Taissumani, March 12

KENN HARPER

In 1902 a Scottish ship-owner, J. M. M. Mitchell, established the Dundee Pond’s Bay Company and purchased a sturdy little vessel, the Albert.

She — it’s peculiar that ships are called “she” even when they have names like Albert — she had been built in 1890 at Fellows’ Yard in Great Yarmouth as a hospital ship for the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen.

A sailing vessel 101 feet long, with tonnage of 155 gross and eighty-nine net, she was built of oak with a teak deck. The phrases “Heal the Sick” and “Preach the Word” were inscribed on her bows, and the text “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men” graced her wheel.

Mitchell hired as his agent in the field that remarkable Arctic whaler, James Mutch, a native of Boddam on Scotland’s east coast, a few miles south of the famous whaling port of Peterhead.

To do so, Mitchell had to convince Mutch to leave the employment of Crawford Noble, whaling entrepreneur from Aberdeen, for whom Mutch had worked for decades. Born in 1848, Mutch had already spent over thirty years whaling in the Arctic. He knew the north and the whaling trade. He also knew the Inuit and their language.

In 1903, Mutch — the Inuit pronounced his name Jiimi Maatsi — sailed the Albert from Dundee to Pond’s Bay, as the whalers called the waters near what is now Pond Inlet.

He intended to keep the vessel permanently in the Arctic at a harbour there. The ship would in effect become a floating but anchored whaling and trading station. White whales and narwhal would be hunted from smaller boats, and Inuit would hunt whales on their own or as agents of Mitchell’s company. Mutch would also trade with the natives.

But on the way to Pond’s Bay, Mutch took the Albert first to Cumberland Sound where he hired a number of Inuit and one white man willing to relocate with him to the far north. The white man was another veteran whaler, William Duval.

The German-born American-raised Duval — known to the Inuit as Sivutiksaq — had lived for over two decades in Cumberland Sound, where he worked for a number of whaling companies, was married after native fashion to an Inuit woman, and spoke the Inuit language fluently. His home was usually at Blacklead Island, a popular shore station in the sound and, since 1894, a Christian mission.

Duval’s influence was instrumental in convincing two boats’ crews of experienced Inuit whalers from Blacklead to relocate with their families to the far north.

Duval was accompanied by his wife, an Inuit woman named Aullaqiaq, their two daughters, Tauki and Aluki, their two sons, Natsiapik and Qakulluk, and Duval’s older son by another woman, Killaq.

Thirty years ago, elderly Inuit remembered the names of some of the brave Inuit who were willing to travel farther north than they had ever been to help Mutch in his whaling enterprise.

Some of the names remembered were Suqqulaaq, Kuki, Tautuarjuq, and Agjalik. But perhaps the most important ones were Kanaaka, a natural leader of his people and a man who went on to become a trader in his own right, and Viivi (Veevee), a man of equal stature and respect who happened to be Duval’s brother-in-law. There were others. [Readers might ask surviving elders if they know the names of the rest.]

One other white man sailed aboard the vessel, an experienced whaler named Fred Cameron. Some sources call him James Cameron. The Inuit called him Kaamalan.

The Albert passed its first winter in the High Arctic at Erik Harbour, well to the east of present-day Pond Inlet, but Mutch experienced poor whaling there the following spring. With the summer thaw, Mutch sailed the Albert out of Erik Harbour, then north and west into Admiralty Inlet, where he left Duval and his family to winter and to assess the whaling and trading possibilities there.

The Albert returned to Pond’s Bay, entering the small strait between Beloeil Island and the Baffin mainland, offshore from the place the Inuit called Igarjuaq, the big cooking-place, so called because it resembled a hearth, especially when the fog, wind-driven, moved out from the harbour like smoke from between the boulders. The Inuit called the harbour Tuqsukattak, but Mutch named it Albert Harbour.

He and his Cumberland Sound Inuit established their shore station, the first permanent trading station in the High Arctic, near a camp of Tununirmiut on the mainland just west of the harbour, near Igarjuaq. He also built a storehouse on the northern shore of Pond’s Bay at Button Point on Bylot Island.

Next Week – Trading at Pond’s Bay

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.