The Yellowknife Expeditor was a small freighter that operated in Canada's Arctic. [1] She was built for the United States Navy, during World War II, as a shallow draft Landing Craft Infantry, displacing approximately 250 tons. [2] She was acquired by the Yellowknife Transportation Company, who had her converted to carry passengers and freight at the Victoria Machinery Depot, in 1949.
Upon her arrival in Yellowknife, in the fall of 1949, she was said to be the biggest ship in the Mackenzie basin. [2]
Her main use was to provide twice weekly crossings from Hay River, on the south shore of Great Slave Lake, then the terminus of the Mackenzie Highway, a dirt road to the south, and Yellowknife, on the north shore, the territorial capital. [3] She was able to carry up to 50 passengers, an up to 50 tons of refrigerated food, plus up to 200 tons of other cargo. Each crossing was estimated to take seven hours, and were scheduled for twice a week.
In 1957 she was damaged, when she struck a rock. [4] Her repairs included cutting down her superstructure and conerting her to a tugboat.
Great Slave Lake, known traditionally as Tıdeè in the Tłı̨chǫ language, Tinde’e in the Yellowknife language, Tu Nedhé in Dëne Sųłıné Yatıé, and Tucho in the Dehcho Dene language, is the second-largest lake in the Northwest Territories of Canada, the deepest lake in North America at 614 metres, and the tenth-largest lake in the world. It is 469 km (291 mi) long and 20 to 203 km wide. It covers an area of 27,200 km2 (10,502 sq mi) in the southern part of the territory. Its given volume ranges from 1,070 km3 (260 cu mi) to 1,580 km3 (380 cu mi) and up to 2,088 km3 (501 cu mi) making it the 10th or 12th largest by volume.
Landing craft are small and medium seagoing watercraft, such as boats and barges, used to convey a landing force from the sea to the shore during an amphibious assault. The term excludes landing ships, which are larger. Production of landing craft peaked during World War II, with a significant number of different designs produced in large quantities by the United Kingdom and United States.
Enterprise is a hamlet in the South Slave Region of the Northwest Territories, Canada, located between Great Slave Lake and the Alberta border on the Hay River.
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SS Uganda was a British steamship that had a varied and notable career. She was built in 1952 as a passenger liner, and successively served as a cruise ship, hospital ship, troop ship and stores ship. She was laid up in 1985 and scrapped in 1992.
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Buffalo Airways is a family-run airline based in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada, established in 1970. Buffalo Airways was launched by Bob Gauchie and later sold to one of his pilots, Joe McBryan. It operates charter passenger, charter cargo, firefighting, and fuel services, and formerly operated scheduled passenger service. Its main base is at Yellowknife Airport (CYZF). It has two other bases at Hay River/Merlyn Carter Airport (CYHY) and Red Deer Regional Airport (CYQF). The Red Deer base is the main storage and maintenance facility. The airline is also the subject of the History television reality series Ice Pilots NWT. The company slogan is Your passage to the North.
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The Mackenzie River in Canada's Northwest Territories is a historic waterway, used for centuries by Indigenous Canadian peoples as a travel and hunting corridor. It is part of a larger watershed that includes the Slave, Athabasca, and Peace rivers extending from northern Alberta. In the 1780s, Peter Pond, a trader with the North West Company became the first known European to visit this watershed and begin viable trade with the Athapascan-speaking Dene of these rivers. The Mackenzie River itself, the great waterway extending to the Arctic Ocean, was first put on European maps by Alexander Mackenzie in 1789, the Scottish trader who explored the river. The watershed thus became a vital part of the North American fur trade, and before the advent of the airplane or road networks, the river was the only communication link between northern trading posts and the south. Water travel increased in the late 19th century as traders, dominated primarily by the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), looked to increase water services in the Mackenzie River District.
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A converted landing craft, the Yellowknife Expeditor , could handle approximately 250 tons of cargo, 40 tons of refrigerated products and 50 passengers. Its shallow draft (2 m, 7 ft.) would enable it to enter the shallow Hay River channel under normal conditions. The travel time to Yellowknife was estimated at only seven hours.
Note: The Yellowknife Expeditor hit a rock and was cut down for use as a tug.