Maud (ship)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please improve this article if you can. (June 2008)

The wreck of "Maud", near Cambridge Bay (Victoria Island).

Maud was a ship built for Roald Amundsen for his second expedition to the Arctic

The vessel was built at a shipyard in Asker at the Oslofjord, Norway and was constructed and built especially for his intended voyage through the Northeast Passage

The vessel was launched in June 1916 and christened by Amundsen himself by crushing a chunk of ice against the vessel's 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

The vessel was built of oak and had the following dimensions:

Length: 36.5 m
Witdt: 12.3 m
Draft: 4.85 m
Tonnage: 292 tons^[vague]
Engine: 240 hp (177 kW) semidiesel Bolinder engine

Whereas the other Polar vessels Gjøa and Fram have been preserved at the maritime museum at Bygdøy near Oslo, the Maud was subject to a far less glamorous destiny.

After sailing through the Northeast Passage, which did not go as planned and lasted for six years from 1918 till 1924. She ended up in Nome, Alaska and in August 1925 and was sold on behalf of Amundsen's creditors in Seattle, Washington.

The buyer was the Hudson's Bay Company and renamed Baymaud she was to be used as a supply vessel for their outposts in Canada's western Arctic. In the winter of 1926 she was frozen in the ice at Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, where she sank in 1930. The ship now lies just of the shore line of the bay. The oak vessel is an easy walk on a warm winter day lying just 15 minutes across the frozen ice from the Cambridge Bays, Hudson’s Bay Store. And an addition ten minute walk to the old Stone Catholic Church that is shadowed by Cambridge Bay LORAN Tower built in the late 1947. Prior to her final voyage the Baymaud was given a refit in Vancouver, British Columbia. This was supervised by Tom Hallidie who later went on to design the St. Roch based on the Maud.