Maud (ship, 1917)

Type

Schooner

Period

20th Century

Nation

Norway

Overview: Maud was a three-masted auxiliary schooner built in 1917 at Vollen, Norway, specifically for Roald Amundsen's planned drift expedition across the Arctic Ocean toward the North Pole, following in the footsteps of his earlier ship Fram. She was named after Queen Maud of Norway in a christening ceremony where Amundsen famously broke a block of ice against her bow instead of champagne. Specifications: The ship was built of oak with ironwood ice-sheathing at Chr. Jensen's shipyard in Asker, measuring roughly 36.5 m (119.75 ft) in length with a 12.3 m (40.35 ft) beam and a 4.85 m (16 ft) depth of hold, registered around 292-380 tons depending on the source. She carried a 240 hp semidiesel Bolinder engine and, notably, both her propeller and rudder could be retracted up out of the ice's reach — a design feature modelers should note, as the heavy oak rudder could reportedly be lifted by one man. Service History: Maud departed Norway in 1918 and spent six years (1918-1924) attempting and eventually completing a transit of the Northeast Passage, becoming only the fourth ship ever to do so, though she never achieved the intended polar drift. After wintering repeatedly in pack ice and reaching Nome, Alaska, and Seattle, she was sold in 1925 to pay off Amundsen's creditors and became the Hudson's Bay Company vessel Baymaud, serving as a floating warehouse, workshop, and radio station at Cambridge Bay, Canada, where she sank at her moorings in 1930. Notable Facts: Unlike her sister exploration ships Gjøa and Fram, which were preserved in Norwegian museums, Maud's wreck lay submerged in Cambridge Bay for over 85 years. She was raised and placed on a barge in 2016, towed back through the Northwest Passage in 2017-2018, and arrived in Bergen, Norway on 6 August 2018, nearly a century after her original departure, where conservation efforts continue at her original building site in Vollen.