CamBay group organizes to keep the Maud in Nunavut

A new group in Cambridge Bay wants to keep the Maud, once sailed by Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, in Nunavut. Here’s how the Maud, marooned in the waters off Cambridge Bay, looks today. (PHOTO BY SUSAN BARR)

A group of Cambridge Bay residents has rallied to keep the sunken hulk of the Maud right where it is: in the waters outside their community.

Wealthy Norwegian investors want to bring the Maud, once used by the famed Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen, back to Norway and then build a futuristic museum around it.

The Cambridge Bay group’s members, who met June 1 at the Arctic Coast Visitors Centre for the first time, want to keep Amundsen’s Maud — also called the Baymaud — in Cambridge Bay.

And they will seek support from the Kitikmeot Inuit Association, whose directors are expected to discuss the ship’s future at a board meeting.

The new group’s plans, shared with Nunatsiaq News, also include talking to the owners of the Maud in Norway and setting up a Facebook page to rally more local and national support for their “keep-the-(Bay)Maud” campaign.

Amundsen, who in 1906 was the first European explorer to sail through the Northwest Passage, may have envisioned an Arctic resting place for the Maud.

“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,” said Amundsen at the ship’s christening as he crushed a chunk of ice against the bow.

Amundsen left Norway in 1918 with the Maud, planning to drift with the ice across the Northeast Passage westwards and over the North Pole.

But they never got into the westward current, although the expedition did produce some excellent scientific results — mostly after Amundsen had given up and left the ship.

The Maud was finally sold by creditors in 1925 to the Hudson Bay Co., who renamed it the Baymaud.

The ship ended its days as a floating warehouse and radio station, sinking at its mooring in 1930.

In 1990, the Hudson’s Bay Co. then transferred the ship’s ownership to Asker for $1 — not to the hamlet, as previously reported, emphasizes its current mayor Syd Glawson.

The plan to bring the wrecked Maud back to Norway is being promoted by the “Maud Returns Home” project.

Promoters want to raise the Maud from underwater with balloons, drag the hulk over to a barge and bring it back to Norway — a 7,000-kilometre journey and exhibiti it in a a futuristic to be built museum around it.

Recently Hans Vrålstad, a Norwegian diver, told the Budstikka newspaper in Norway that “climate change and the ravages of the ice makes it necessary to bring the Maud on land.”

Otherwise, Vrålstad said he fears that the ship will disintegrate and disappear for good.

Vrålstad, who visited Cambridge Bay in 1990 and 1993, dove underwater to evaluate the sunken vessel.

Although Maud had been under water for about 70 years, the hulk remained in “surprisingly good” condition, he said, noting that when he scratched the remaining wood, fresh wood lay just beneath the algae.

“Since we do not know what condition it is in, it is extremely important to stabilize the Maud before it is raised and embarks on the journey to Norway,” Vrålstad told the newspaper last month.

A Norwegian investment company, Tandberg Eiendom A/S, has already purchased a barge and is willing to spend $5 to $6 million — or more — to bring the Maud back to Norway.

Tandberg now plans to ask the community of Asker to turn over ownership of the hulk and to apply for a new export permit from Canada, so the Maud can be hauled back to Norway.

“I don’t think a private company should gain the ownership of an international cultural heritage,” Susan Barr, the president of International Polar Heritage Committee, told Nunatsiaq News in an email.

Jan Wanggaard, the manager for the “Maud Returns Home” project, has said he plans to contact the people of Cambridge Bay soon and to visit the community this summer.