Taissumani: May 17

By 1900 bowhead whaling in Baffin Island was drawing to a reluctant close after dominating the lives of Baffin Inuit for the better part of a century. Inuit in some areas had developed a dependence on the whalers and the trade goods which they brought.

Traditional settlement patterns had been altered as people moved in summer to where whaling offered the possibility of employment. In the winter months Inuit often congregated around shore stations where they found casual employment to supplement their subsistence hunting.

As profits from whaling decreased, the whalers who continued to come to the eastern Arctic turned more and more to other pursuits, hunting for beluga, narwhal and walrus, and trading with the Inuit for skins and tusks. Some companies abandoned whaling altogether and became what history has called “free traders.”

That is not the oxymoron that it at first appears to be, for the “free” meant unaffiliated or independent. These were the traders that filled the gap between whaling proper and the move of the giant Hudson’s Bay Company into the Arctic.

One of these companies was the Sabellum Trading Company Limited. It was organized and incorporated in London in 1911 by a ship-broker with no experience of the Arctic, William Prowse Jobson.

But Jobson had recruited as his main employee a man with over fifty years of experience in Baffin, the veteran whaler and trader, James Mutch. Mutch’s home was near the famous Scottish whaling port of Peterhead, and it is from there that the company’s ships usually operated.

In 1912 the company sent its first ship to Baffin Island. The ship was the Erme, a small wooden schooner of 72 tons. The crew traded with Inuit whom Mutch knew. They visited the Inuk, Harry, at Durban Island, but he had already sold his produce to a rival trader. In Cumberland Sound, they visited Kanaaka, a well-known Inuk trader.

They didn’t set up any shore stations but established alliances with various Inuit in Cumberland Sound and on the Baffin coast. The next year, with a Captain Fletcher in command, the Erme sailed again. James Cameron, who had previous experience in the Arctic with another firm, acted as mate. The Erme left him to winter in a small shack at Cape Haven near the mouth of Cumberland Sound. The Erme picked him up the following year when she sailed under a Captain Donaldson, with James Mutch again acting as ice master. Cameron was in very bad shape, having been ill much of the winter.

The company’s activities slowed for the years of the first World War; North Atlantic crossings were dangerous because of the activity of German submarines. Yet the Erme managed to sail for Baffin again in 1916 on a voyage, which, however, accomplished little.

Two years later, the reliable little ship left again for Baffin Island. A man from Leeds named Hector Pitchforth sailed as assistant engineer. He had experience on fishing boats but had never been to the Arctic before.

As luck – bad luck – would have it, he would not make it to the Arctic on this occasion. On July 2, 240 miles west of Ireland, the Erme was intercepted by a German submarine, boarded and set afire.

A captain is expected to be the last man to leave a vessel, but Captain John Pearson was one of the first men into the lifeboat.

So anxious was he to make his escape that he and other crew members attempted to row away leaving Pitchforth and the old ice master, James Mutch, still aboard the sinking vessel. The misadventure delayed for two years Pitchforth’s arrival in the Arctic.

Jobson purchased another vessel to replace the Erme. She was the Vera, a racing yacht, only 63 tons, and totally unsuited for ice navigation. A Captain Mowatt commanded her in 1919 and spent one complete month stuck in the ice.

The next year, it was Captain Fletcher’s turn to try again. James Mutch served again as ice master. Pitchforth sailed again this year as well. The vessel visited Frobisher Bay, a number of other points, and finally reached Cape Henry Kater, a long low peninsula reaching into Davis Strait immediately to the north of the rich waters of Home Bay, between present-day Qikiqtarjuaq and Clyde River.

Pitchforth stayed ashore to winter at a place called Niaqungnaq.

Next Week — Hector Pitchforth in the Arctic

Taissumani recounts a specific event of historic interest. Kenn Harper is a historian, writer and linguist who lives in Iqaluit. Feedback? Send your comments and questions to kennharper@hotmail.com.