Taissumani, June 17

The Rev. Edgar W. T. Greenshield and his wife. Greenshield was honoured by Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands for helping a group of ship-wrecked Dutch sailors survive a winter on Blacklead Island.

KENN HARPER

Bernhard Hantzsch left Blacklead Island for Foxe Basin on April 23, 1910 with his supplies and Inuit guides on his ornithological quest. The ship-wrecked Dutch sailors on the island were happy to see him leave.

The missionary, the Rev. Edgar W. T. Greenshield, was relieved, for he had often been called upon to intervene in disputes between the sailors and the scientist, usually over food.

By early June the sailors knew that their survival, if not their rescue, was assured. The weather had warmed and the Inuit took some of the sailors on a hunting and fishing expedition.

Two boats, each crewed by eight men, left the island, taking with them two sleds and 16 dogs. This venture lasted two weeks and was a success. They shot seals and polar bears, before crossing Cumberland Sound where they took 12 caribou.

On the return they were able to shoot a walrus and even a whale. A week later a number of the stranded sailors went out again with the Inuit, this time for eggs.

In August, two whaling ships from Dundee, first the Thomas, then the Scotia, reached Blacklead. The Thomas was too small to carry all the sailors so only the cook and an ordinary seaman went on her.

The rest of the party waited at the mission while the Scotia whaled in the sound, taking them aboard later in the season for the return trip to Scotland.

The mate of the Jantina Agatha sent a letter home on the Thomas. “You are now celebrating over there,” he wrote, in reference to the festivities accompanying a Dutch holiday, “but we are doing so no less, for there are as many as two steamers and a sailing ship here. We now live in abundance. Truly the need was great, the people here were eating dogs to satisfy their hunger.”

The sailors arrived, to great curiosity, in Dundee, wearing Inuit sealskin garments. By early October 1910 all of them had returned safely to Groningen.

Earlier that summer they had been given up for dead. Their wives had already been promised compensation by the Seamen’s College.

The daughter of the second mate recalled years later, “We heard little from father about it. He’d rather not mention that trip. Life among the Eskimos must have been hard. He did say emotionally once: ‘They are the very best people in the world.’ They were treated extremely well there. The people there were completely unselfish.”

Greenshield returned to England on the Scotia in the fall of 1910. The following summer he went out again to Blacklead Island. He took with him some unexpected supplies.

Earlier that year Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, having heard the story of the selfless care Greenshield and the Inuit had given her stranded countrymen, had made Greenshield a Knight of the Order of Orange Nassau.

The letter he received from the Dutch Consul-General in London, informing him of the Queen’s decree, added that the Queen was also granting him an allowance of 200 guilders “which is intended to enable you to supply some of the goods which would be appreciated by your Eskimos as a mark of appreciation of the kindness displayed by them towards our ship-wrecked mariners.”

As soon as the ship had left Blacklead, Greenshield distributed the supplies he had purchased to the Inuit, explaining that “the gifts were sent in appreciation of the splendid spirit of self-denial shown by them” and “that they came from the Queen herself.”

Greenshield’s biography records that “the natives received their presents with many words of thanks.”

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.