every year to pay their respects to the man known by his crews simply as "The Boss."

"Shackleton will live forever as one of the greatest explorers of all time, not just because of what he achieved in exploration but for the way he did it, and the way he looked after his men," said David Mearns.

"His story is timeless and will be told again and again; and I'm just one of many disciples who'll keep telling it for as long as I can."

—

Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton CVO OBE��FRGS FRSGS (15 February 1874 – 5 January 1922) was an Anglo-Irish Antarctic explorer who led three British expeditions to the Antarctic.

He was one of the principal figures of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.

[cupsofsilver]

Captain James Fitzjames has been identified!! And surprise, surprised he was cannibalized.

[grimm-the-tiger]

I think it's telling about the nature of the actual events The Terror is based on that the Tuunbaq isn't even the most batshit thing going on in it.

[the-golden-vanity]

I think the thing I like most about The Sea, as, like... a setting or a concept, is that in its vastness, its untameable nature, its unknown secrets, you have a lot of historically documented events that sound more like tales out of mythology and folklore.

Take, for instance, the fate of the Victory Expedition of 1829.

The Victory expedition was a private polar expedition led by veteran British explorer Captain John Ross. Twenty-three men set sail for the Canadian Arctic on the steamship Victory, but when the ship became trapped in the polar ice, there was no way to free it. The crew spent four years in the frozen north, surviving on rations from the wreck of a previous polar exploration ship.

Eventually, twenty survivors packed their belongings into small boats and hauled them over ice towards open water. And in that open water, there was a ship, the whaler Isabella of Hull.*

The Isabella's crew couldn't believe their eyes, because, as they told the Victory's survivors, "Captain Ross has been dead these two years."

And if that wasn't strange enough, the (very much alive) Captain Ross of the Victory had, on a previous Arctic expedition, been captain of the Isabella.

*Side note: the more I read about the Age of Sail, the more I realize that wherever official Explorers™ from a given Western nation go, their whalers have already beaten them there. Sometimes that's even the reason the explorers were sent.

[ganymedian]

it's because you're always on those damn canadian arctic expeditions

[entwinedmoon]

40 years ago today, on August 10, 1984, a scientific team led by anthropologist Owen Beattie arrived on Beechey Island in the Canadian Arctic. They intended to exhume and autopsy the three members of the Franklin Expedition buried there. They spent that first day setting up temporary living quarters and exploring the area. In a little over a week, they would come face to face with the preserved remains of John Torrington…

[one-time-i-dreamt]

I was on an expedition to the Canadian arctic for some high school class. We were traveling by dogsled and sleeping in igloos and Brian David Gilbert was one of my classmates.

[jesslovesboats]

In my ongoing quest to make all of you read about my pet expedition the Karluk, I have assembled this collection of relevant images and presented them without context. Intrigued? You should be! Pick up a copy of The Ice Master or Empire of Ice and Stone and learn the whole story! 😘

[thepastisalreadywritten]

[victusinveritas]

Cans from Captain Sir John Franklin’s lost expedition (1845) still on the ground of Beechey Island in the Canadian Arctic. Stones were put inside the cans to prevent their dislocation by the wind.

The cans were welded with lead as canning food was a new invention. Unfortunately, they didn't realise the toxicity of lead at that time (or did and the cannery was cheap), therefore some of their bad decision making was due to poor brain function.

Some of it was due to being convinced that the Northwest Passage exists. Which, it does now, because of global climate change. But like Henry Hudson before him, Franklin learned that you can't get there from here the cold, hard way.

Anyway, here's Nathan Rogers (son of Stan) singing "Northwest Passage."

[scotianostra]

On 30th September 1813 John Rae, surgeon, trader and Canadian explorer, was born.

Born n at Hall of Clestrain, Orphir, on the Orkney Islands, at the age of sixteen he began the study of medicine at Edinburgh University and in 1833 he was appointed surgeon to the Hudson’s Bay Company ship Prince of Wales on its annual voyage to Moose Factory, and was resident surgeon there from 1835 to 1844.

Between 1846 and 1854 John Rae made four voyages of exploration to the Arctic, surveying and charting many miles of newly discovered coastlines. In recognition of this the Royal Geographical Society awarded him the Founder’s Medal in 1862. Two of these expeditions had been sent out to search for Sir John Franklin; the search of 1853 resulted in the discovery of Franklin’s fate.

Information from the Inuit given to Rae showed that Franklin’s men had all perished and the bodies showed signs of cannibalism. This report made Rae unpopular and his achievements were rather ignored. Nobody wanted to believe that men would be capable of eating the flesh of humans, even in an attempt to save their own lives, it wasn’t as if they killed their own people.

In 1860 he married Catharine Jane Alicia, daughter of Major George A. Thompson, Ardkill,Derry, Ireland, but his days at The Hudson Bay Company were far from over, Rae rejoined them 1864 to survey the route from Fort Garry to Victoria, and at both points accumulated material for the construction of a continental telegraph. The material he collected at Winnipeg was utilized in 1871 in linking up Manitoba with Eastern Canada.

In October 1882 he revisited Winnipeg, giving an address to the Manitoba Historical Society on his Arctic explorations and on the value of Hudson Bay as a commercial route. In 1880 the Royal Society elected him a Fellow. He was the author of many journals and papers and his name is perpetuated in many place names in the Canadian Arctic.

Rae was another Scot who was something of a polymath, and his writings on economics were admired by John Stuart Mill. He wrote A Narrative of an Expedition to the Shores of the Arctic Sea in 1846 and 1847 and Report of the Proceedings of the Arctic Searching Expedition.

Rae's legacy is an important one. He is thought to have mapped around 1,750 miles of the Arctic coast. His willingness to learn from the indigenous people that he met on his travels sets him aside from many of his contemporaries.

The Victorian wrong was righted when the simple plaque for the Orcadian surgeon turned explorer Dr John Rae was unveiled at Westminster Abbey in 2014, his writings have been accepted as accurate since the days of the doubters.

He spent his last years in London, where he died on 22 July 1893, his body was taken by steamer to Kirkwall for burial at St Magnus Cathedral, a memorial inside to Rae shows him sleeping on the ground, covered with a skin blanket. Nearby are his gun and a book.

[equatorjournal]

Fête des baleines à Point Barrow Alaska, 1923. Photo by Leo Hansen (1888-1962). "The Nalukataq consists of the dancer maintaining the most graceful position when propelled into the air from a trampoline." "The catalog Inuit features early twentieth-century portraits from the archive of the writer-journalist Victor Forbin: half of the 350 photographs they had bought in 2019, on a whim, from Yves Bouger, a well-known gallery owner and bookseller based in Granville. They originally belonged to Victor Forbin (1864–1947), who thought himself an “adventurer,” and who assembled a personal iconography to illustrate his articles, translations, and books (his first novel, Les Fiancées du Soleil, came out in 1923).  When they were confronted with “this vanished world,” the Jacquiers had known nothing about the Arctic or about polar expeditions, such as the Canadian Arctic Expedition led by the ethnologist Vilhjalmur Stefansson (1879-1963), between 1913 and 1918, and the 5th Thule Expedition led by the Danish explorer Knud Rasmussen (1879–1933) between 1921 and 1925. Although they could see at once that, by their very subject, the photographs were of great value, and not just sentimental, they were yet to document their discovery. This they did during the first months of lockdown, consulting online libraries and Northern museums, moved by these portraits of the Inuit, and the “reciprocal gaze” exchanged between the photographed and the photographer. “It is true, we were touched by this gaze devoid of exoticism,” emphasized Philippe Jacquier, “by the presence of the Inuit, their power in the endless white landscapes. These photos are more than a century old, and yet they seem so close… Those who took them understood that photography is an indispensable tool.” https://www.instagram.com/p/Cp3NPKjth47/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[ltwilliammowett]

On January 11, 1914, the flagship of the Canadian Arctic Expedition, HMCS Karluk, a brigantine - ex whaler (shown here in 1913), was crushed by ice north of Siberia. January 1914 the ship was crushed and sunk. In the ensuing months, the crew and expedition staff struggled to survive, first on the ice and later on the shores of Wrangel Island. In all, eleven men died before rescue - 14 survived. 

[croziers-compass]

George Henry Hodgson of the HMS Terror A Historical Recount, collection, and documentation of Lt. Hodgson's Life

Birth Record

When George Henry Hodgson was born on January 25, 1817, in London, London, England, his father, Robert, was 43 and his mother, Mary, was 39. He had one sister. He died in 1848 at the age of 31.

 Henrietta Mildred Hodgson (only Sibling)

George Hodgson's Sister's Life and Death (Lefthand Side) A Portrait of Her here: ⚓

⚓ George Henry Hodgson was an English Royal Navy officer and polar explorer. He fought in the First Opium War (1839-1842) where he distinguished himself in combat. He later served under Captain Francis Crozier as Second Lieutenant aboard HMS Terror on the 1845 Franklin Expedition, which sought to chart unexplored areas of the Canadian Arctic, find the Northwest Passage, and carry out scientific observations.

Found in: A naval biographical dictionary: comprising the life and services of every living officer in Her Majesty's navy, from the rank of admiral of the fleet to that of lieutenant, inclusive. - O'Byrne, William R., 1823-1896

Previous Services Aboard the HMS Excellent

Muster Roll

George Henry Hodgson Lt. Record (links to my google drive)

Arctic Medal 1818-1855

All Officers and men of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines

Digital Memorial

I hope you have all enjoyed this lovely journey through records and materials relating to Lt. George Henry Hodgson. Admittedly there is very little substance here but I am more than happy with what I have procured. I hope it satisfies you as well.

[digitalnewberry]

Arctic exploration

Arctic toy theater set, between 1881 and 1889

This time of year, my mind turns to the holidays the 1800s European and American expeditions to the Arctic. The icy landscape captivated the imagination of many artists and explorers, including the creator of this Arctic toy set. It possibly depicts the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition (1881-1884) into the Canadian Arctic led by Adolphus Greely, and features icebergs, ships, animals, and people, some of whom are in native Inuit dress.

Penguins, Arctic toy theater set

For a more grounded artistic rendition of the area and its people, you can peruse the 1820s drawings made by members of expeditions led by Sir William Edward Parry and Sir John Ross.

Arctic Life Portfolio, 1821-1828

And of course, there are the numerous letters and journals written by the people on these journeys. This 1876 diary from Lieutenant Rawson includes the memorable line "If any one had told me during the cold weather that I should be kept awake, out sledging, from being too warm, I should have told him he did strictly adhere to that sacred article called truth."

–Quinn Sluzenski, Digital Initiatives Assistant

See all of these and more at Newberry Digital Collections