by Gray, Gordon
After Beechey Island, our ship headed for the Lancaster Sound, but we stopped for a while after two polar bears were spotted on some large ice flows. The bears paid little heed to us until they felt the ship was encroaching on their area and then they just got up and wandered off, glancing suspiciously backwards at the ship as they went. These two bears seemed to be either a mother and a large two-year-old cub, or two males together. Soon they were lost from sight behind the ice ridges on the floes.
Three polar bears in the sunset.
We stopped briefly at Prince Leopold Island, at the very top of the Prince Regent Inlet, to see a guillemots nesting site on a series of vertical cliffs that rose straight up, hundreds of feet out of the sea. It was a beautiful and calm evening with a dramatic sunset on a flat calm sea. The plan had been to go down Prince Regent Inlet to the Bellot Strait, a narrow tidal channel that runs between Somerset Island and the Boothia Peninsula. We also hoped to go to Fort Ross, a historic site from the Ross expeditions of the early 1800s. However, the satellite ice forecast showed that there was a possibility of the ice cover increasing to three-tenths or four-tenths in the next twenty-four hours. So even though there was still plenty of open water and the forecast ice was thin with only three-tenth ice cover, the expedition leader, Steve, and the captain decided not to proceed. After missing King William Island, with its Franklin connections, due to ice, this was another disappointment. I tried to press Steve as to why we did not spend half a day going to see if the ice forecast was right and his answer was that it was more important to get us ashore for a walk somewhere than try and get to Bellot Strait. I disagreed as we had come to see the arctic sights, not go for walks. He told us we will not see any more ice and I half wondered whether they were reluctant to take the ship into any form of ice.
One chilled-out polar bear.
That night was beautifully calm and as we stood on deck and watched the sunset; the rich brown colours of the bare hills drained to grey and black, and three bears were spotted on an ice flow. They were a few hundred yards away but the low evening sun turned their coats pure gold and tinged with pink. As they ambled along on the edge of the ice their reflections were mirror-like in the opening of sea beside them. They seemed to be happy to have us near, but not too close and the mother kept a close eye on the cubs as she led them along. One of the cubs spotted a gull sitting on the edge of the ice and made a run and a jump for it. The gull rose gracefully from the ice and watched from the air as the cub missed its footing and tumbled straight into the water. At the sound of the splash its mother looked back in disgust then wandered on, leaving the cub to drag itself out of the sea. Once it was on the ice the mother moved away and the cubs followed, off into the ridges of the floe.
Dundas Harbour
Instead of heading south down Prince Regent Inlet, we sailed north across the Lancaster Sound to Dundas Harbour on Devon Island. Devon Island has the distinction of being the largest totally uninhabited island in the world. Here, a zodiac ride and a short walk took us to some old Thule (pronounced – Toola) culture ruins. The Thule people were the indigenous race here before the Inuit and were at their peak about 1000 years ago. We also went to a ruined hut used by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). The RCMP based small patrols up here and patrolled the whole region by dog sledge during the winter and by boat in the summer. This is a similar activity to that carried out by Denmark’s larger marine detachment, ‘The Sirius Patrol’, at Danehaven on the north–east coast of Greenland.
The ship later sailed into the Croker Fjord, named after Ross’s Croker Mountains, and everyone gathered on the foredeck while we looked at the face of the Croker Glacier, a large glacier coming down from the interior of Devon Island. Its broad front was silent and still, we all enjoyed a beer on the fore deck in the flat, calm weather while we watched the glacier. In the far distance muskox grazed near the water’s edge. During the trip the Akademic Ioffe worked her way south down the east coast of Baffin Island with daily landings and a couple of calls to Inuit settlements.
Calm seas at sunset.
Whales and Aurora
The ship then headed east for Navy Board Inlet, a long fjord between Baffin Island and Bylot Island on the north–eastern tip of Baffin Island. The whole area at the northern end of Baffin Island and all of Bylot Island is part of the Sirmilik National Park. Sirmilik means ‘the place of glaciers’. After an afternoon ashore at the northern end of the inlet, called Low Point, where we stalked a snowy owl to about 100 yards, we continued sailing up the inlet. It was a favourite spot to see narwhal and the ship steamed to the head of the fjord and anchored to await the morning.
At the very head of the fjord we found the elusive and rare narwhal. A pod of about fifty were swimming in the shallows with a single bowhead whale. Narwhal are one of the most shy and timid of the smaller whales, growing to about 15 feet in length, while the bowhead is one of the largest, reaching up to 80 feet in length, so it was interesting to see them together. We were able to watch them blowing and rolling in the shallows, but as the ship slowly approached, they fled. We spent the best part of the day waiting for them to return on the tide but they had found a quieter corner in another part of the fjord and we only saw them as we sailed out in the late afternoon. This was a great day, as not only had I never seem them before but they are one of the Arctic’s most rare creatures. The long tusk of the male has been prized since Viking times and was hailed as the mythical unicorns tusk in Elizabethan England. In fact, the tusk is one of the male narwhal’s two teeth and can grow to lengths of about 6 feet. While we were in Baffin Island a local Inuit caught one with two tusks, an even rarer event.
Two separate pods of orca, or killer whales, were spotted over the next two days. The first pod of about a dozen orcas included a couple of big males with tall dorsal fins. Two female whales from the pod came across to investigate the ship and swam round it for some minutes. Then these sleek, black monsters swam fast towards the ship’s side and when they were about twenty yards away suddenly dived underneath, causing a volley of shrieks from the women on deck watching it happen. They appeared on the other side and obviously content that we posed no threat swam back to the rest of the pod. The second pod was more reserved but we were able to watch them as we slowly passed them. As they fell astern they formed black silhouettes against a golden sunset. There was one iceberg between us and the sun and this gave the whole scene a golden aurora, while the orcas swam between us and the iceberg showing off their tall dorsal fins. It is always a great thrill to see such beasts and even though they rarely attack man, they are a fearsome sight. They have no natural enemies in the ocean and are known to be highly intelligent.
Orca with iceberg in the sunset.
We had just fallen asleep one night when the ship’s sound-system crackled into life. ‘Aurora to starboard!’ ‘Aurora to starboard!’ Dominique and I struggled to get up together and grab some clothes. Not easy in the tiny, dark cabin. We bumped into each other as we hopped into trousers and tried to pull on thick jerseys and boots. Harold remained unmoved and stayed in bed having seen aurora many times in the past. It was a fine aurora show and worth getting up for. Several of us stood out on the bridge wing and watched in awe as we gradually got colder and colder. The aurora stretched right across the sky in a thick ribbon of white light from the southern horizon to directly above the ships mast, shimmering in whites and tinges of green, shot silk swirled and twisted in the heavens for over twenty minutes, widening then thinning, fading then blooming again, before suddenly fading away to nothing and leaving the sky dark again. It was in the south as the ship was well north of the aurora line which runs around the globe at about 70 degrees north.
On the east side of Baffin Island are some majestic fjords. We entered one of these, Scott Inlet, which led us through a narrow gap in the mountains into Gibbs Fjord. This fjord was magnificent. It was another clear, calm, sunny day and the sun imbued the bare mountains with a sandy golden colour. The fjord ran inland for 5
0 miles, but was only 2 miles wide at the seaward end. We spent the whole morning gently motoring up to the head. The sheer sides of the fjord rose straight up with no shoreline at all, up to peaks of 5,500- and 6,000-feet high. Beneath us the water was 1,500 feet deep. These fjords, which, geologically, are flooded U-shaped valleys, will give the Norwegian ones a good run for their money! Harold was in his element here, giving impromptu passionate talks on the history of the rocks we were looking at and how they were formed, what they were made of and how old they all were. A polar bear was spotted swimming along the shore line, undoubtedly looking for seal or birds.
On the way down the coast the ship stopped at a couple of Inuit communities, first at Pond Inlet opposite Bylot Island, and later at Pangnirtung on Cumberland Sound at the southern end of Baffin Island. Both communities had interesting museums and escorted us round their settlements. At both of these they gave us culture shows covering dancing, throat singing and games for cold nights in an igloo. It was fascinating to see that the games tended to involve inflicting pain on your partner until he submitted. The games needed extreme physical and dextrous exertion, based on one-handed hand stands or press ups! The local folk dancing at Pangnirtung on Cumberland Sound comes from a time when Scottish whalers were regular visitors here and we were treated to a thirty-minute dance. This display was danced to accordion music on a looped, non-stop tape of Jimmy Shand music and was easily recognised as a medley of Scottish country dances. After half-an-hour the Inuits, sticking pretty well to the Scottish dance moves, were all sweating freely and decided that we had seen enough. We were then invited to sample some local food. They served us with whale stew and fish soup, or was it whale soup and fish stew? Anyway I took a bowl of the whale broth. I could not discern any large lumps of whale meat, just some vegetables and some white and grey pieces of something. I asked one of the cooks which bits were whale meat. He said that the white bits were. It was beluga stew made from white beluga whale skin and blubber.
Inuit
In Pangnirtung they showed us a traditional Inuit house. This was not an igloo, but a small, low, single-storey, single-room house of the type they built for themselves before modern, section-built houses arrived. As we arrived, a black and white dog was dozing by the door in the sun. He grudgingly moved to let us in. The roof was low and the only natural light came from a sky light. There were no windows at all. There was a sleeping area, a cooking and eating area and an area for taking off wet, outside clothes. The houses seemed to be made of pieces of packing cases and any spare materials they could find. The roof was covered in heavy plastic sheeting and lashed on with ropes. They used heather as insulation between the wall panels and decorated the walls with pages from magazines! In the house we visited all the walls and ceiling was covered in pages from ladies fashion magazines.
Ice tower iceberg.
The Inuit learnt how to live and survive well in the Arctic over the centuries. Their food might not have been to European taste, but that was driven by what was available. They avoided scurvy as they ate fresh meat, albeit mainly seals or the occasional small whales or polar bear. Scurvy was always the biggest threat to European sailors in the Arctic and certainly badly affected Franklin’s men, but fresh meat prevents it, as well as other sources of vitamin C. The Inuit could travel and navigate easily in small groups, with light flexible sledges and dog teams as well as kayaks; they could hunt successfully and live off the sea, land and the ice. They clothed themselves in native animal skins, like seal and caribou, which provided better warmth and insulation than European wool based clothes of the time.
After the remains from the Franklin expedition were found and it had been reported back to the Admiralty by John Rae, a lot of people tried to blame the Inuit for the deaths and the cannibalism. It was probably a reaction to the shock of the discovery, but to me it makes no sense. Why would the Inuit, who at that time did not have guns but could happily hunt and fend for themselves twelve months of the year in the Arctic, decide to kill and eat a crowd of filthy, starved, scurvy-ridden, dying men who even had guns with which the could defend themselves? Why would they then tell the story to John Rae, and others that came afterwards, if they themselves were the perpetrators? If the Inuit were as violent as the Establishment claimed them to be, then there would surely be many sorry tales of battles and killings over the years. The Inuit acted as guides for the white man, provided food for the starving, and shelter when needed. Many Inuit stories, repeated and passed down by Inuit over the years, as well as their tales about sightings of Franklin’s ships and men, were borne out to be true. At the time though, the tales were regarded as fiction in the United Kingdom, as they were not what the Establishment wanted to hear. The Establishment’s view in the 1850s, simply put, was that ‘British sailors could never resort to cannibalism and the Inuit are savages’.
If only some of the European explorers had followed the Inuit example and learnt some of their skills, then polar exploration would have been different. Those who did learn from the Inuit succeeded. Nansen was a believer of their skills and their use of dogs. So too was Amundsen, who beat Scott to the South Pole by three weeks thanks to his dogs and light sledges. John Rae had also learnt their skills and spent years in the high Arctic.
Icebergs
As we sailed down Baffin Bay into Davis Straight we passed many icebergs, some stranded, some sailing free, some tabular, some angular and ornate. One tabular berg was estimated by the captain as over 2 kms long. These had all come from the Greenland side of the Straight, swept around the bay on the circular current.
Icebergs always fascinate people. Every iceberg is unique and every time one sees them, the shapes are different, the light is different and the colours are different. I am always amazed at the variety of colours and textures that make up a berg. The colours run from pure white through to pale blues and deep brilliant blues, and from greens through to soft greys. Their textures range from a solid, white, concrete look to soft ice-cream textures, then to almost transparent glass. One of those we saw was the tallest berg that anyone on board had ever seen. We diverted to look at it and sailed slowly round it. It was a pinnacle of ice standing alone and must have been well over 100 feet high, as it was easily twice to three times the height of the ships bridge and that was 45 feet above the sea. When we got near we could see that the berg consisted of an eroded, but large, tabular base, and from one side of it this huge tower of ice stood tall and erect. Its sides were sheer and its top was pointed, like a pitched roof. It was visible for miles. It was resembled a modern office tower-block made of white granite.
Cumberland Bay found fame, or infamy, during the 1840s and 1860s when it became the centre for bowhead whaling. Previously whalers had operated from their ships out at on the open sea. This was often a dangerous and risky business due to weather, ice, being wrecked on rocks etc. However, in 1840 skipper William Penny and other Scottish whalers entered Cumberland Bay and found not only a new stock of whales, but also that the bay remained ice free up to January most years. About thirty ships a year visited the area and in 1857 a shore station was set up. Some ships deliberately overwintered here, mixing with the local Inuit population. One bowhead whale could produce about 150 barrels of oil and a ton of whalebone which equated to a total of over 15 million over thirty years in Cumberland Sound area alone. The bowhead whale population is now recovering and a whale sanctuary has been set up at Isabella Bay, a huge bay north of Cumberland Sound. We spent a forenoon in Isabella Bay watching these huge whales. Bowheads are the second heaviest whale after the blue whale but are still shy creatures. They can live to over 200 years old so it was incredible to think that some of these whales could have seen Franklin sail by on his way to meet his fate. They swam around the shores of the bay, gently surfacing, blowing then arching their backs as they dived again. Occasionally one would go deeper and put its tail flukes into the air as it went.
I spent some time that evening chatting to Harold. He had spent his working life as a g
eologist out in the field. He was a cheery guy, easy to get along with and had made friends with most people on board. Among other places that he had been were the Antarctic, where he had spent many months doing seismic work out on the Ross Ice Shelf. He had spent most of his time out on the Canadian Shield, mostly living in tents, and had even discovered a gold mine in the Yukon. He was a widower who had lost his wife to cancer at the age of forty-two, after fighting it for five years. He now spends his winters in Arizona, near Phoenix, and his summers in Vancouver. He is currently writing a book about his life.
By now we had reached the southern end of Baffin Island, having sailed the full 1000 mile length of it from Prince Regent Inlet and Lancaster Sound. We had sailed the northern and eastern part of the Northwest Passage, but just not the southern leg around Victoria Island and past King William Island.
We anchored off the town of Iqaluit, capital of Nunavut province. It lies at the top of Frobisher Bay. Martin Frobisher discovered this area and thought that this was a sound that would lead to the Orient. He thought it was the Northwest Passage itself. However, before he could prove it he was distracted from investigating the area properly by the discovery of gold further south by some of his party. They returned to England with the gold ore and believed they were now rich beyond their dreams. Money was naturally forthcoming to mount further trips to get more gold ore, but unfortunately, after two years work and ferrying large quantities of the ore back to the England, it was found not to be gold at all, but a relatively worthless form of iron pyrites.
We had heard that the town had a problem with a refuse tip that was on fire and the local fire brigade had been called in to sort it out. They decided to pump sea water into the tip to put out the fire. There was no jetty or pier at Iqaluit that we could use to get ashore with cases, so on earlier visits the ship had found a suitable beach landing that was close to a road so that buses could collect passengers and cases.