Читать книгу Paddling the Boreal Forest - Stone James Madison - Страница 15

6 A.P. Low: Yachting In Ice

FOR A MAN WHOSE LIFE and career were marked by major but little known accomplishments, A.P. Low's sailing voyages are among his least known expeditions. For these trips, he abandoned the use of a canoe and used sailing boats to survey the east coast and islands of James Bay, the east coast of Hudson Bay, including the Nastapoka Islands, and the coast of Ungava Bay. These surveys were made in the days before radar, radio or accurate navigational charts of the region. His only aids were British Admiralty charts¹ which dated from 1853, and which were notoriously inaccurate. Some prominent features were placed up to 40 miles out of their actual positions.

By the time Low had finished, he had surveyed close to 1,400 miles of shoreline, had spent two winters on the coast of Hudson Bay and had examined the coastal Nastapoka Islands for potential mines. While we of a later age have overlooked these exploits, at the time they attracted considerable attention, particularly his conclusion that a continental ice-sheet had once covered the Quebec-Labrador peninsula and his identification of the vast iron ore deposits on the islands and coast of Hudson Bay.

ON A BOAT WITH NO NAME 1887

In 1887, Dr. Alfred R.C. Selwyn, the director of the Geological Survey, assigned to Low the task of inspecting the geology and mapping the outlines of the islands of James Bay. Since its incorporation in 1670, the Hudson's Bay Company had concentrated its efforts in mapping the harbours for its posts along James Bay, so maps and nautical charts of features beyond the harbours were not accurate. Very little previous geological work had been done on the islands.

Low needed a sailboat. A canoe was dangerous to use in the shallow “shoaly” waters of James Bay. When a canoe is stranded by the low tide, it can be miles from the shore with no fresh water available. The crew has to get out of the canoe and stand in the muck to protect its bottom while waiting for the incoming tide. James Bay is a dangerous, and uncomfortable, place to be in a canoe.

Imagine Low's scene of departure from Ottawa on May 19 for his 1887 trip. Low's daughter, Estelle, was a year and a half old, and already Low had been absent five months during that time. He was now off again. His wife Isabella would have accompanied him to the train station with Estelle in her arms, to say goodbye for a voyage from which he might never be seen again. The scene has been played out in many movies — puffs of steam rising from the tracks, crowds of people, the men in long dark coats, the “womenfolk” in long dresses and wide-brimmed hats, waving, tears in their eyes. Low gives Isabella and Estelle a quick hug, and climbs on board. The whistle blows, the massive iron wheels turn and the train slowly pulls away. Low looks out the window at his family. Is he regretting his choice of career that takes him on such long trips away from his family? We just don't know.

Low first went to the fishing port of Collingwood² on Georgian Bay where he purchased a small fishing boat to use in James Bay³ for the princely sum of $250.⁴ The boat was a typical Lake Huron fishing boat of the time, with a retractable centreboard (this would be a great feature in the shallow waters of James Bay), two masts, open, and built of lap-straked pine. It was 28 feet long⁵ and likely weighed between one and two tons. It had no deck and, when becalmed, it could be rowed with heavy ten-foot-long oars. Used on a later trip, the vessel was described as large enough to carry two tons of provisions, six men and two large canoes.

Low shipped this boat and supplies for the voyage by rail to the Missinaibi Station on the Canadian Pacific Railroad in Northern Ontario. The railway journey in this section of Ontario must have provided a sense of adventure as it had been opened only in 1885. There he and his assistant James Macoun (the botanist who had accompanied Low on his trip down the Rupert in 1885) and four other men that Low had hired for the summer, unloaded his boat. Low also engaged a large birchbark canoe and several Cree canoemen at the station to help him move all the supplies to James Bay. The expedition headed north across the height of land to the Missinaibi River, and began the 350-mile trip to Moose Factory at the southern tip of James Bay.⁶ Low and his crew hauled the boat across the 25 portages,⁷ including one that was two miles in length, making this a long and laborious trip. To cross the portages, the boat would have been winched or dragged on rollers, as it was too heavy to carry. Today people paddling down the Missinaibi in lightly loaded canoes take three weeks to go to Moose Factory. Low and his crew did the trip in the same amount of time with the sailboat plus food supplies for three months, arriving in Moose Factory on June 27 — an incredible feat!

Sailing from Moose Factory to lower James Bay, Low surveyed 15 of the larger islands,⁸ making a paced survey around each one and fixing its latitude with a sextant. Camps were made on the islands as the boat had no covered area for sleeping. Agoomski (now called Akimiski) Island, the largest one in James Bay, was found to be very low and swampy. The shallow, murky water and the barricades of boulders and sandbars, made sailing in these waters very tricky. On North Twin Island Low found a sloop wrecked in 1886 and a lifeboat from a ship not known to the Hudson's Bay Company, his finds attesting to the hazards of sailing in this area.

Sailing conditions in James Bay were difficult in an open boat. Fog or rain, or both, occurred on 35 days out of the 58 they were there. Bumping against rocks hidden in the treacherous waters, sometimes half a mile from shore, caused leaking and damage to the hull of the ship. The shallow water and frequent gales made the tides unpredictable. On August 8, Low records the effect of a moderate gale, “Here the ordinary rise of tide does not exceed five feet, yet after beaching the boat at 8 p.m., by midnight the water was twelve feet deep, showing a rise of at least seven feet above its ordinary level.”⁹ Low and his men, camped near the boat, must have had a very wet and miserable night.

Sailing boats were common on James Bay. This large vessel may have been operated by the Hudson's Bay Company when A.P. Low photographed it at Fort George in 1896. Courtesy of Natural Resources Canada, Geological Survey of Canada, photo GSC199529, A.P. Low.

Low recorded information about the various harbours on the east coast and their depths for shipping. Specifically, he obtained information on depths and locations of channels and sand bars, estimates of tides and the locations of deep water for docking. In the 1880s, the Canadian government was considering building a railway to a port on either James or Hudson bays.¹⁰ The key question revolved around the location of the best harbour. Low believed it to be at the mouth of the Big River (now La Grande Rivière), but thought the cost of building a railway there was prohibitive as large bridges would have to be constructed over the Rupert, Eastmain and other rivers.

Low made some interesting observations on this trip as part of his general inventory. The soil along the rivers of the south of James Bay “…appears to be good, and as the climate to the southward is probably favourable for the growth of cereals and root crops, nothing prevents future settlement in this region after the filling up of the north-west except that without an extensive system of drainage, the lands remote from the river will be found too wet for farming.”¹¹ Well, not all predictions come true, and A.P. Low was not a crop or soils specialist. Nevertheless, in Low's day, the Hudson's Bay Company fed their employees with milk, butter and cheese from cattle kept at Rupert House and Eastmain, and with root crops grown with success as far north as Fort George.

Unlike his view on farming, Low was well-qualified to make observations on surficial glacial deposits and on the rise of the land following the retreat of the continental ice sheets. Some of his conclusions disputed the theories¹²of his more senior colleague (and later, as acting director of the Geological Survey, his boss) Robert Bell. A.P. also was an astute naturalist, and noted that the rich berry crops on several of the islands attracted bears. He told a “story” of two encounters with bears on islands in James Bay to Alexander Ross, his assistant on his 1892 Eastmain trip, who recorded it:

…came across a bear some distance from shore. M. [James Macoun] had a tin pail in his hand, and asked the Chief [Low] to return to the canoe for a rifle. Objection being raised, he exclaimed, “Oh! Never mind me. You get the shooting irons, and I'll amuse his nibs.” A steady advance was now made upon the astonished monster, who just as steadily retreated before the waving of the pail and the gentle “shoo-shoo”-ing of the intrepid Jimmie. The Chief returning with his Winchester, Bruin soon came to grief.

Coming suddenly upon another bear, the Chief, in his surprise, hurled a book of micrometer tables at him. These he caught, tore to pieces, and ate. Afterwards the pieces were recovered, spread out, placed together, interpolations made, and a copy of the whole transferred to paper. This task seriously impaired the bear's digestion and delayed the survey two days.¹³

Polar bears provided some tense moments on this trip, although it was the bears who suffered in the end. In a presentation on the potential of big-game hunting to the Boone and Crockett Club of New York (a group of hunters that included the future U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt among its members),¹⁴ Low told of killing four polar bears in these islands.

To return to Ottawa, Low and his crew sailed to Moose Factory, where he stored his boat, canoed up the Missinaibi River and caught a train at Missinaibi Station. With his return in mid-September, Low's 1887 expedition was four months long, a short trip by his standards.

The next year, 1888, he returned to sail the boat from Moose Factory to Fort George, and from there into Hudson Bay to Richmond Gulf. In the following years, Low would use the same vessel to move men, provisions and canoes to and from his survey areas along the coast. The last record of its use was in 1896 when he sailed from Moose Factory to Richmond Gulf for his trip across Ungava to Fort Chimo. Although having served Low so well, the boat is never mentioned as having a name, and there is no confirmed photograph of it.

VOYAGES: UNGAVA BAY 1897 AND THE

EAST COAST OF HUDSON BAY 1898–1899

These voyages were all made in the same boat, a 35-foot yacht named the Alle, and covered most of the northern coast of what is now Quebec. During these years, Low became a sailor of Arctic waters, experienced in dealing with ice conditions in his fragile boat. Over a period of three years, he carried out the first accurate surveys of the shores of most of Ungava Bay and eastern Hudson Bay.

Low's 1897 voyage¹⁵ took advantage of the hiring of the sealing steamer Diana by the Department of Marine and Fisheries for its exploration of Hudson Strait during the summer of that year. This was the fourth of four government cruises into the area in the late 1800s, largely to determine the feasibility of using Hudson Strait as a sailing route between Britain and a soon-to-be established port in Hudson or James Bay.¹⁶ The Diana and her crew came from the United Kingdom colony of Newfoundland since the Canadian government did not have a suitable boat or trained crew available within Canada. According to Captain Wakeham, commander of the vessel, the purpose of the cruise was to test the earliest and latest dates for sailing through the Hudson Strait, in anticipation of commercial use of the route.¹⁷

The move from canoeing to yachting seems to have been due to the opportunity presented by the Diana's cruise, rather than any great priority for coastal mapping of the Ungava Bay area, although such mapping would benefit to any commercial vessels sailing that route. Low's assistant was his nephew, George Young,¹⁸ who had accompanied him on his canoe trip across Ungava in 1896. Three additional crew members, known only as D. Burgoyne, Jim Lantz and J. Greenland, completed the crew.

The Diana carried, on its very crowded deck, Low's yacht and a similarly dimensioned yacht for Robert Bell, who was on his way to survey the southern shore of Baffin Island, plus a 16-foot skiff for each yacht. This was prior to Bell's appointment as acting director of the Geological Survey in 1901. In March 1897, Low had gone to Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia, to supervise the construction of the two custom-built yachts. Each was 35 feet long, with a beam of 10 feet, a maximum three-and-half-foot draught, with a yawl rig and 800 square feet of sail and with two closed cabins for five crew, or for six in “close accommodation.” Cooking was done over two kerosene stoves in a tiny galley. However, planked with one-inch-thick pine, the hull was too soft to handle ice. The boat had no motor and had to seek the shelter of coves or bays during rough weather. It towed one of the 16-foot skiffs from the Diana for landing on the coast.¹⁹ This sailing boat was a real sea-going vessel and a great improvement over the open fishing boat used in 1887.

Leaving Isabella with their two surviving children, Estelle (now 11) and Reginald (now two), Low must have worried about her health. She had suffered from consumption for several years and her condition was becoming more serious. Low must have left with a great deal of uncertainty, not knowing if he would return a widower in the fall. Isabella's battle with consumption would steadily wear her down and finally lead to her death in less than a year later.

The Diana sailed from Halifax in early June. Ice conditions were such that it was not until July 16 that she reached Douglas Harbour on the south shore of Hudson Strait, the starting point for the trip. This harbour is a deep valley, cut into the high barren hills that drop almost straight into the water. Upon dropping the yacht into the water, Low christened it the Alle “after the hardy little auk.”²⁰ Launching and loading the ship was complicated by large pans of ice which kept bashing into the yacht.

There are no direct accounts of what life was like on the Alle. But with its short keel, the boat must have rolled considerably and been difficult to tack. The five men slept crammed inside small sleeping quarters, made even more crowded by the two-month supply of food stored on board. Food was likely the same type of rations as Low used on his canoe trips — mostly salt pork and flour, but with more canned goods, supplemented by game and fish where possible. Clothing and blankets (they didn't use sleeping bags) were made of wool. It was damp within the cabins from both the wet weather and the many leaks caused by the yacht's frequent collisions with ice and rocks. The only heat source was the two kerosene stoves. Inside the cabin, the air was thick with the odours from drying woollen clothes and from the people who wore them, combined with fumes from the stoves, the large barrel of kerosene and the rack of meat from recently caught caribou or geese. When the crew lit up their pipes, the dank air inside the cramped cabins was stifling.²¹ Artificial light was from kerosene lanterns, a cut above the candles used on the canoe trips, but probably not much used in the very long daylight of the northern summer.

During the next six weeks, Low coasted along the shore of Ungava Bay wherever the ubiquitous ice and shoals permitted, landing at various spots to examine the geology and to climb prominent hills in order to sketch the shoreline. Sailing was hindered by the lack of accurate maps, by headwinds which threatened to jam the Alle against the rocks, by the often large tides which would leave the Alle stranded, and by very shallow bottoms covered with boulders which often forced the Alle to stay miles from shore. The shore, if they could reach it, was perfect for geological inspection — almost barren, mostly exposed bedrock, with little vegetation and no trees to get in the way of the view.

George Young kept track of distance sailed by using a log,²² and of direction by magnetic compass bearing, supported by observations of the sun through use of a sextant to determine bearings and latitude. Interestingly, even though a sextant can also be used to estimate longitude, for some reason Low did not determine longitudes on any of his trips. The use of these tools led to the first accurate map of 650 miles (1046 km) of shoreline.

George Albert Young, reputedly the nephew of A.P. Low. He spent five survey seasons with Low. Courtesy of Natural Resources Canada, Geological Survey of Canada, photo KGS 2369-H.

During the first two weeks of the expedition, ice was a constant problem as the crew coasted east on the southern shore of Hudson Strait between Douglas Harbour and Cape Hope's Advance. The Alle was held in Douglas Harbour for four days, trapped by the ice blown in from the open strait. During this time, several walks were made to the top of the hills surrounding the harbour, the highest of which Low estimated to be 2000 feet and which gave magnificent views of the rolling, barren land. Once the harbour was clear of ice, the Alle set course to the east, passing the “Maiden's Paps” (now just “Maiden's”) islands, where they met a group of five Inuit families in Fisher Bay.

The Inuit were hunting for beluga whales and seals. Dressed in caribou skin clothing and living in tents made from caribou skins, their guns, ammunition and a few metal implements were the only products of modern civilization that these people required. And tobacco. In return for taking some photos, Low gave “…a small present of tobacco to each man, woman and child. It was curious to see a mother take a short black pipe, filled with rank, black tobacco, out of her mouth and pass it backwards to the small child in her hood; the youngster evidently relished it, as there was always a cry when the mother resumed her own smoke.”²³

Leaving the Inuit happily smoking, the Alle continued along the coast of Ungava Bay. Once it was trapped by ice for seven days. The huge tides of Ungava Bay made for some interesting sailing. In Whitley Bay, Low ran the Alle down rapids caused by the tidal current flowing into the bay. Entering Payne Bay the Alle ran rapids in two directions, first going inland with the current on a rising high tide. Later in the day, on a falling tide, the same stretch of river was run again, but this time in the opposite direction, back to Ungava Bay. Shooting these rapids twice in a day, in opposite directions and going downstream both times (Low estimated a fall of six feet in 200 yards) in a 35-foot sailboat must have been exciting.

The large tides on the western shore of Ungava Bay provided additional hazards. Low anchored the Alle in 42 feet of water and a few hours later was grounded by the receding tide.²⁴ On another occasion, the Alle was grounded deliberately at high tide at the head of a wide shallow bay in order to avoid the pounding of the waves in an anticipated storm. When the tide was out, the Alle was three miles inland, rocky ridges with mud flats and boulders of all sizes strewn about between the ship and the shore.

Farther south, very strong currents which ripped between the islands “like a mill-race,” prevented the Alle from entering Hope's Advance Bay. They spent the night in an exposed position during which time it snowed six inches (August 22).²⁵ Continuing south, they passed the mouth of Leaf River without entering it. The water was so shallow that even the Alle with its three-and-a-half foot draft had to stay four miles from shore. Many small islands in the area around Leaf River made navigation confusing. Two days later they finally sailed into the Koksoak River to reach the HBC post at Fort Chimo. Low had visited the post in 1893 and 1896. There they took a week to repair the yacht, and then continued east along the coast to the Hudson's Bay Company posts at Whale River and George River.

Returning to Fort Chimo, Low had the Alle demasted, and loaded on board the HBC steamer Erik for transport to the HBC post at Nachvak on the Labrador coast, where the Alle was stored for the winter. Nachvak was the only nearby post where the HBC steamer would call early in the next sailing season, allowing access to the Alle for another voyage just after the ice was out. This would not be possible had the yacht been stored at Fort Chimo, as the steamer did not arrive there until late August. Low and his crew caught the Diana when it returned to Fort Chimo, returned to St. John's, then to Halifax and reached Ottawa on October 2.

Low spent the winter of 1897–98 writing his report of the trip and, as always, making preparations for the coming season. He wrote about the iron ore deposits he had found on the west coast of Ungava Bay and linked them to the deposits he had seen on the upper Hamilton and Caniapiscau rivers during his trip of 1893–94, and expanded his theories about the continental ice sheet which had once covered the Quebec-Labrador peninsula. He now believed this mass had flowed radially towards all the coasts to the sea from a central area.

Winter was marred by Low's increasing preoccupation with Isabella's continuing decline due to consumption and, ultimately, her death on April 18,1898. Low makes no mention of this in his official publications, and no personal letters have been found. Certainly, he and his two children, Estelle, now 12, and Reginald, nearly three, received much support from his wife's family. Isabella's unmarried sister Jessie and her father both shared the household. Whatever his personal feelings were, Low prepared to leave for the coming field season as usual, scarcely five months after his wife's passing. He planned to be absent from Ottawa for over a year, during which time he could expect to receive letters only twice. His newly motherless children would be fatherless as well for the first 18 months after losing their mother.

EAST COAST OF HUDSON BAY 1898–99

Low's task was to map and geologically reconnoitre the east coast of Hudson Bay from its northeastern tip to the southern end of James Bay, and to finish his 1887 survey of the islands of lower James Bay. This work could not be completed in one season and he planned to spend the winter at the HBC post at Great Whale River, where he would make use of his time there by taking a winter trip to map the interior. The following summer he then would finish his survey to the south end of James Bay. There were no reliable accounts of the interior terrain or geology north of the Big River (now La Grande Rivière) except for his 1896 description of the route from Richmond Gulf to Fort Chimo. His plan was to take the Alle from storage at the HBC post at Nachvak with sufficient supplies for the summer season, and sail to the post at Great Whale River. Since the HBC post would not have enough food to feed him and his crew or to supply them for the following summer's cruise, he would be resupplied with foods and materials that he had pre-arranged to be sent from Ottawa. These supplies left the city by train, then transported by canoe down the Missinaibi River and by HBC schooner from Moose Factory to Great Whale.

In preparation, Low looked for existing maps of the coast he was to survey. While the general outline of Hudson Bay had been mapped by the British Admiralty in 1853, the details were few. One of the most complete maps of the east coast of the northern part of Hudson Bay was that prepared by Robert Bell of the Geological Survey (scale of one inch equals four miles) based on his exploration, in 1877–78, from Portland Promontory to Great Whale River. Low had his own survey of the islands and the east coastline of James Bay developed from his expeditions in 1887 and 1888. This is not to mean that this area was unknown land and waters — far from it. The Hudson's Bay Company had been sailing in these waters, delivering cargo and moving people for almost two centuries. Its sailors and pilots had good personal knowledge of the region, particularly south of Richmond Gulf. Inuit and Cree travellers were also well-acquainted with the areas of the coast and the interior where they lived. However, this information was almost all held personally and had not found its way into detailed maps. Low would bring consistent, careful measurements and a geological eye and, more importantly, once published the information and maps would become widely available.

The HBC supply vessel Erik in 1898 in Nachvak Harbour, Labrador, picking up A.P. Law's yacht, the Alle. Courtesy of Natural Resources Canada, Geological Survey of Canada, photo GSC 199570, A.P. Low.