The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Living History In The Arctic

Episode Date: August 25, 2021

It was a travel day at sea today as we headed south in the Arctic Ocean.  But travel days can be a chance to reflect on the history of exploration in the Arctic and there is nothing I enjoy doing more.  That plus also watching the Navy go through its drills breaking in a new vessel on its maiden northern voyage.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. We're heading south in the Arctic Ocean. So that phrase, heading south in the Arctic Ocean, seems to clash, right? Heading south on the one hand, Arctic Ocean in the other. But I'll tell you, it's pretty exciting where we are. We're heading south from Greece Fjord, heading towards Arctic Bay. It's a fairly lengthy voyage, about, well, maybe about a day and a half in terms of actual travel time. On one side, Ellesmere Island. On the other side, Greenland. about a day and a half in terms of actual travel time.

On one side, Ellesmere Island, on the other side, Greenland. We're in Baffin Bay, and we're headed towards Lancaster Sound. Now, Lancaster Sound is, it's kind of the Trans-Canada Highway of the Arctic. It's a waterway that runs east to west or west to east. It's pretty wide, about 25 miles, 40 clicks wide, and if there was never any ice, this would be the big highway for sea traffic that was trying to get either from Asia to Europe or Europe to Asia. This is really what they were looking for,

those explorers from hundreds of years ago, looking for the Northwest Passage. That's what Lancaster Sound is. But as I said, the problem is ice. And so there are all kinds of other pathways. We use this term Northwest Passage all the time as if there was just one. There isn't.

There are, I think at last count, seven different ways you can traverse the top of Canada to go from one side to the other. They're all tricky because of ice, but they're all less tricky than they used to be because of climate change. So that's what makes this trip all exciting. But on this day, as we're going through this waterway, we're about to cross Lancaster Sound to get down towards Arctic Bay. What makes this interesting on this day is, well, there are a number of things. For the HMCS Harry DeWolf, the vessel we're on, the Navy's latest Arctic patrol vessel, there are going to be six of these eventually. This is the first one. It's on its maiden voyage. So it's doing a lot of maiden voyage type things. And one of the things it does on a day like this, it does lots of tests, lots of drills. So for the past few hours,

the crew of the Harrod de Wolfe has been testing its ability to handle certain crisis situations. These are thrown at the crew. You know, they kind of know it's going to be a day of drills, but suddenly it's happening and they have to react very quickly. Everybody has their particular duties for certain different types of drills. There are drills about flooding that they have, you know, part of the ship's quarters has flooded for any number of different reasons. The drill they did today had them hitting an iceberg, had a kind of titanic scene, everybody bracing for impact. They saw it in front of them. This is imaginary, right? They saw it in front of them. You have

somebody yelling, basically, you know, kind of that scene out of the movie Titanic, you know, iceberg straight ahead. And then you have somebody yelling, brace impact because they can't turn in time. And then they assume that there's been a shutter and big impact. Big icebergs are multi-year ice usually. And they're like hitting cement. And it caused all kinds of potential damage. So in this case, they had an imaginary leak and they had to deal with it. They had to section off different parts of the ship and contain the water. So there's that, there's a flood situation, there's a fire situation and you can imagine how dangerous that

is on board a ship. Same kind of thing as floods in a sense, you got to section off the area that is in real difficulty. Now, the third one, which could happen actually at any time while we're doing this podcast, is a drill that's, they call it force protection. It'll protect the ship. This is a warship after all. And the concern here is if there was a small craft coming at the ship. You remember the story in the late 90s of the USS Cole when Al-Qaeda, I think it was in Yemen, Al-Qaeda attacked the USS Cole with a small craft, very small. It was basically just like a fishing boat that you'd see on a lake in the Muskokas. But it was totally full of explosives and suicide bombers on board that went straight

at the USS Cole, the U.S. naval warship. And they hit it in the side, caused all kinds of damage and quite a few deaths involving members of the U.S. Navy. So you've got to train to be prepared for something like that. It's not going to happen up here in the Arctic. However, you know, this ship could be going other places as well. The crew has to be prepared for it. So they have a number of heavy-duty weapons on board, including two 50-millimeter guns, one on either side of the vessel. And those are the ones that would deal with a small craft attacking the ship.

And if it did, they've got to be able to deal with that in a hurry. You'll hear the same kind of thing, attack, attack, attack. And suddenly people spring into action and there's suddenly a guy within minutes, literally, on stationed, man or a woman from the Canadian Navy stationed at the 50 millimeter gun and they would take out that small craft as it was coming towards fire warning shots first of all and then if that didn't work they would have to dispatch the small craft now what's interesting in the drills that are done here, they use blanks, blank 50 millimeter cartridges. Why do they use blanks, you say? Well, it's not about, you know, wasting

ammunition. It's not about the potential danger because we're in the Arctic, believe me, we haven't seen another ship anywhere. But the main reason is this. They've signed their signatory to a UN agreement where they would not put anything in the water, anything that would in any way cause some damage. Now, I'm not sure what a shell casing damage would do. I mean, garbage I get, oil I get, waste I get. But nevertheless, the Canadian Navy takes this very seriously. No way in terms of putting any kind of shell, any kind of ammunition into the water. So the blanks stay on deck, right? The cartridge pops out and it's just been a bang noise. And that's all that happens. But it carries through. All countries have signed this UN agreement.

Most countries, I should say. Certainly any country that travels in the Canadian Arctic has signed it where they will not put anything in the water of any kind of waste. Any kind. Keep it pristine. You might not know, I didn't know, that there is no

such agreement on any level about anything in the North Atlantic. And there's an awful lot of ship traffic. Go on any of those apps that show you the ships in the North Atlantic. And there's an awful lot of ship traffic. Go on any of those apps that show you the ships in the sea, and you'll see an awful lot of traffic crossing the North Atlantic both ways. And it's open season on dumping.

You can toss anything you want into the ocean. I think the Canadian Navy, any Canadian vessel belonging to the country, does not dump. So on board they have, like this vessel has an incinerator on board. That's how they deal with their garbage. But across the North Atlantic, a lot of other countries and certainly commercial traffic, they just dump. They dump garbage. They dump, as I said before, fuel.

And they dump waste. Wastewater, black water, as they call it. So something for you to know, a little tidbit of information. But here in the Arctic, nothing, nothing at all goes in the water. Well, one thing went in the water today because the other drill, the final drill, is a man overboard drill. And obviously, that's an important thing. People do fall off ships, you know, by accident. And you have to react very quickly. This water is extremely cold, you're gonna last minutes, not much longer given the temperature of the sea here. So they have a situation where they do a test drill. So they don't have any volunteers who fall overboard. They have a life-size

dummy, they call it Oscar, where they toss off the ship, and then the process begins. Somebody reports man overboard, and they move very quickly. Threat, threat, threat. Threat bearing green 9-0. Well, listen to that. Okay, you hear that? Threat, threat. Threat, threat, threat. Threat bearing red 9-0. Threat, threat, threat. Close up.

Okay, threat, threat, threat. Threat bearing red nine zero. Threat, threat, threat. Close up. Okay, threat, threat, threat. It's coming at the ship. This is an exercise. This is a test. You'll hear it going on. So what happens is people get in their gear very quickly, and they will man the 50-millimeter gun off the side of the ship. And we're actually, I'm positioned at the back end of the ship, near the stern of the ship. And we're actually, I'm positioned at the back end of the ship, near the stern of the ship right now, and right next door to where one of those guns is.

So we're going to hear this in a few moments. We might hear it. We're in kind of a soundproof area, but we'll see. We could hear it going on. Just to wrap up while they're moving quickly towards doing that, they have to have that done once they decide that the threat is real. They then have less than a minute to react to it in terms of opening fire. You may have heard that in the background. And just listen to see how that goes. Sees fire, sees fire, sees fire. All right, so they dealt with it. I'm not sure if you could hear it because we're not that far away from it,

but we're in a kind of a soundproof area. But the whole idea of the drill here is to move as quickly as possible and into position next to that 50-millimeter gun. Anyway, to tie the knot on the story of the man overboard, they toss this dummy Oscar, they call it, into the water and everything happens very quickly, just like it did on the threat, threat, threat, attack, attack, attack. And in this situation, they threw the dummy overboard. I think it was in less than eight minutes, they'd dropped a speedboat, kind of a dinghy speedboat, into the water with people specially geared up

and done it within that eight minutes into the dinghy. The ship turns around the dinghy's speedboat dinghy heads off and goes and grabs the Oscar brings them back to the ship and the tests we watched today they did in eight minutes which is a little longer than they wanted it to take. But even that, I got to admit, all looked pretty quick in terms of how they did that. All right, so that gives you an idea of the various drills that have been taking place today that we've been lucky enough to witness. And it's all, you know, it's all pretty impressive. They've had a few problems here and there in terms of drills,

but that's what drills are all about, right? Is find out where your problems are. There are constant experiments going on here as well. On board the ship, there's a small group from the defense research of the Canadian government. And they're, how can I say it? They're pretty secretive about what they do. What's clear is they're listening underwater.

So they've been doing some tests or dropping some kind of microphone equipment that they have into the water and listening to what's in the water. Now, you know, you ask them what they're doing and they sort of look at you with that, you know, I can tell you what we're doing, but then I'd have to shoot you. So they're not telling you specifically, but I think we can all guess you know they used to say well you know we're studying underwater sea life we're listening for whales and interesting you can hear whales 100 200 kilometers away whale noises but that's not what they're here for they're here here to, they're listening for engine noise. In other words, engines of other ships that might be on the surface and making sure

they know who those ships are, whether they're Canadian or whether they're foreign vessels and whether they registered to come into Canadian waters. But they're also looking for submarines. There's no question about that. There have been submarines in the Canadian Arctic. There have been American subs. There have been Russian subs. And who knows what other subs there have been as well. So that's all part of this process. But at the moment, these people from Defence Research are just testing equipment. I don't think

they're doing any actual real surveys. They're trying to find out how good their equipment is, how to upgrade it, where to place it, and how many people it's going to take to operate it. 50 years ago they put a line down across the Lancaster Sound, a body of water that we've been in. At one point, a stretch, as I said earlier, 25 miles, 40 kilometers, right across. of monitoring sea life, but also the ability to monitor engine noise and determine where that engine noise was coming from. That could be subs, could be above sea level. Anyway, so that's what's been going on. I want to talk about some of the history of this area because I love it and I'm passionate

about it. And so we're pretty much anybody who travels in this part of our country. So we're going to talk a little bit about the good old Franklin expedition. But first of all, we're going to take this quick break. This is The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge. And hello again, Peter Mansbridge, back with you once again on HMCS Harry DeWolf, Canadian Arctic Patrol vessel. We're crossing Lancaster Sound, part of the great historic Northwest Passage. You're listening to us either on Sirius XM channel 167 Canada Talks Or on our podcast, The Bridge

Downloadable from any platform you like to find your podcasts on Alright, I promised a little bit of history here And I love Arctic history And I think most people who come to this part of our country Love it as well It's the story of the opening up really not only of the north but in many ways the opening up of Western Canada because so many of the expeditions that came north went through

Western Canada to get here or went back down through Western Canada upon leaving and the more expeditions there were, the more opening up of the West took place. So, as I said earlier, Lancaster Sound is like the Trans-Canada Highway. That's the place where you wanted to go. And it was in the spot, actually, it was in the spot we're in right now where Lancaster Sound meets Baffin Bay. The waters from Baffin Bay and the

icebergs from Baffin Bay, and we've seen a few of them, come down into and around Lancaster Sound. And it was in this spot, almost this very spot, was the last place Sir John Franklin was seen by white people. He was seen later. The Inuit say they saw him. Last place that white people saw him was right around here. And they were whalers from Greenland. And they saw him and his two ships, the Airbus and the Terror. Franklin is an English sailor, member of the Royal Navy. And this was the big expedition. There'd been attempts for a couple of hundred years to find the Northwest Pass terms of a trade route. So Franklin was sent with these two ships. They were the class of the British naval fleet that could travel in Arctic waters. So the Erebus and the terror were equipped with just about everything you'd want for

in a sense luxurious travel in that era we're talking 1845 it had you know silver tea sets and china and well-stocked libraries. They even had, each of them, steam engines, literally made out of train engines, that were placed inside the ship to try and help them maneuver through ice. We'll never know exactly how well they worked unless we somehow recover Franklin's journals, because, of course, Franklin and the 128 men he had with him as they entered the Northwest Passage didn't survive. Not one of them. They all died. In some cases, mysterious deaths. But Franklin, when he left England in 1845, June of 1845, it was a really big deal.

If you've been to London, you know the Thames River goes out towards the ocean. The Erebus and the Terror went down the Thames. There were crowds lined up on both sides, on both shores, to cheer these great explorers on. So off they went. They took the route, they went north past the Orkney Islands, then over towards Greenland and into Baffin Bay and towards this spot where we are right now. By then it was getting late in the 1845 year and Franklin made the decision, you know what, we're going to overwinter along here.

And it was not far from this spot we're at now, a little place called Beachy Island on the shores of Lancaster Sound, where they wintered. They lost three of their crew there. They died. Once again, kind of mysterious deaths. Apparently, you'll hear these PA systems blast on here every once in a while, just like it did there, looking for the navigation officer. I hope they find him, because without the navigation officer, we're not going to know where we're going. Anyway, these three fellas died in the overwintering, and they were all young guys. They're still buried there, and I've been to Beachy a couple of times and you can see their graves. About 20 years ago, they opened the ground up to try and determine how they died. And

they were stunned when they opened the coffins because it was like they'd been buried yesterday. I guess because they were buried in, you know, solid frozen ground. Never thought out. They were, you know, as I said, they look like they, and there are photographs on them. You can see it in Google. They look like they were just put there yesterday. They did some tests. They did some, you know, medical tests on them, and they thought perhaps that it was lead poisoning from the tin food, but that's been kind of dismissed since. So it's a bit of a mystery. They're all young guys in their, I think, 20s, early 30s. From Beachy Island in 1846, the Franklin Expedition headed south, and that's where they really got trouble.

What happened with ice then is kind of similar to what happens on a much smaller scale now. The ice from the north, where we were, further up, Baffin Bay up, Grease Fjord Way, as it breaks up in the spring and summer, it moves south. That's where the icebergs come from. And same-year ice is no big deal. It melts. Multi-year ice, the long-term ice, some of it decades, some of it even centuries old, it's much harder, much tougher. And it clogs up down around the Victoria Straits remember I warned you last

week I have a map around for these these podcasts and you kind of have a look at the the maps on that the ice clogs up because it really narrows up and on some years certainly in the year 1846 you can get trapped because there was so much of it. It was so cold. The summers weren't warm. And that's what happened to Franklin. He got trapped in the ice, 1846. Had to overwinter in the ice off King William Island.

He died once again, mysteriously. We don't know why he died in 1847 they found a piece of paper on shore in a cairn that had been left by a couple of the officers from the arabus and the terror that all it just remarked is that franklin had died in the early summer of 1847. Anyway, by 1848, the crew, the remaining crew, there were still more than 100 of them, decided, you know, we're stuck here. We're going to be stuck forever. The ice is never going to let us free.

So we're going to walk out. And they walked over land. They got to King William Island, and they tried to walk out. They walked over land. They got to King William Island, and they tried to walk south. It's a little more complicated than that, the story, but nevertheless, it was an ugly end to the expedition. All of them died. There was evidence discovered of cannibalism, as each one lost their lives lives and the others were starving

you know the ultimate decision made on the part of some of them was to eat their colleagues and that's what happened and they still find bones I've been on one of those archaeological digs where you can see on the bones the cut marks from the knives. So it's kind of eerie. Anyway, all these years later they never found the ships until, as you know, just a couple years ago. First in 2014 then I think in 20, I'm just going on memory here, I think it was around 2017 or 16, they found the second. So both the Erebus and the Terror have been found, and they're going over them, they're both sunk, going over them very carefully, looking for evidence, including,

was there any way of Franklin's journals surviving so we'd have a better idea of what happened on that voyage. So that's your, you know, snapshot story of Sir John Franklin. And it really is a snapshot. There's so many books written about it. They're all great. Go back to Pierre Burton's Arctic Grail, which has a, you know, the kind of history of a lot of the searches for the Northwest Passage, including the story of Sir John Franklin. And it's ironic, really, because Franklin, you know, never found the Northwest Passage. He probably thought he knew where it was.

Deep down in the Victoria Straits, he probably figured it's just over there, if I can ever get through this ice. But he never did. But it's ironic in the sense that if he'd lived and not found the passage, you'd be a footnote in history. That he died and not found the passage, you'd be a footnote in history. That he died and never found the passage has made him this mythic figure.

Right down to the Stan Rogers song, Canadian Stan Rogers, Northwest Passage, which is a fabulous song. I remember traveling through the Northwest Passage on the Louis S. Saint Laurent, the Canadian Icebreaker, back in 2006. And they played it often on the public address system in the Louis as we were going through the passage. And it was, you know, great to listen to. So anyway, I get charged up by that story i can never stop hearing about the story and talking about it and talking about how difficult obviously those years were for that crew and the way they ended up most of them were from the uk most of

them were for scotland many of them from the Orkney Islands in the north of Scotland. And most of them, you know, died on King William Island and are still there. Just bone fragments. Some were recovered. And I remember being in a cemetery in Edinburgh a couple of years ago, and finding one of the gravestones marking the final resting place for a member of the Franklin Expedition. So anyway, there's that story. You know, it's got really nothing to do with this trip, except when you cross these waters,

you can't help but think about Franklin and his men. And, you you know as I said to Commander Gleason just the other day I said do you ever think of Franklin on here? He says I think of Franklin every day. Think of the mistakes he made and how easy those same mistakes can be made today. But as I said from the beginning here part of our history, part of our big history. Okay, time to wrap up today's program and give you a snapshot of where we go over the next couple of days. If there's a possibility for tomorrow's podcast of doing Smoke Mirrors of the Truth with Bruce Anderson, I'll do it.

It will all be dependent on how strong the Internet is from Arctic Bay and whether I can begin the flights back to Iqaluit, then Ottawa, then Toronto, we'll be doing a good talk with Chantal Hebert and Bruce Anderson on Friday. And you'll have it to listen to on Friday as well as obviously on the weekend. So there's a lot of ifs in there when you're operating this far north. You live with ifs because the weather is such a determining factor. And it will be over these next couple of days. So as I said, that wraps up the bridge for this day. A special day for me and I hope for you in talking about this part of our great Arctic.

I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you again in 24 hours.