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The Aklavik an Arctic Icon

by John MacFarlane 2021

Supplies on Icefloe

Supplies on ice–floe (Photo from the Angus Brabant collection.)

While on a voyage from Shingle Point to Herschel Island in July 1924 the Aklavik ran aground at full speed on a shoal 11 miles from land. To save the ship more than 15 tons of cargo was landed on an ice–floe anchored with a boat anchor. Remarkably everything was saved.

Aklavik

The Aklavik (Photo from the Angus Brabant collection.)

The schooner Aklavik was owned by the Hudson’s Bay Company, London UK. Conflicting accounts exist about where the Aklavik was built. The most likely one version is that she was prefabricated and knocked down in pieces in Vancouver along with another vessel the Liard River, both being too large to meet railway tunnel clearances. Then parts for both vessels transported overland to the end of steel on the railway and then along the Clearwater River ice by horse sleds to Waterways AB (Fort McMurray) where both were assembled and the engine installed in the Liard River. The Aklavik was floated down to Fort Fitzgerald, lashed to the Liard River where she was hauled out (still without her engines installed). A winch with multiple blocks nested inside each other was used so that progress was very slow. "We moved about an inch every hour it seemed like." reported Scotty Gall who was assisting. Mickey Ryan portaged her with mules – cracking whips, but they could not move her. The hated American competitors Lamson and Hubbard used two big tractors and pulled her through for $1000 per day. The HBC was "mad as hell that the mules could not do it." Gall recalled. Going down the bank was easier– jacked down on skids.

Shear legs allowed them to lower the engine in for installation at Fort Smith. Bunks were built into the foc’sle but most of the space was kept for freight. As Scotty Gall and others in the crew travelled down the river they met Pete Norberg who took over as skipper. He came over the mountains meeting them at Fort Simpson. They had to go through the Sans Sault Rapids and hit many of the sandbars with their six–foot draught. One mast was broken but with the jolly boat and the two canoes lowered over the side and filled with weight to make her heel over to draw less water she made it through the rapids.

At Aklavik Pete Norberg left and then Henry Bjorn took over as skipper. Gall recalled that "to a kid just out from Scotland this was high adventure. It seemed as though it could not get any better."


To quote from this article please cite:

MacFarlane, John (2020) The Aklavik An Arctic Icon. Nauticapedia.ca 2020. http://nauticapedia.ca/Gallery/FILE.php

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