Roald Amundsen’s ship Maud, built for his second Arctic expedition and
launched 100 years ago, in June 1917, has spent the last 90 years preserved
in ice, in Cambridge Bay, Canada, where she sunk after four years of being
frozen in, in 1930. She had been sold to the Hudson’s Bay Company on
behalf of Amundsen’s creditors.
Now, the hull of the Maud has been lifted by a Norwegian team, which
is planning to have her returned home to the town of Asker, near Oslo,
where she was built. She was released from the seabed on 1 August, and a
month was spent clearing mud from her hull.
The team’s blog, maudreturnshome.no, reports: “Most of all we just feel
extremely happy to see the enormous hull of Maud out of the water and
also to see what good shape she is in despite all the years that have passed
since she sunk in 1930. Now Maud is ready to face her first winter up in
the air and she will slowly dry out to loosen some weight before starting her journey ‘home’ this summer.
Maud launching in 1917