Taissumani, March 26

Vera Villa, James Mutch’s home in Sisimiut in 1922, now Building B-17. (PHOTO COURTESY OF HAL TIMAR)

KENN HARPER

James Mutch finally moved his little ship, Albert, out of its comfortable northern harbour near Pond Inlet, its home for three winters, and took it back to Scotland in the fall of 1907.

The following year he purchased the little vessel from Mitchell’s Dundee Pond’s Bay Company for 1,200 pounds, then exchanged her for 600 shares in a new venture formed with associates in Peterhead, the Albert Whaling Company Limited. It was said that anyone in town who had any money contributed, presumably in the vain hope of restoring Peterhead’s reputation of the good old days when the town flourished as a great whaling port.

Mutch decided that, with this new venture, he would return to Peterhead every fall – there would be no more wintering in the Arctic. This was a sensible move for Mutch, who by then was 61.

In 1908, he went out on a summer hunting voyage to Davis Strait. The following year he was again in the strait, hunting off Disco Island, known to whalers as the Whale Fish Islands.

In 1910 he hunted off Sukkertoppen, Greenland and off Kivitoo on the Baffin coast. There he met the famous Norwegian explorer, Otto Sverdrup, who visited Mutch’s ship off the coast.

Beset by unfavourable winds in the ice off Kivitoo – the Albert still had no engine – the vessel had to be towed out by another Scottish ship, Diana, on October 5. The summer had not been a success. He returned to Peterhead with 202 walrus hides, but no whalebone.

Mutch left the Albert Whaling Company and the little ship that he loved in 1911 and went to a competitor, the Sabellum Company, based in London. From that year on, his efforts would be devoted more to trading than to whaling, and to dealing with Inuit middlemen whom he would supply on annual voyages.

In that first year with Sabellum, he established a trading post at Cape Mercy. Others would follow. An Inuk known as Durban Harry looked after Mutch’s interest at Durban Harbour near Padloping. The famed Kanaaka was his middleman in Cumberland Sound. Niaquttiaq and his wife, Qaunnaq (who served also as Mutch’s girlfriend) looked after the post that he built at Kivitoo.

Two years later, the aging Mutch returned on the vessel, Erme to Kekerten in Cumberland Sound for the first time in 13 years. He rescued the crew of the Ernest William, which had been wrecked there, and took them and the missionary Greenshield back to England.

In 1918 Mutch left Ireland, again aboard the Erme, bound for Baffin Island. But the Erme was torpedoed by a German U-boat and sunk. Mutch survived.

In 1922 Mutch falsified his sea records, claiming to be 67 instead of his actual age of 75, and set out once again for Davis Strait in the little ship, Vera. He visited his station at Cape Haven, but ice prevented him from getting in to Kivitoo, where Niaquttiaq was in charge.

The Vera was damaged and he made for Sisimiut (then known as Holsteinsborg) on the Greenland coast. During repairs there the Vera keeled over and broke her mast on a sheer cliff at the edge of the harbour. She filled with water and was declared unsalvageable. He and his crew spent a number of weeks there waiting for passage back to Europe aboard a Danish supply ship.

While there Mutch took many of his meals with the local administrator, while he and the Vera’s crew stayed at a building built in about 1906 for use as a hospital.

To while away the time, some of his men made a crude sign for the building and nailed it up between two windows and just under the eaves. It read “VERA VILLA” and underneath that was written the standard abbreviation for Peterhead and the year: PHD 1922.

My good friend, the late Ulrik Lennert, whose father salvaged wood from the wreck of the Vera and built a beautiful table from it (a table that Ulrik treasured in the years that I knew him), took me some years ago to show me this sign. It’s hard to find.

The building, now a kindergarten, building B-17, is painted red and so is the sign. That makes it difficult to photograph. But it is still there, though one has to look hard to find it.

That was James Mutch’s last voyage to the Arctic. He began a well-deserved retirement in Peterhead. Two years later his daughter’s husband, Francis McRobbie, was killed in a boiler explosion, and the next year his widow, Jeannie, moved to South Africa.

In 1927 Mutch, now aged 80, and his wife followed their daughter. He spent his final years living at Rindebeach, a suburb of Cape Town. He died there in 1931, far from the Arctic to which he had devoted most of his adult years.

Those Inuit who knew him personally have all passed away, but many of their children, from Iqaluit to Pond Inlet remember stories they heard from their elders about this remarkable man, Jiimi Maatsi.

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.