History | |
---|---|
Norway | |
Name | Maud |
Namesake | Queen Maud of Norway |
Owner | Roald Amundsen |
Builder | Built in Asker, Norway |
Launched | June 1916 [1] or 17 June 1917 [2] |
Canada | |
Owner | Hudson's Bay Company |
Acquired | 1925 |
Renamed | Baymaud |
Norway | |
Owner | Asker, Norway |
Acquired | 1990 |
Renamed | Maud |
General characteristics | |
Class and type | Oak hulled sailing ship, built for Arctic exploration |
Tonnage | 292 register |
Length | 36.5 m (119.75 ft) |
Beam | 12.3 m (40.35 ft) |
Depth of hold | 4.85 m (16 ft) |
Propulsion | 240 hp (177 kW) semidiesel Bolinder engine |
Maud, named for Queen Maud of Norway, was a ship built for Roald Amundsen for his second expedition to the Arctic. Designed for his intended voyage through the Northeast Passage, the vessel was built in Asker, a suburb of the capital, Oslo.
Maud was launched in June 1916 [1] or 17 June 1917 [2] at Vollen and ceremonially christened by Amundsen crushing a chunk of ice against her bow:
It is not my intention to dishonor 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
— Roald Amundsen [1]
She lived up to her christening, as she remained in the ice until 2016. Whereas other vessels used in Amundsen's polar explorations, Gjøa and Fram , have been preserved at the Norwegian Maritime Museum, Maud had a more rugged fate. After sailing through the Northeast Passage, which did not go as planned and took six years between 1918 and 1924, she ended up in Nome, Alaska and in August 1925 was sold on behalf of Amundsen's creditors in Seattle, Washington.
The buyer was the Hudson's Bay Company, which renamed her Baymaud. She was to be used as a supply vessel for Company outposts in Canada's western Arctic. Prior to her final voyage Baymaud was given a refit in Vancouver, British Columbia. (The work was supervised by Tom Halliday, who later designed the RCMP vessel St. Roch , based on Maud.) In the winter of 1926 she was frozen into the ice at Cambridge Bay, where she sank in 1930. The wreck lay just offshore, across the inlet from the community's former Hudson's Bay Company store. Nearby is the site of the former Cambridge Bay LORAN Tower, built in 1947.
In 1990 the ship was sold by the Hudson's Bay Company to Asker with the expectation that she would be returned to the town. Although a Cultural Properties Export permit was issued, the price tag to repair and move the ship was 230 million kroner ($43,200,000) and the permit expired. [3] [4] [5]
In 2011 an Asker-based company, Tandberg Eiendom AS, in the project Maud Returns Home [6] announced a plan to return Maud to Norway. They intend to build a museum in Vollen to house her, near where she was built and had purchased a barge to move her. Concern about the plan came from the community of Cambridge Bay, Parks Canada, the Government of Nunavut, the International Polar Heritage Committee, and some people in her intended destination. [7] Initial refusal of a new export permit from the federal government, on the grounds of a lack of a full archeological study was later reversed on appeal in March 2012. [8] [6] [9] The salvage operation was under way in the summer of 2015, with a plan to return the hull to Norway in the summer of 2016. [10]
On 31 July 2016 it was reported that the hull of Maud had been raised to the surface and placed on a barge in preparation for shipment to Norway. [11] In August 2017 Maud began the journey back to Norway; she was towed through the Northwest Passage. In September 2017 she arrived in Greenland to stay for the winter. [12] [13] Maud arrived in Bergen on 6 August 2018, finally returning to Norway nearly a century after her departure with Amundsen. She was then towed along the Norwegian coast, and arrived at Vollen on 18 August. [14]
The Northwest Passage (NWP) is the sea lane between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through the Arctic Ocean, along the northern coast of North America via waterways through the Arctic Archipelago of Canada. The eastern route along the Arctic coasts of Norway and Siberia is accordingly called the Northeast Passage (NEP). The various islands of the archipelago are separated from one another and from Mainland Canada by a series of Arctic waterways collectively known as the Northwest Passages, Northwestern Passages or the Canadian Internal Waters.
Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen was a Norwegian explorer of polar regions. He was a key figure of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.
Asker, also called Asker proper, is a district and former municipality in Akershus, Norway, located approximately 20km southwest of Oslo. From 2020 it is part of the larger administrative municipality Asker together with the traditional Buskerud districts Røyken and Hurum; Asker constitutes the northern fourth and is part of the Greater Oslo Region. The administrative center was the town of Asker, which remains so for the new larger municipality. Asker was established as a parish in the Middle Ages and as a municipality on 1 January 1838.
Fredrik Hjalmar Johansen was a Norwegian polar explorer. He participated on the first and third Fram expeditions. He shipped out with the Fridtjof Nansen expedition in 1893–1896, and accompanied Nansen to notch a new Farthest North record near the North Pole. Johansen also participated in the expedition of Roald Amundsen to the South Pole in 1910–1912.
Fram ("Forward") is a ship that was used in expeditions of the Arctic and Antarctic regions by the Norwegian explorers Fridtjof Nansen, Otto Sverdrup, Oscar Wisting, and Roald Amundsen between 1893 and 1912. It was designed and built by the Scottish-Norwegian shipwright Colin Archer for Fridtjof Nansen's 1893 Arctic expedition in which the plan was to freeze Fram into the Arctic ice sheet and float with it over the North Pole.
King William Island is an island in the Kitikmeot Region of Nunavut, which is part of the Arctic Archipelago. In area it is between 12,516 km2 (4,832 sq mi) and 13,111 km2 (5,062 sq mi) making it the 61st-largest island in the world and Canada's 15th-largest island. Its population, as of the 2021 census, was 1,349, all of whom live in the island's only community, Gjoa Haven.
Henry Asbjørn Larsen was a Norwegian-Canadian Arctic explorer. Larsen was born on a small island, Herføl, south of Fredrikstad in Norway. Like his hero, Roald Amundsen, he became a seaman. Larsen immigrated to Canada, and became a British subject in 1927. In 1928, he joined the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).
The Axel Heiberg Glacier in Antarctica is a valley glacier, 30 nautical miles long, descending from the high elevations of the Antarctic Plateau into the Ross Ice Shelf between the Herbert Range and Mount Don Pedro Christophersen in the Queen Maud Mountains.
Helmer Julius Hanssen was a Norwegian sailor, pilot and polar explorer. He participated in three of the polar expeditions led by Roald Amundsen and was one of the first five explorers to reach the South Pole.
Sverre Helge Hassel was a Norwegian polar explorer and one of the first five people to reach the South Pole.
Gjøa was the first vessel to transit the Northwest Passage. With a crew of six, Roald Amundsen traversed the passage in a three-year journey, finishing in 1906.
Terra Nova was a whaler and polar expedition ship. The ship is best known for carrying the 1910 British Antarctic Expedition, Robert Falcon Scott's last expedition.
Vollen is a part of the Asker municipality in Akershus county, Norway. For statistical purposes, it is usually treated as part of the Oslo urban area. It is mainly a residential area, though the area has a café, a restaurant, several art galleries, a primary school and secondary school.
The research ship had origins in the early voyages of exploration. By the time of James Cook's Endeavour, the essentials of what today we would call a research ship are clearly apparent. In 1766, the Royal Society hired Cook to travel to the Pacific Ocean to observe and record the transit of Venus across the Sun. The Endeavour was a sturdy boat, well designed and equipped for the ordeals she would face, and fitted out with facilities for her research personnel, Joseph Banks. And, as is common with contemporary research vessels, Endeavour carried out more than one kind of research, including comprehensive hydrographic survey work.
The first ever expedition to reach the Geographic South Pole was led by the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. He and four other crew members made it to the geographical south pole on 14 December 1911, which would prove to be five weeks ahead of the competitive British party led by Robert Falcon Scott as part of the Terra Nova Expedition. Amundsen and his team returned safely to their base, and about a year later heard that Scott and his four companions had perished on their return journey.
The Fram Museum is a museum telling the story of Norwegian polar exploration. It is located on the peninsula of Bygdøy in Oslo, Norway.
Jan Wanggaard is a Norwegian artist with a wide range of expressions from pure sculpture to land art in a wide sense. He was World Champion in windsurfing in 1981 and studied Art and Design in Newcastle upon Tyne, England (1983–1987).
Andreas Beck was a Norwegian seal-hunter, polar captain, ice captain, and shipowner.
The bark Danmark is best known for her role as expedition ship for the Danmark expedition (1906–1908), so named after the ship, but had a long prehistory as a whaler under the name Sir Colin Campbell of Peterhead and later as a sealer named Magdalena of Tønsberg/Kristiana.