«Baychimo»: Arctic Ghost Ship

Gordon Turner is the author of Empress of Britain: Canadian Pacific’s
Greatest Ship and the editor of SeaFare, a quarterly newsletter on sea
travel.

At a time when Canada’s Arctic sovereignty is sometimes called into
question, it is important to recall that for many decades Canadian ships
have regularly sailed the region’s icy waters for commercial,
scientific, and navigational purposes, to say nothing of policing,
administration, and humanitarian duties. One such vessel was the
Hudson’s Bay Company’s Baychimo, a sturdy cargo ship that plied
Arctic waters from 1921 to 1931. In the latter year she was beset by ice
and frozen in with no likelihood of an early escape. Her crew abandoned
her, expecting that the heavy ice would soon crush the ship and send her
to the bottom. In fact, she remained upright in the grip of the ice for
several decades, the last reliable sighting having occurred in the early
1960s. Hence the book’s title.

Dalton has thoroughly researched the story of the ship, her personnel,
and her functions, mostly in the Western Arctic but also during the two
years she traded in Siberian waters. He writes skilfully about his
subject, giving sufficient measure to Captain Sydney Cornwell,
Baychimo’s able but aloof master, and the immense difficulties of
Arctic navigation, where groundings and propeller damage were almost
commonplace. He writes also of other ships that sailed Arctic waters,
the role of the RCMP, and the work involved in delivering supplies to
the company’s remote trading posts. His detailed accounts present a
revealing picture of the Western Arctic as it was in the 1920s and early
1930s. Unfortunately, many locations named in the text have been omitted
from an inadequate map of the region, but the book itself is a
noteworthy addition to the literature of the Canadian Arctic.