| Bishop Gabriel Breynat raised the necessary $20,000 cost of construction for a suitable vessel from the Church in Rome. They placed the order with C. T. Pedersen for a 60' vessel (the largest ever brought to the Arctic by Pedersen.) this vessel was to be about 15' in beam and 5' in depth. This vessel was delivered in the manner of the other Eskimo trading schooners. "During a visit to Herschel Island with St. Roch we anchored next to the Oblate Fathers' mission ship, Our Lady of Lourdes. Captain Pedersen had bought her in San Francisco and brought her in on the deck of Patterson a few years earlier. How Pedersen had managed to unload the boat at Herschel Island was beyond my comprehension, but then he was an old whaling skipper and was used to handling this sort of thing." (Larsen, Henry, Frank Sheer & Edward Omholt-Jensen. 1967). Her white and blue hull moved at about 8 knots. This vessel was flush decked and appeared like the other trading schooners. This vessel had one mast and carried a gaff-rigged mainsail and jib which could be used to save fuel or when time was not particularly important. This vessel was initially based at Lettie Harbour. Later this vessel was based at Paulatuk and eventually moved to Tuktoyaktuk in 1940. This vessel would take mission supplies out in the spring and bringing school children in the fall to residential school in Aklavik and some went on to Hay River. The children didn't travel home to their parents very often. Many older people in the Western Arctic told Johansson that they were kept in the mission school for seven or eigt years before returning home to see their parents. In 1941 this vessel was carrying Bishop Joseph Trocellier, four Oblate Fathers, an Eskimo guide and five children and were stranded by ice on the coast. They managed to make an escape by dog team, overland to Tuktoyaktuk when the weather conditions improved. This vessel was essential to the operation of the Mission. In the winter they couldn't live without the dogs. In the summer the same was true of the Our Lady of Lourdes. This vessel was used from 1931 to about 1955. At the end of her life this vessel was given first to Eddie Grueben, Eddie. but he discovered that this vessel had never been properly registered or the import duty declared and paid to the RCMP when this vessel was delivered. He would have been responsible for the payment after 30 thirty years so he declined the offer. When this vessel was pulled out of the water, with heavy tractors, the keel became trapped by a log on the beach. The continued to pull on her until the keel snapped near the rudder. This vessel was never put back in the water after that time as the repairs were considered too costly for such an old ship. A DEW Line helicopter moved her in 1967 to a storage pad in Tuktoyaktuk. In 1978 crews from Dome Petroleum blocked her up and painted her and put a bronze plaque in front of her as a monument at Tuktoyaktuk. That happened with the Our Lady of Lourdes, the Roman Catholic Church mission ship brought up to the Arctic in exactly the same manner as the North Star. When they were finished using her they offered her to Eddie Grueben, Eddie at Tuktoyaktuk. He learned that if he accepted her he would be liable for the import duties payable forty years before when this vessel was originally imported from the United States. This vessel wasn't worth it by that time so this vessel was pulled up on the beach as an exhibit instead. |
