Amundsen’s Maud changes hands

Here’s a look at the futuristic museum that a wealthy investment company wants to build in Norway around the remains of Roald Amundsen’s Maud, which now lie off Cambridge Bay. (PHOTO/MAUDRETURNSHOME.NO)

The Maud — or Baymaud as many in Cambridge Bay prefer to call the ship— now officially belongs to a wealthy Norwegian investment corporation that wants to haul the wrecked hull of Roald Amundsen’s ship from Nunavut to Norway.

On June 7, the municipal council of Asker decided by unanimous resolution to transfer the ownership of the Maud from the Asker Kommune to Tandberg Eiendom and its project group “Maud Returns Home,” reports the group’s website.

The renowned Norwegian polar explorer Amundsen, the first European to travel the Northwest Passage successfully in 1906, 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, and the Maud was finally sold by creditors in 1925 to the Hudson Bay Co., who renamed it the Baymaud.

And the ship ended its days as a floating warehouse and radio station, sinking at its mooring off today’s Cambridge Bay in 1930.

The Hudson’s Bay Co. then transferred the ship’s ownership for $1 to Asker in 1992, according to Asker Kommune documents obtained by Nunatsiaq News.

When they bought the Maud, officials in Asker applied for and received a cultural properties export permit from Canada’s federal government, but never acted to bring the 36.5-metre ship back due to “lack of funding.” The permit expired in 1995.

However, Asker has been a long-time supporter of the scheme to bring Amundsen’s ship “back home” to Norway where Tandberg wants to build a Maud Museum around the remains of this “once proud ship.”

Now, people in Asker will now “cross their fingers that a new Export Licence will be issued by Canadian Government to release the wreck of Maud for being salvaged and brought back to Vollen where it was built nearly 100 years ago,” says the “Maud Returns Home” website.

Without this license, the Maud can’t be bought out of Canada.

“Ownership to this famous piece of physical history that has suffered under severe tearing by the ice over the years calls for action and we are now putting all energy and focus on the process to come,” the website says.

Tandberg plans the evaluate hull as soon as the ice has cleared and to discuss the project details and plans with people in Cambridge Bay “to hopefully also have their support for saving the Maud for future generations, rather than just let it go.”

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

Its members have set up a Facebook site called “Baymaud Canada,” about the ship born on “June 7, 1916,” which had more than 60 “friends” on June 8.

The goal of the Facebook site is to rally support to keep the ship in Nunavut.

Here’s the profile photo of the “Baymaud” from a Facebook page set up by a group in Cambridge Bay, which wants to keep the ship sailed by Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen from leaving Nunavut for Norway. (PHOTO/FACEBOOK)