| History | |
|---|---|
 United States | |
| Name | Ottilie Fjord |
| Builder | H. D. Bendixsen, Eureka, California |
| Completed | 1892 |
| Renamed | Nanuk |
| General characteristics | |
| Type | Schooner - full-rigged ship - Schooner |
| Displacement | 261 Gross Tons |
| Length | 40.3 m (132 ft) |
| Beam | 9.6 m (31 ft) |
| Draft | 2.95 m (9.7 ft) |
The Nanuk (until 1923 Ottilie Fjord) was a trading and whaling schooner, which was later used in the Hollywood film industry as a historicising full-rigged ship for movies, among other things.
The Ottilie Fjord was built in 1892 as a three-masted schooner with "steam-boat" rigging by H. D. Bendixsen in Eureka, California. The ship was owned by a coalition of 12 owners, mostly Humboldt County residents, and was named after the daughter Ottilie Fjord of one owner, Lorentz Fjord, a ship chandler in San Francisco. The first voyage brought the lumber cargo of another owner, Mr. Isaac Minor, to San Luis Obispo. [1]
Ottilie Fjord was used as a cargo sailor on the West Coast of the United States and in the Pacific. In October 1903, she was rescued by tugboats from distress at sea off the port of Honolulu (Hawaii) when she had run aground with a cargo of wood from San Francisco. [2] In 1904 a voyage with a cargo of coal went from San Francisco to Topolobampo (Mexico) and ended in Eureka. [2] A trip to Honolulu for the Charles Nelson Company in 1905 listed the cargo as nearly $7,000 (2023: $240,000). [3]
In 1906, the Ottilie Fjord was sold to the Pacific States Trading Company. [4] Subsequently, longer voyages were reported, e.g. 1912 to the arctic Bering Sea. [5] During this trip she lost two anchors and 55 fathoms (100 m) of anchor chain in two storms.
On the morning of April 30, 1919, the Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton recorded a strong earthquake lasting 45 minutes. [6] After returning from Tonga, 8,600 km away, Captain Olsen of the Ottilie Fjord reported on July 21 that this earthquake, combined with a tidal wave, had killed and injured many people on the islands and caused severe destruction and a supply shortage. His ship was the only one to survive this catastrophe. [7]
In April 1921, the Ottilie Fjord sailed to Pago Pago (American Samoa). [8]
Captain C. T. Pedersen, an experienced Arctic explorer, sailed from Oakland with Ottilie Fjord in 1923 to trade furs and hunt walruses and whales in the Arctic Ocean. He was accompanied by his wife Olive, a Canadian nurse whom Pedersen had married after he had brought her to California in 1920 from a Presbyterian missionary hospital at Point Barrow, the northernmost point of the United States. [9] Since then she had been the only woman in the crew of eighteen seafarers and whalers and had served as "The Doctor Lady From the Ship" for the crew and outsiders as well as a working crew member. [10] That year, Ottilie Fjord brought home von Pedersen's most successful voyage a shipment of blubber and furs valued at $1 million (2023: $17.7 million). [11] Mrs. Pedersen is said to have prevented a possible failure by warning him of the danger of pack ice from the crow's nest in good time. [12]
Returning from the summer 1924 voyage, now as Nanuk (Inuktitut for polar bear), Pedersen reported commerce with Soviet officials on Big Diomede island on the border between Alaska and Russia. After the conclusion of the negotiations, his business partners fined him $2,200 for “repeatedly trading without Soviet authorization”, after which he returned to Alaska. The cargo of walrus ivory and furs worth $100,000 (2023: $1.8 million) made up for this. Pedersen also brought two live polar bears to sell to zoos. [13]
Returning from her summer voyage of 1925, as an "auxiliary trading schooner", [14] Nanuk brought to San Francisco a record load of furs worth $250,000 (2023: $4.3 million), along with ivory, salt, cod and mackerel. Mrs. Pedersen gave a detailed account of the arduous and dangerous ice passages and the health problems of the Eskimos from malnutrition and lack of disease resistance, such as tuberculosis, measles and respiratory diseases from colds to pneumonia, brought to the Arctic by hunters, traders and missionaries. [10] On this voyage, an eighteen-year-old cabin boy hanged himself on the Nanuk shortly before arriving at Herschel Island, Canada, where he was buried. [15]
In 1926, Nanuk passed into the ownership of the Swenson Fur Trading Company (New York and Seattle), which fulfilled an exclusive five-year contract with the Soviet Union until 1930 and delivered supplies to arctic outposts at places such as the Kolyma Gulf (Northern Siberia) in exchange for furs. [16]
During a walrus hunt in 1928, the men of the Nanuk killed 297 animals in less than two weeks before the rudder and propeller were damaged in the ice and the Coast guard cutter Northland came for assistance. [17]
In May 1929, Olaf Swenson, the owner, and his seventeen-year-old daughter Marion embarked on the Nanuk on a rescue mission for his motor ship Elisif which had been frozen in over the winter near North Cape (Siberia, today's Cape Schmidt). [18] The Elisif came free. In September, Nanuk herself was caught in ice at Cape Schmidt and was trapped with six tons of fox and bear furs [19] worth $1.5 million (2023: $26.6 million). After that, they prepared to overwinter. Alaskan Airways flew six men of the staff and some furs to Teller, Alaska; five remained on board, including the Swensons. [20] During another flight on November 9, 1929 to supply the crew and to salvage more of the valuable cargo, pilot Carl Ben Eielson and mechanic Frank Borland went missing in a storm 60 miles from Cape Schmidt [21] and were found dead after a weeks-long search operation - they had crashed. Nanuk was frozen in until July 1930 and returned to Seattle in August, undamaged (photo report). [22]
In May 1932, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer chartered the motor ship Nanuk as a transport ship to Teller (Alaska) for location shoots of the movie Eskimo. [23] [24] The production left nothing to chance: Artificial snow, blowers and Eskimo actors were taken along. [25] Nanuk went on hunting and whale expeditions at times during filming, [26] and was ice-bound again during the year of filming. MGM also bought the Nanuk from Swenson [27] and, after returning to Los Angeles, had her converted into the pirate ship Hispaniola for the film Treasure Island' [28] The schooner thus became a full-rigged ship with cannons. [29]
Immediately afterwards, Nanuk slipped into the role of a British Admiralty frigate: In Mutiny on the Bounty [30] she appeared as HMS Pandora. [31] Together with Lily as a replica of the HMAV Bounty she went as far as Tahiti for filming. [31]
According to JaySea, the Nanuk was later sold to the Mexican government (Cia Naviera Nacional del Pacifico), which got rid of the masts and operated her as a motor ship until at least 1960. [31]
Some photos of the Nanuk can be found on JaySea's blog The First Bounty Replica. [31]
C.A. Thayer is a schooner built in 1895 near Eureka, California. The schooner has been preserved and open to the public at the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park since 1963. She is one of the last survivors of the sailing schooners in the West coast lumber trade to San Francisco from Washington, Oregon, and Northern California. She was designated a National Historic Landmark on 13 November 1966.
A knarr is a type of Norse merchant ship used by the Vikings. The knarr was constructed using the same clinker-built method as longships, karves, and faerings.
Eurana was a steam cargo ship built on speculation in 1915 by Union Iron Works of San Francisco. While under construction, the ship was acquired by Frank Duncan McPherson Strachan to operate in the Atlantic trade for his family's Strachan Shipping Company. The vessel made several trips between the Southeast of the United States and Europe before being sold to the Nafra Steamship Company in 1917. The freighter then entered the Mediterranean trade where she remained until September 1918 when she was requisitioned by the Emergency Fleet Corporation and transferred to the United States Navy to transport military supplies prior to the end of World War I, and as a troop transport after the war's end. In October 1919, the ship was returned to Nafra, which was then being reorganized to become the Green Star Steamship Company. In 1923, Eurana and twelve other ships passed to the Planet Steamship Company, newly formed to receive them from Green Star's bankruptcy. The ship remained principally engaged in the West Coast to East Coast trade for the next seven years. In 1930, together with several other vessels, Eurana was purchased by the Calmar Steamship Corporation, and renamed Alamar. The ship continued carrying various cargo between the East and West Coasts of the United States through 1941. On 27 May 1942, while en route from Hvalfjord to Murmansk carrying lend-lease war materiel to the Soviet Union during World War II as part of Arctic convoy PQ-16, she was fatally damaged by German aircraft bombs and was consequently scuttled by a British submarine to prevent her from becoming a menace to navigation.
The West Coast lumber trade was a maritime trade route on the West Coast of the United States. It carried lumber from the coasts of Northern California, Oregon, and Washington mainly to the port of San Francisco. The trade included direct foreign shipment from ports of the Pacific Northwest and might include another product characteristic of the region, salmon, as in the schooner Henry Wilson sailing from Washington state for Australia with "around 500,000 feet of lumber and canned salmon" in 1918.
SS Baychimo was a steel-hulled 1,322 ton cargo steamer built in 1914 in Sweden and owned by the Hudson's Bay Company, used to trade provisions for pelts in Inuit settlements along the Victoria Island coast of the Northwest Territories of Canada. She became a notable ghost ship along the Alaska coast, being abandoned in 1931 and seen numerous times since then until her last sighting in 1969.
Eskimo is a 1933 American Pre-Code drama film directed by W. S. Van Dyke and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). It is based on the books Der Eskimo and Die Flucht ins weisse Land by Danish explorer and author Peter Freuchen. The film stars Ray Mala as Mala, Lulu Wong Wing as Mala's first wife Aba, Lotus Long as Mala's second wife Iva, Peter Freuchen as the Ship Captain, W. S. Van Dyke as Inspector White, and Joseph Sauers as Sergeant Hunt.
Metha Nelson was built as a wooden‑hulled merchant schooner which was later used in historic movies as a full-rigged ship. During World War II, she served the United States Navy.
Swayne & Hoyt was an American steamship company based in San Francisco, California, and in operation from the 1890s to 1940.
Christian Theodore Pedersen was a Norwegian-American seaman, whaling captain and fur trader active in Alaska, Canada, and the northern Pacific from the 1890s to the 1930s. He was called "one of the canniest old skippers in the western arctic" by a contemporary.
Olaf Swenson was a Seattle-based fur trader and adventurer active in Siberia and Alaska in the first third of the 20th century. His career intersected with activities of notable explorers of the period, and with the Russian Civil War. He is credited with leading the rescue of the Karluk survivors from Wrangel Island in 1914. According to historian Thomas C. Owen, Swenson's "practicality and zest for adventure made him an ideal entrepreneur on the arctic frontier..."
Providence Bay is a fjord in the southern coast of the Chukchi Peninsula of northeastern Siberia. It was a popular rendezvous, wintering spot, and provisioning spot for whalers and traders in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Emma Harbor is a large sheltered bay in the eastern shore of Providence Bay. Provideniya and Ureliki settlements and Provideniya Bay Airport stand on the Komsomolskaya Bay. Plover Bay in English sources sometimes refers specifically to the anchorage behind Napkum Spit within Providence Bay but was commonly used as a synonym for Providence Bay; Russian 19th century sources used the term for an anchorage within Providence Bay.
Hans Ditlev Bendixsen was a Danish-American shipbuilder who was instrumental in the development of the merchant marine industry on the West Coast of the United States. His lumber schooners were built in or near Eureka, California in shipyards on Humboldt Bay for over 30 years. These schooners played a major role in the historic west coast lumber trade.
Christian Klengenberg Jorgensen, was a Danish whaler, trapper, and trader, active for 34 years in Alaska and Northern Canada. He is notable for opening trade routes to the Copper Inuit territory. Klengenberg is also credited with the discovery of Blond Eskimo and recounting his experience to the anthropologist Vilhjalmur Stefansson who went on to publish about their existence.
Narwhal was a whaling ship, a barque which was part of the Arctic fleet between 1883 and 1907.
West Cajoot was a Design 1013 cargo ship built in 1919 by the Los Angeles Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co of Los Angeles. She was one of many ships built by the company for the United States Shipping Board.
The Way of the Eskimo is a lost 1911 American silent drama film that portrayed the Inuit or "Eskimo" culture of northeastern Canada along the coast of Labrador. Directed by William V. Mong and produced by Selig Polyscope Company, this "photoplay" was based on a love story written by Columbia Eneutseak, a young Inuit woman who was born in the United States in 1893, in the "Esquimaux Village" exhibition at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. She, fellow Inuit performer Zacharias Zad, and William Mong costarred in the film with a supporting cast that included members of Columbia's immediate family and other Inuit players. While this production was promoted in 1911 as being filmed on location in northern Canada, it was actually shot that year at the snow-covered port town of Escanaba, Michigan, along a frozen stretch of shoreline of Little Bay de Noc, which connects to Lake Michigan.
Lost in the Arctic is a lost 1911 American silent drama film that portrayed the Inuit or "Eskimo" culture in the northern coastal area of Labrador. Directed by William V. Mong and produced by the Selig Polyscope Company, the "one-reeler" costarred Columbia Eneutseak, J. C. Smith, and also Mong. The film was not, as advertised by Selig and in trade publications in 1911, shot in the Arctic or even farther south in Labrador. It and another Selig release, The Way of the Eskimo, were produced at the same time in the same location in the United States, in Escanaba, Michigan. Both "Arctic" stories were filmed there in less than two weeks during the early winter months of 1911, staged along the frozen shoreline of Little Bay de Noc that connects to Lake Michigan.
Lily was a two-masted schooner (1882) which in 1934 was modified for use as the 18th century full-rigged ship HMS Bounty in the 1935 film Mutiny on the Bounty with Clark Gable and Charles Laughton.
she will be taken to Areata wharf to be loaded with lumber from Isaac Minor's Glendale mill for San Luis Obispo.
from Topolobampo, Mexico, where she went with a cargo of coal from San Francisco.
An earthquake and tidal wave swept Rangal [Pangai], a town of the Tonga group, in the Pacific, just south of the equator, on April 30
Olive Jordan, a nurse, who had been at Point Barrow for five years as representatives of the Presbyterian mission...
Blubber and furs were the cargo of the three-masted schooner Ottilie Fjord, which sailed into San Francisco harbor recently. The catch was rated at a million dollars.
The power trading schooner NANUK, formerly the Ottilie Fjord, returned to the bay from Arctic waters yesterday. The vessel had numerous exciting experiences with the ice and Russian officials. Here cargo is valued at $100,000 and consists of furs and ivory.
The three-masted schooner Nanuk, operated by the Swenson Fur Trading Company of New York and Seattle, will be sent into the far reaches of the Siberian coast line on the Arctic ocean, 1200 miles westward of Bering straits to the Kolyma river, in continuation of a five year contract with the Soviet State Trading Company of Russia or the "Dalgostorg" Fur Company
walrus-hunting schooner Nanuk when the craft was disabled by having its propeller and rudder broken by the crushing force of grinding Arctic Ice. […] Nanuk had been out less than two weeks and […] had already killed 297 walrus.
the Pandora had started its life as a wooden three-masted schooner that served in the California lumber trade named the Ottilie Fjord.