Don's Blog Gjoa Haven I

After sailing through the Larsen Sound, the James Ross Strait, the St Roch Basin, and the Rae Strait we arrived 

at the hamlet of Gjoa Haven, the only settlement on King William Island. This is our first village since Pond Inlet.

The hamlet is named Gjoa Haven after the harbor and the wooden sailing ship, the Gjoa, of Roald Amundsen the Norwegian explorer who stopped here for the winter in 1903. The Inuit name is Uqsaqtuuq, the place of plenty of fat. This refers to the sea mammals available in the area for hunting.  

Amundsen stayed at this site for nearly two years.  He and his crew are said to have learned  the ways of the local Netsilik Inuit including how to live off the land and travel efficiently. Even today he is much revered. This statue is in the local arts center. It is said to be good luck to touch his nose so I did. You can see how shiny the nose is.

The local artists are very expert at stone carvings.

The carvings are from limestone which comes from a quarry about 60 miles away.

Don's Blog Got Ice?

Going south through the Franklin Strait we sailed into the Larsen Sound. The Sound was named for Henry Larsen who was the Commander of the the St Roch, an Royal Canadian Mounted Police arctic resupply schooner.

 

It is this specific area that created navigational problems for the 19th century explorers. Multi year ice is swept south east through the Maclintock Channel. Most of these channels remain ice-choked all summer.

We have been getting regular ice reports via satellite. The latest map indicated that we might need some help.

Assistance came in the form of the Canadian Coastguard Icebreaker, Le Grollieres.  We were told that the name 

meant some kind of special blueberry but certainly not a bluet. The Canadian government was especially interested in our welfare.

The Ice Captain took over the ship and we proceeded to follow the icebreaker through the Larsen Sound. It even did some needed icebreaking. The mood of the ship was festive. Franklin could have used an icebreaker.

 It was not difficult for the icebreaker as this was not multiyear ice. When we were safely back into open water the ships came together and our Captain sent a Zodiac for their Captain and three of their officers who were invited to address our gathered group. They discussed how an icebreaker works and answered questions. It was all great fun. Our Ice Captain (in white) brought down the house by answering the question of when he thought the route would be open for regular navigation. In his classic French Canadian English he replied, "Well, we all be dead before then."

Don's Blog Coningham Bay A Most ExcitingTime II

After watching these bears we continued toward the far shore where we could to see multiple beluga whales. The beluga (Dephinapterus leucas) is readily identified because of its white color and absence of a  dorsal fin. Belugas can grow to 18 feet long and weigh 3500 pounds. Their blows were small. Notice how close we are to the shore.

This mother whale has a calf with her. Beluga calves are born grey and lose their pigmentation by 7-9 years.

The beluga whales have a promontory at the front of the head which houses an echolocation organ called the melon. Their lateral fins are characteristically squared off.

Several times the belugas swam right at our Zodiac veering off just before collision. The melon (below) on the front of the skull is a mass of adipose or fatty tissue in the forehead of  beluga and other toothed whales.

It focuses and modulates the whales vocalizations and acts as a sound lens. With the melon belugas use a form of bio sonar to send out calls as sound and listen to the echoes of those calls that return from objects near them.

They use these echoes to locate and identify objects for navigation and foraging.

Belugas seasonally shed their skin. Ordinarily in the winter the skin thickens and turns yellow on the back and fins.  During the summer they rub themselves on shallow gravel to remove the epidermis. On this day groups of belugas appeared to scratch themselves on a shallow bay ledge. 

Returning to the ship after this extraordinary show this curious bearded seal swam close.  

We all felt that at this moment in time we were where we were meant to be.

Don's Blog Coningham Bay - A Most Exciting Time I

Across the Franklin Trough from the Boothia Peninsula is Prince of Wales Island. On the western shore is Coningham Bay. 

We left Le Boreal late in the afternoon for the ride to Coningham Bay which took over an hour. One of the great aspects of being above the arctic circle is that with longer days there is more light for adventure.  It was one of the best Zodiac explorations of the trip. Between Cape Eyre and Point Walker Coningham Bay has a long bottleneck opening and once in the bay itself we found several polar bears on the incline above the shore. They were far enough away that we could approach the shore safely in the Zodiacs. 

The larger bear  had been feasting on the carcass of a beluga whale and was lumbering along slowly.

What stood out was his massive belly and his black bottom. And also there was another bear just up from him

over the hill.

Truly spectacular animals.                      

Don's Blog Heading south in the Franklin Strait

Exiting the Bellot we went south through the Franklin Trough to the Franklin Strait.

There was a noticeable difference in the ice conditions. There was much more sea ice

and some small icebergs.

This allowed for more wildlife sightings including some bearded seals.

Bearded seals (Erignathus barbatus) have long and abundant whiskers. Their head is small compared to their body. They are 7-8 feet long and weigh 575-800 pounds.

Bearded seals are benthic and feed on a variety of small prey found along the ocean floor including clams, squid, and fish. They use their whiskers as feelers in the soft bottom sediments.

Don's Blog The Mystery of the Franklin Expedition

As we exited the Bellot Strait we turned south into the Franklin Trough between Peel Sound and The Franklin Strait. Rear Admiral Sir John Franklin left England in May of 1845 with 24 officers and 110 men in 2 ships, the Erebus and the Terror. After the winter on Beechey Island the force sailed south most probably through Peel Sound which is just north of our position and disappeared. 

Sir John Franklin

The Erebus (Franklin) and the Terror (Crozier)

From Peel Sound Franklin's two ships would have sailed south through the Franklin Strait and then Larsen Sound toward King William Island. At this point Franklin made his fatal mistake. Instead of sailing southeast through what is now the James Ross Strait to the Rasmussen Basin, his force went southwest through the Victoria Strait. Later findings showed that the Erebus and the Terror became trapped in the icealong the northwest shore of King William Island in September of 1846.

Franklin's expedition was held by the British public as we would have held two teams of astronauts on two space ships. After no word  for three years a massive search for the missing party was begun. There were eleven British and 2 American search parties.  Independently in 1854 Scottish explorer Dr. John Rae while surveying the Boothia Peninsula on foot for the Hudson Bay Company discovered by talking to Inuit hunters that both of Franklin's ships had become icebound and the survivors had tried to reach safety on foot but had succumbed to the cold and starvation. The Inuit were in possession of artifacts from the Franklin party providing physical proof. Further, in 1859 one of the ships under Francis Leopold McClintock found a note in a cairn at  Victory Point on the northwestern shore of King William Island which reported that Sir John Franklin had died in 1847. Over the next four decades there were more than 25 more search expeditions. Artifacts and skulls and other bones have been found through the years indicating that the men had died. Yet the details of what finally happened to the officers and crew have remained unanswered.

The exciting news is that recently  after 169 years both submerged ships have been discovered. The Erebus was located in fairly shallow water near an island in the Queen Maude Gulf off the Adelaide Peninsula in 2014 by a  Parks Canada team. The Terror was found in King William Island's Terror Bay in 2016 by the Arctic Research Foundation, a private group.  The underwater archeologists are working slowly to unravel what is there and the mystery continues.

Don's Blog The Bellot Strait

We left Fort Ross on a beautiful sunny arctic day.

Around the corner to the west we came to the Bellot Strait which is a water passageway between Prince Regent Inlet on the east and Peel Sound and the Franklin Straight on the west. It separates Somerset Island and the Boothia Peninsula which is on mainland North America.

The strait was discovered in 1852 by Captain William Kennedy who was on an expedition in search of John Franklin. He named it after one of his men, Frenchman Joseph Rene Bellot. He and Bellot had reached it by dogsled. This was several years before Bellot's heroic death (1854) in Wellington Channel when he was on another Franklin  rescue expedition under of Admiral Sir Edward Belcher.

The strait is 15 miles long and 1.2 miles wide with steep slopes. The north side rises to about 1350 feet.

The south side at its highest is 2250 feet. The rocks are Precambrian and are part of the Canadian Shield, more than two and a half billion years old. There was open water with a few small icebergs. The peninsula on the left is Murchison Promontory which is a zenith point, the most northern mainland point in North America.

 

At the western end of the Bellot we entered the confluence of Peel Sound and the Franklin Trough and turned left (south) as the Franklin saga continues.

Don's Blog Fort Ross

Sailing south from Prince Leopold Island through the Prince Regent Inlet along the west coast of Somerset Island we passed Fury Beach. In August of 1825, the exploration ship HMS Fury under William Edward Parry was driven by the wind and ice onto the eastern coast of Somerset Island. It was beached and stores were unloaded when it became clear that the ship was lost. Parry's crew was taken home on the sister ship Hecla reaching England two months later. Explorer John Ross returned in 1829 to find the hulk of the Fury gone but the ships  boats, stores and anchors were still piled on the beach.  Ross's ship, the Victory was later frozen in further south and he depended on the Fury stores before being rescued after a four year heroic ordeal.  

South of Fury Beach we stopped to explore Fort Ross. This is the site of the last trading post established by the Hudson Bay Company for the fox pelt trade (1937). It was financially viable for only eleven years when ice conditions caused its closure. 

The factors residence and the store (below) remain.

Our late arrival this year diminished our chance to see fields of arctic flowers. Here at Fort Ross we found

great examples of lichen. Current thinking regarding the lichen is that it lives in a finely controlled relationship in which the fungus is parasitic on the alga. 

This is orange sea lichen (Xanthoria parietina).

 

Combination of two lichens including the black rock tripe (Umbilicaria).

Map lichen (Rhizocarpon geographical)

The  Fort Ross tundra  was also a great medium for growing mushrooms.

Don's Blog Heading South - Prince Leopold Island

After the thrill of seeing the polar bear (Ursus maritimes) and the trip to the Croker Bay glacier we headed west on Lancaster Sound to Beechey Island which has been described in previous blogs. It was time to head south to Prince Regent Inlet. 

We approached Prince Leopold Island off the northeast tip of Somerset Island. Victoria became Queen of England in 1837 eight years before Sir John Franklin and his 2 ships left on their voyage to discover the Northwest Passage in 1845. While watching the television series "Victoria" in 2017 we had been introduced

 to the German Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg who later became the first King of the Belgians (1831). Prince Leopold was Victoria's uncle and was portrayed as an unsympathetic conniving schemer. 

The island is flat-topped and surrounded by 800 foot vertical sandstone and limestone cliffs. There appears to

be no easy way to the top.

The island became a migratory bird sanctuary in 1995 supporting murres, fulmars, kittiwakes, and  guillemots.

We were fortunate to see a polar bear (not shown) at the base of the cliff. 

Don's Blog Ursus Maritimes in Croker Bay

Just west of Dundas Harbour is  deep water Croker Bay that is 24 miles long and ends in a large glacier. It was named by explorer William Edward Parry in 1819 for John Wilson Croker, a Secretary of the Admiralty.

The sides of the bay had interesting rock formations.

and the glacier was calving some large icebergs.

Swimming directly off the right side of our bow was a large polar bear. You can imagine the excitement on board as we followed the bear for hours.

We watched as he swam leisurely to the shore and then followed him as walked on the beach for miles.

After this encounter we wound down with a Zodiac ride near the base of the glacier away from the bear.

The tiny Zodiac is at the left.

What we had for dessert that night:

Note: If you are reading the Blog consecutively  now go to the four blogs on Beechey Island starting with 12-26-17.