Above the Ice

North of the Arctic Circle
sits the community of  Cambridge Bay

Less that a thousand kilometers to the Northwest of Rankin Inlet, outside the Nunavut community of Cambridge Bay, rests a legend. As our nation reaches the ripe old age of 150...she will turn 100. This winter she is free...free from the salty brine that has been her home since her birth in Norway all those years before.

It's been a battle. No, its been a series of battles...not really a war, as such, but skirmishes along her coloured past. And soon, like many old soldiers...she's going home....returning to her birthplace and her final resting site. There will be celebrations, no doubt, marking this great event in Norway, mostly because the hands of their countrymen, created her. Their hands also steered her for a few years until, eventually, she became a fixture for a small village in Arctic Canada.

Those celebrations abroad...the handshaking and those tears of joy will not be matched in Nunavut. Once the ice clears the harbour of Cambridge Bay, probably by late June or early July, she will be gone forever. A memory for those who know her and a historical fact for future generations. In her place...a large stone cairn, marks her resting place for so many years...as she was submerged beneath the surface of Cambridge Bay.

Residents of CamBay grew up with her and have never known anything but her presence. All know her name...but few really know her history. There may be witnesses who watched her sails blow in the wind. But those, if they exist, are few and far between as the years have passed. Time marches on and eventually memories fade.

Maud completing her oufittng in Norway

Her name is MAUD. She is built of oak and was named after a queen. She became a fixture of the arctic, visiting ports in her commercial days. Her original skipper was Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian explorer, and she was constructed to withstand the pressures of winter ice in Canada's north for his second Arctic expedition. She did so admirably, for two winters, while those aboard performed experiments, logged weather and other data using celestial navigation, and made observations while mapping our far north during the dark days of both winters.

She was 119 feet (36.5m) in length with a beam of 40 feet (12.3m) and her 240 hp semi diesel motor was used when necessary to propel her but the wind provided the bulk of her propulsion. Designed specifically for his second Arctic expedition, she was launched in 1916. Her hull was christened by Amundsen who used a chunk of ice rather that the traditional champagne saying to the ship and those dignitaries gathered “It is not my intention to dishonour the glorious grape, but already now you shall get the taste of your real environment. For the ice you have been built, and in the ice you shall stay most of your life, and in the ice you shall solve your tasks. With the permission of our Queen, I christen you Maud”.

Built outside of Olso, in the suburb of Asker, she had sailed out of Oslo and the year was 1917. Across the Atlantic...around Greenland and into Canadian waters she sailed. Her Canadian adventure barely begun. Long before GPS, when maps were sparse, let us remember that these were the explorers making the maps.

The MAUD stranded in icefield.

She was a heavy craft weighing in at 292 tons and had a depth of some 16 feet (4.85m). He knew that he would need all the strength the steel reinforced oak beams could muster to protect the crew from the shifting ice floes and crushing hull pressures as each winter season came and went. She did not disappoint.

For two dark winters, the crew were stranded in solid icefields as they navigated when they could towards the west. Eventually free of the ice after that second winter, they sailed her south into Washington state where a whole new task would soon become the Maud's legacy.

For the time spent in the ice had created some financial problems for the consortium affiliated with Amundsen's project....and funds hadn't fully paid all the overdue accounts. The sheriff seized the vessel for past debts...and someone discovered that the Maud, built for Arctic waters, was for sale. There was interest for sure....and that interest stemmed from the Hudson's Bay Company.

The Hudson Bay trading post in Repulse Bay.

HBC had interest since they were (and still are) active in the north of Canada. They were looking for a vessel to travel between the communities of the north. The purpose, of course, was still one that they had started with....the fur trade. Collecting pelts and trading those pelts for goods among the Intuit and others in the Arctic was still in demand. Although, the open water season was short this vessel could manoeuvre but if it did get trapped in the ice it could survive....it was a proven success.

The deal was struck and in 1925 after acquisition by the Hudson Bay Company, she was renamed Baymaud, a variation of her original name with a corporate identity.

Our story continues. “From then til now” is the basis for our next segment.