Capt. William Adams and ‘his love for the Esquimaux’

Capt. William Adams was one of the best-known and most well-respected Dundee whaling captains of his time.

Born in 1837, the son of a seaman, he first went to sea when he was 13 years old. While still a boy, he sailed on voyages to the Baltic and to India. He worked his way up through the ranks and received his Master’s Certificate in 1866. He was made captain of the ship Arctic in 1868.

As a whaler, Adams had outstanding commercial success.

In 1872, he made his mark on the map of Baffin Island when he explored the northern part of Admiralty Inlet, one of the world’s longest fiords.

He named Adams Sound and entered a large bay off its northern shore, which he named Arctic Bay, after his ship. That remains the name of Baffin Island’s most northerly community.

In 1874, disaster struck. The Arctic sank in “a howling storm and heavy rain” in the ice off Creswell Bay in Prince Regent Inlet. The crew of 54 men all survived but had to live on the ice for several days. Fortunately, other ships were in the area and Adams and his crew went back to Scotland on the Victor.

The following year, Adams’s employer, Alexander Stephen and Son, launched a replacement ship, named Arctic II, with the motto “Do or Die.”

Adams was appointed master. [These ships should not be confused with Capt. Bernier’s famous Canadian ship, the Arctic, from the early 1900s.]

At about this time, Dundee whalers began a change to their annual activities. They began to leave Dundee early in the spring for sealing off northern Newfoundland, discharge their cargo of oil and pelts in St. John’s, reprovision, then head to Davis Strait for whaling there before finally returning to Dundee in the fall. This is the routine Adams followed with his Arctic II.

In 1880, Adams landed 400 tons of seal oil at St. John’s, then took 12 whales in Davis Strait and the waters near Pond Inlet. Going farther west, he took 600 white whales, sometimes called beluga, in four days at Elwin Bay in Prince Regent Inlet.

The whales were “surrounded by the [ship’s] boats and driven ashore to shallow water when they were killed when the tide receded.”

At his home in Broughty Ferry near Dundee, during his winters home from whaling, Adams remained a busy man.

He participated in the search for victims of the Tay Bridge disaster in 1879 [a bridge collapse that killed more than 70 people]. He appeared as an expert witness in court cases involving whaling disputes. He launched a relief fund for the surviving crew of the Chieftain, which had been lost off Greenland. And he advised the Canadian government on ice conditions in Hudson Strait during planning for a proposed railway from Winnipeg to Hudson Bay for the shipment of grain to Europe.

He was also a lecturer and spoke extensively about whaling, about the Inuit, and of the need for a British settlement to be established in the Arctic for the welfare and benefit of the Inuit.

His obituary included a lengthy section entitled, “His Love for the Esquimaux.” It read, in part:

“Capt. Adams was a man of large sympathies, and his heart went out to the poor Esquimaux whom he met in the Far North. Everyone knows that at considerable expense he brought at different times representatives of the race to Dundee, and by lecturing and otherwise he excited an interest in them.”

Adams was impressed with the lifestyle of the Inuit he met in Greenland and was “loud in his praise of what had been done for them by the Danish Government.”

He contrasted that, in a tone of bitterness, with the neglect shown by the British government.

His obituary continued: “In his own way the captain did a great deal for the Esquimaux, and he never failed when opportunity offered to arouse interest in them and sympathy for them.”

It quoted from the captain’s own writing from 1887: “I have spent the greater portion of the last 30 years in the Arctic regions, and the question has often occurred to me — Can nothing be done for the Esquimaux?”

In Greenland, he noted, there were “about 13,000 natives, all civilized, and under the influence of Christianity.”

“The Danes send out ships every year with clothing, tea, coffee and other provisions. Each village has a church and school … The natives can read and write, are attentive to their religious duties and … may be described as a contented and happy people.”

He was familiar with the Inughuit of farthest northern Greenland, to the north of Melville Bay, and removed from Danish influence. He said they were “nomadic and miserable,” and advocated for their removal, either to the Danish settlements in southern Greenland or to the Canadian side of Davis Strait “where their life, though by no means luxurious, would at any rate be tolerable.”

On the Canadian side, where the Inuit lived in a state of “semi-barbarism,” he thought one or more British settlements should be established.

“To these places a ship could easily penetrate any year,” he wrote.

“Surely some help could be extended to these poor, God-forsaken people. I know the men can be got for such work and the cost would not be much.”

He noted that Queen Victoria’s Jubilee Year was approaching — it would start in June of 1887 — and wrote, “It has occurred to me that one celebration of the Queen’s Jubilee year might take the form of starting one settlement as an experiment at Durban [Durban Island, south of present-day Qikiqtarjuaq] or Cumberland Inlet, where many natives are to be met with. Such an act would remove a blot from the flag of Christian England.”

Capt. William Adams retired in 1883. But that didn’t last. He longed for the sea. He purchased the whaler Maud and returned to whaling.

On his final voyage, in 1890, he was accompanied by his son, also named William, who served as mate.

It was a successful voyage on which he took seven bowhead whales. But crossing the Atlantic to return home, Capt. Adams became ill. The ship put in at Caithness on the north coast of Scotland. He planned to take the train home from there, but died en route on Aug. 6. In retrospect, he probably died of colon cancer.

In the next instalment I will write about Adams’s friendship with one particular Inuk from Baffin Island.

Taissumani is an occasional column that recalls events of historical interest. Kenn Harper is a historian and writer who lived in the Arctic for over 50 years. He is the author of Give Me Winter, Give Me Dogs: Knud Rasmussen and the Fifth Thule Expedition, and Thou Shalt Do No Murder, among other books. Feedback? Send your comments and questions to kennharper@hotmail.com.