Baffin Bay

cheerful notes about the voyage ahead, and those letters are the last words from the expedition that anyone outside it would ever read.

Late in July, two British whaling ships, the Prince of Wales and the Enterprise, met Erebus and Terror in Baffin Bay.

Franklin's vessels were waiting for a gap in the ice to cross into the channels beyond.

The whalers traded a few pleasantries and watched Franklin's ships sit moored to an iceberg.

Well, we'll get to blubber a little bit later.

I actually did a little research on blubber, but they need that blubber Angie, because they range in the Arctic, you know, but the, the Bering sea, can you say some of these, the Chukai sea, the Beaufort sea, Hudson bay, Fox basin, Baffin bay.

I was going to go

with Hudson bay.

So this, Salve Bar population is critically endangered.

The Sea of Osh stock subpopulation is endangered.

Baffin Bay Davis Strait stock is endangered.

Hudson Bay, that's an easy one to say, that's vulnerable, estimated to be maybe 1,000 individuals.

In 1823, the HMS Viceroy sailed into the polar north in search of the Northwest Passage.

It sailed into Baffin Bay off the coast of Greenland and was never seen again.

50 years later, in 1873, a young man in a tattered naval uniform staggers into a whaling camp on an unnamed island in that bay, screams an incoherent babble of words, and drops dead.

Word is passed down via rumor and legend that a crew member of the Viceroy was found, and an expedition is subsequently put together.

Nuke in Greenland.

And, you know, they kind of their share Baffin Bay.

And they were looking for Russian subs in Baffin Bay.

Really? And he says that Russian subs just go and sit on the bottom.

Not, you know, depending on where it is.

Yeah.

They'll sit there for like three weeks just sitting in the bottom of Baffin Bay.

And we did that project with Woods Hole in 2024 and the Navy, and they were trying to understand how the sound, you know, these mountains that are 12,000 feet tall, but they're in 14,000, 15,000 feet of water, and subs can hide behind them and you basically get like a sound deflection.

In 1576, Frobisher explored part of the region, the work being continued by Davis, who in 1585 to 1588 discovered and explored the strait which still bears his name, to the west of Greenland.

In 1610, Hudson, an intrepid trader and explorer, sailed into Hudson's Bay, and five years later Baffin sailed into and through Baffin's Bay.

The result of these two discoveries was to open up a very valuable fur trade, and for the next 200 years, fur traders and whalers were practically the only men who went into the frozen north.

In 1818, the British Navy again entered the field for the purpose of mapping out the northern coast of America.

This was the introduction of Franklin to that sphere of work which, during the remainder of his life, he was fated so brilliantly to adorn.

The following year, 1819, saw him again facing the north, this time in company with Captain Parry and with a well-arranged plan of operations.

Parry was to remain in the ships and explore at sea, while Franklin was to push along the shores of Baffin Bay, making as complete a survey as possible.

For three years the work was continued until, by 1822, the party had traveled over five thousand five hundred and fifty miles of previously unexplored country along the North American coast.

The projectors of the Enterprise had a firm belief that there

was a channel from Baffin's Bay into an open polar sea, which would be

navigable if its entrance were not blocked up by ice, and on this belief were based all their hopes of success.

So the explorers pressed steadily

there was perhaps no real reason why they should fear the fate of the great fish but after all this subject was one which should be very seriously considered the latter part of their passage under the ice had been very hazardous Had they struck a sharp rock below them, or had they been pierced by a jagged mass of ice above them, there probably would have been a speedy end of the expedition.

And now, having come safely out of that dangerous shallow water, they shrank from going into it again.

It was the general opinion that if they would sail a considerable distance to the eastward they could not fail to find a deep channel by which the waters of this sea communicated with Baffin's Bay.

But in this case they would be obliged to leave the line of longitude by which they had safely travelled from Cape Tariff to the Pole and seek another route southward, along some other line, which would end their journey they knew not where.

The following year, 1819, saw him again facing the north, this time in company with Captain Parry and with a well-arranged plan of operations.

Parry was to remain in the ships and explore at sea, while Franklin was to push along the shores of Baffin Bay, making as complete a survey as possible.

For three years the work was continued until, by 1822, the party had traveled over 5,550 miles of previously unexplored country along the North American coast.

Returning to England, Franklin enjoyed a well-earned rest until in 1825 he was placed in charge of an expedition to complete the surveys of the coast along which the Northwest Passage was supposed to run.

Public opinion, stimulated by the interest taken in the departure of the expedition, began to grow anxious at the prolonged silence, but the last dispatches had been received, and the last tidings direct from the ships had come to hand.

Over their subsequent actions and adventures, the heavy veil of the frozen north hung until the intrepid searchers raised it and learned the sad but gallant story of how the North-West Passage was discovered and the route to the Pole marked clearer.

When the Erebus and Terror parted company with the dispatch boat on July the 4th, they shaped their course through Baffin Bay towards Lancaster Sound.

Continuing their way, they passed Cape Warrender and ultimately reached Beechey Island at the entrance of the then unexplored waters of Wellington Channel.

The lateness of the season obliged the explorers to turn back to avoid being frozen in for many months.

They therefore made their way southward through the wide passage known as Baffin Bay, and thence by Davis Strait to the Atlantic Ocean, reaching England in August of the same year.

The solitude of those icy regions was not again broken for two hundred years.

End of chapter 2 Chapter 3 of Stories of North Pole Adventure by Frank Mundell This LibriVox recording is in the public domain The First Royal Arctic Expeditions The discovery of Hudson Bay and its valuable fisheries became famous about the middle of the 17th century.

Even the pole itself was thought to be surrounded by an open sea, if only the icy barrier which encircled it could be penetrated.

In 1817 the British government decided to send out four vessels.

Two of them were to attempt to reach the Pacific by proceeding in a northerly direction across the pole, while the other two were to find a western route through Baffin Bay.

Never before had so many experienced officers of the Royal Navy taken part in such an expedition.