The Karluk. a California-built brigantine, attempted an ill-fated Arctic expedition from Esquimalt i...

1. Karluk: Victoria's ill-fated Arctic expedition

2. The Karluk. a California-built brigantine, attempted an ill-fated Arctic expedition from Esquimalt in
June 1913.
-- image credit: Maritime Museum of B.C.
With the last few months of interest in the story of the Franklin Expedition, my thoughts turned to
another ill-fated Arctic expedition, which has a direct connection not only with Victoria, but with the
Maritime Museum of B.C.
In our collection we have a few bits and pieces, including an oar, from a former whaling vessel called
the Karluk.
In 1913 this already worn ship embarked upon a doomed journey that would captivate the Canadian
public for more than a year.
The Karluk had begun life in 1884 as a
California-built brigantine designed for
fishing, but was converted into a whaler a
decade later. Her bows and sides were
covered with two-inch ironwood
sheathing in this conversion, and she
completed 14 successful whaling trips.
She was not a large vessel, nor
particularly suited for extreme
conditions. Only 321 gross tons, and 39
metres in length, Karluk was powered by
sail and a coal-fed steam engine of only
150 horsepower.
When she was purchased by a strangely charismatic explorer called Vilhjalmur Stefansson in 1913
for $10,000 there was immediate rumor that she was unfit for the job she had been assigned, for
Stefansson intended to take this 30-year old vessel on a perilous journey into the most inhospitable
of Canadian environments: the Arctic.