This Distant and Unsurveyed Country: A Woman's Winter at Baffin Island, 1857-1858

Barbara Robertson is the author of Wilfrid Laurier: The Great
Conciliator and the co-author of The Well-Filled Cupboard.

The woman who spent the winter at Baffin Island in 1857–58 was
Margaret Penny, wife of William Penny, captain of the whaler Lady
Franklin. She is certainly a rarity, for the wives of whaling captains
seldom accompanied their husbands on their expeditions, and Baffin
Island in the winter was scarcely a tempting destination. Penny kept a
diary for most of the year there, the main exception being a gap from
the end of January 1858 until early May of that year.

Although not an especially eloquent writer, Penny is wide-ranging in
her interests. The first whale caught amazes her: “What a size of an
animal! You would scarcely think that such a monstrous creature could be
killed.” Of particular interest are her observations on the
“Esquimaux.” She liked them for their kindness, and pitied them for
the harshness of their lives (not that whalers’ lives were luxurious).
Throughout her stay, there was much visiting. In the winter evenings,
she had tea parties (“mak[ing] out about 20 to 30 cups for the natives
who come to me in rotation”), and she visited them often in their
igloos, observing in mid-December that “[i]t is really wonderful what
one can get accustomed to for I now crawl out & in as well as any
Esquimaux & eat mactac with pleasure.” Considering that mactac is raw
whale skin, we may forgive the diarist’s touch of complacency and
admire her adaptability.

The actual diary occupies only about 45 pages of this 260-page book. W.
Gillies Ross clearly knows a great deal about Arctic whaling in the 19th
century, and what he writes is often interesting, but the quantity is a
little overwhelming. He divides the diary arbitrarily into chapters and
then provides for each section a commentary that extends well beyond the
bounds of necessity. Thus treated, the diary is like a small
19th-century watercolor placed in an immensely heavy frame. Why could he
not have written a history of Arctic whaling and published separately a
more minimalist edition of the diary? What he has produced is a
curiosity, not a masterpiece.