The
Maud, named for
Queen Maud of NorwayPrincess Maud of Wales was Queen of Norway as spouse of King Haakon VII. She was a member of the British Royal Family as the youngest daughter of Edward VII and Alexandra of Denmark and granddaughter of Queen Victoria and also of Christian IX of Denmark. She was the younger sister of George V...
, was a ship built for
Roald AmundsenRoald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen was a Norwegian explorer of polar regions. He led the first Antarctic expedition to reach the South Pole between 1910 and 1912 and he was the first person to reach both the North and South Poles. He is also known as the first to traverse the Northwest Passage....
for his second expedition to the
ArcticThe Arctic is a region located at the northern-most part of the Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean and parts of Canada, Russia, Greenland, the United States, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. The Arctic region consists of a vast, ice-covered ocean, surrounded by treeless permafrost...
. Designed for his intended voyage through the
Northeast PassageThe Northern Sea Route is a shipping lane officially defined by Russian legislation from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean specifically running along the Russian Arctic coast from Murmansk on the Barents Sea, along Siberia, to the Bering Strait and Far East. The entire route lies in Arctic...
, the vessel was specially built at a shipyard in
AskerAsker is a municipality in Akershus county, Norway. It is part of the Viken traditional region. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Asker. The municipality is a suburb of Oslo, the national capital...
,
NorwayNorway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
on the
OslofjordThe Oslofjord is a bay in the south-east of Norway, stretching from an imaginary line between the Torbjørnskjær and Færder lighthouses and down to Langesund in the south to Oslo in the north....
.
The
Maud was launched in June 1916 and christened by Roald Amundsen by crushing a chunk of ice against her bow:
- It is not my intention to dishonour 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.
Career and fate
She lived up to her christening, for she lies still in the ice. Whereas other vessels designed for Amundsen's polar explorations, the
GjøaGjøa 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.- History :- Construction :...
and
FramFram 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...
, have been preserved at the maritime museum at
BygdøyBygdøy or Bygdø is a peninsula on the western side of Oslo, Norway. Administratively, Bygdøy belongs to the borough of Frogner.Bygdøy has several museums, like the Kon-Tiki Museum, which shows all year long the legendary expeditions of Thor Heyerdahl; the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History ; the...
, the
Maud was subject to a far less glamorous destiny.
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, AlaskaNome is a city in the Nome Census Area in the Unorganized Borough of the U.S. state of Alaska, located on the southern Seward Peninsula coast on Norton Sound of the Bering Sea. According to the 2010 Census, the city population was 3,598. Nome was incorporated on April 9, 1901, and was once the...
and in August 1925 was sold on behalf of Amundsen's
creditorA creditor is a party that has a claim to the services of a second party. It is a person or institution to whom money is owed. The first party, in general, has provided some property or service to the second party under the assumption that the second party will return an equivalent property or...
s in
Seattle, WashingtonSeattle is the county seat of King County, Washington. With 608,660 residents as of the 2010 Census, Seattle is the largest city in the Northwestern United States. The Seattle metropolitan area of about 3.4 million inhabitants is the 15th largest metropolitan area in the country...
.
The buyer was the
Hudson's Bay CompanyThe Hudson's Bay Company , abbreviated HBC, or "The Bay" is the oldest commercial corporation in North America and one of the oldest in the world. A fur trading business for much of its existence, today Hudson's Bay Company owns and operates retail stores throughout Canada...
which renamed her
Baymaud. She was to be used as a supply vessel for Company outposts in
CanadaCanada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
's western Arctic. However, in the winter of 1926 she was frozen in the ice at
Cambridge BayCambridge Bay, named for Prince Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge, is a hamlet located in the Kitikmeot Region of Nunavut, Canada...
, where she sank in 1930.
The ship now lies just off the shore in the bay, across the frozen ice from Cambridge Bay's former Hudson's Bay Company store. Nearby is the
Cambridge Bay LORAN TowerCambridge Bay LORAN Tower is a tall free-standing lattice tower at Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, Canada. It was built in 1947/48 for LORAN transmissions. Today the tower is used as a Non-directional beacon and is often called to the "CB" beacon after the morse code letters that it transmits on 245 kHz,...
built in 1947.
Prior to her final voyage the
Baymaud was given a refit in
VancouverVancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...
,
British ColumbiaBritish Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...
. The work was supervised by Tom Hallidie, who later went on to design the RCMP vessel
St. Roch, based on the
Maud.
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
kronerThe krone is the currency of Norway and its dependent territories. The plural form is kroner . It is subdivided into 100 øre. The ISO 4217 code is NOK, although the common local abbreviation is kr. The name translates into English as "crown"...
($43,200,000) and the permit expired.
In 2011 Norwegian company Tandberg Eiendom AS in the project Maud Returns Home announced a plan to return the
Maud to Norway. They intend to build a new museum in
VollenVollen is a part of the Asker municipality in Akershus county, Norway. For statistical purposes, it's 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...
, Asker to house the ship and say that they have already purchased a barge to move it. Opposition to the plan has come from the community of Cambridge Bay,
Parks CanadaParks Canada , also known as the Parks Canada Agency , is an agency of the Government of Canada mandated to protect and present nationally significant natural and cultural heritage, and foster public understanding, appreciation, and enjoyment in ways that ensure their ecological and commemorative...
, the Government of Nunavut, the International Polar Heritage Committee as well as some people in Asker. Moving the ship would require another export permit from the federal government.
External links