Gjøa

Coordinates: 59°54′13.44″N 10°41′56.32″E / 59.9037333°N 10.6989778°E / 59.9037333; 10.6989778
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
This article is about the first ship to cross the Northwest Passage. For other uses, see Gjoa (disambiguation).
Norwegian Maritime Museum in Oslo

Gjøa was the first vessel to transit the Northwest Passage. With a crew of six, Roald Amundsen traversed the passage in a three-year journey, finishing in 1906.[1]

History

Gjøa, the first ship to sail through the Northwest Passage
Gjøa in 1903, at the time of the Northwest Passage expedition

Construction

The 70 by 20 ft (21.3 by 6.1 m) square-sterned

Norse name Gyða, in turn a nickname for Guðfríðr, a compound of guð 'god' and fríðr 'beautiful'.) For the next 28 years the vessel served as a herring
fishing boat.

Purchase by Amundsen

On March 28, 1901, Amundsen bought her from Asbjørn Sexe of Ullensvang, Norway, for his forthcoming expedition to the Arctic Ocean. Gjøa was much smaller than vessels used by other Arctic expeditions, but Amundsen intended to live off the limited resources of the land and sea through which he was to travel, and reasoned that the land could sustain only a tiny crew (this had been a cause of the catastrophic failure of John Franklin's expedition fifty years previously). Her shallow draught would help her traverse the shoals of the Arctic straits. Perhaps most importantly, the ageing ship was all that Amundsen (who was financing his expedition largely by spending his inheritance) could afford.

Amundsen had little experience of Arctic sailing, and so decided to undertake a training expedition before braving the Arctic ice. He engaged Hans Christian Johannsen, her previous owner, and a small crew, and sailed from Tromsø in April 1901. The next five months were spent sealing on the pack ice of the Barents Sea. Following their return to Tromsø in September, Amundsen set about remedying the deficiencies in Gjøa that the trip had exposed. He had a little 13-horsepower marine paraffin motor, connected with a winch, for navigation in light winds and to facilitate handlings.[2][3] Much of the winter was spent upgrading her ice sheathing, as Amundsen knew she would spend several winters iced-in.

Journey through the Northwest Passage

In the spring of 1902, her refit complete, Amundsen sailed Gjøa to

King Oscar
, he succeeded. By the time Amundsen returned, Norway had gained its independence, and he and his crew were among the new country's first national heroes.

Amundsen served as the expedition leader and Gjøa's master. His crew were Godfred Hansen, a Danish naval lieutenant and Gjøa's first officer; Helmer Hanssen, second officer, an experienced ice pilot who later accompanied Amundsen on subsequent expeditions; Anton Lund, an experienced sealing captain; Peder Ristvedt, chief engineer; Gustav Juel Wiik, second engineer, a gunner in the Royal Norwegian Navy; and Adolf Henrik Lindstrøm, cook.[4]

Gjøa left the

Arctic Archipelago. By late September Gjøa was west of the Boothia Peninsula and began to encounter worsening weather and sea ice. Amundsen put her into a natural harbour on the south shore of King William Island; by October 3 she was iced in.[5]

There she remained for nearly two years, with her crew undertaking sledge journeys to make measurements to determine the location of the

2011 census).[6]

Gjøa arrives in Nome, Alaska in August 1906

Gjøa left Gjoa Haven on August 13, 1905, and motored through the treacherous straits south of

San Francisco, California
, where the expedition was met with a hero's welcome on October 19.

San Francisco

Rather than sail her round

Norwegian American community in San Francisco prevailed on Amundsen to sell Gjøa to them. The ship was donated to the city of San Francisco, and the ship was dragged up the beach[7][8][9][10] to the northwest corner of Golden Gate Park, surrounded by a low fence and put on display. Amundsen knew that because of the fame that his exploits aboard Gjøa had earned, he would be able to gain access to Nansen's ship Fram
which had been custom-built for ice work and was owned by the Norwegian state. Therefore, Amundsen left Gjøa in San Francisco. He and his crew traveled back to Norway by commercial ship. Of the original expedition members, only Wiik failed to return to Norway, because he had died of illness during the third Arctic winter.

Preservation

Gjøa in the Fram Museum in Oslo

Over the following decades Gjøa slowly deteriorated, and by 1939 she was in poor condition. Refurbishment was delayed by World War II, and repairs were not completed until 1949. Being displayed outdoors and having faced 66 years of high winds, ocean salt and sand, the boat once again suffered deterioration, until in 1972, with the help of Erik Krag, a Danish American shipping company owner of San Francisco, Gjøa was returned to Norway. Krag was knighted by the king of Norway for his efforts in shipping home Gjøa.[11]

Gjøa was displayed in the

Norwegian Maritime Museum (Norwegian: Norsk Maritimt Museum) in Bygdøy, Oslo. In May 2009 the Norwegian Maritime Museum and the Fram Museum (Norwegian: Frammuseet) signed an agreement for the Fram Museum of Bygdøy to take over the exhibition of Gjøa. It has been displayed in a separate building at Fram Museum.[12]

A bauta (memorial pillar) now stands near Gjøa's former home in San Francisco.[13] Gjøa was also featured as a filming location in the 2005 documentary, The Search for the Northwest Passage, in which Kåre Conradi played Amundsen.

See also

Sources

  • Roald Amundsen told the story of the exploration of the Norwest Passage in Nordvestpassagen : Beretning om Gjøa-ekspedisjonen 1903-1907 . The material was translated into English as The North-West Passage: Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the ship "Gjøa" 1903–1907 (Ams Press Inc; 1908,
    ISBN 978-0-548-77250-8
    ).
  • ISBN 0-349-11395-5
  • Oterhals, Leo (2006) Havdrønn : om berømte båter og stolte båteiere (AS Lagunen)
    ISBN 82-90757-23-9

References

  1. ^ a b Gjøa – norsk polarskute (Store norske leksikon)
  2. ^ Roald Amundsen (1907). Nordvestpassagen : Beretning om Gjøa-ekspedisjonen 1903-1907 (in Norwegian). Kristiana: Aschehoug. p. 7.
  3. ^ Roald Amundsen (1908). The North West Passage: Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship Gjøa 1903-1907 Volume 1. London: Archibald Constable.
  4. ISBN 978-82-489-0075-7
  5. ISBN 978-1559639088
  6. ^ Statistics Canada. 2012. Gjoa Haven, Nunavut (Code 6208081) and Nunavut (Code 62) (table). Census Profile. 2011 Census. Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 98-316-XWE. Ottawa. Released October 24, 2012 (accessed May 20, 2014).
  7. ^ Roald Amundsen Marker -Historical Marker Database
  8. ^ The Gjoa – Western Neighborhoods Project – San Francisco History – The Roald Amundsen Monument – Or The Ship That Isn't There
  9. ^ 100 years since "Gjøa" arrived in San Francisco – Norwegian Consulate General San Francisco
  10. ISBN 978-1-55868-545-1
    .
  11. ^ 100 years since "Gjøa" arrived in San Francisco (Norwegian Consulate General San Francisco – norway.org)
  12. ^ "Gjøa-Ekspedisjonen (1903–1906)". The Fram Museum. Archived from the original on 2015-09-06. Retrieved December 1, 2016.
  13. ^ Gjoa Monument | Atlas Obscura

External links

59°54′13.44″N 10°41′56.32″E / 59.9037333°N 10.6989778°E / 59.9037333; 10.6989778

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gjøa&oldid=1155661921"
This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article: Gjøa. Articles is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license; additional terms may apply.Privacy Policy