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George E. Tyson
Captain George Emory Tyson spent a few days partying on an abandoned ship, a few months on an ice floe and many years in the Arctic. He was born in 1829 and grew up mostly in New York City, where he heard stories of Arctic explorers and dreamed of going to sea. When he was 22 years old, he quit his job in an iron foundry and signed on with the Arctic whaling ship McLellan.
During this voyage, he volunteered along with 11 other crew members to spend the winter in Cumberland Sound. It was the first time Qallunaat whalers had deliberately overwintered there. When Tyson got back to New York, his friends urged him to stay, and he resumed his old factory job. But, as he wrote, he very soon grew tired of it, and again longed for the sea. He was back on an Arctic whaling ship again in 1855. This time, he and his fellow crew members discovered an abandoned British ship, the Resolute, drifting in the pack ice. Tyson was among the first to walk over to it, and he and the other whalers enjoyed consuming the provisions on board, fake-duelling with British swords and dressing up in the uniforms of British officers.
Soon Tyson would become an officer himself. Like most hard-working, white, English-speaking American men who were willing to go on more than one whaling voyage, Tyson rose quickly through the ranks. By 1860, he was a whaling captain. He spent most of that decade in Cumberland Sound and Hudson's Bay. In 1871, the United States government paid him to go on Charles Francis Hall's disastrous expedition to the North Pole. Nineteen expedition members, including Tyson, Ipiirvik and Taqulittuq, were marooned on an ice floe for six and a half months. They were finally rescued by a sealing ship off the coast of Labrador nearly 3,000 kilometres from their starting point off the coast of Greenland. Thanks to the skills and generosity of the two Inuit families on the floe, everyone survived.
Tyson returned to Cumberland Sound on the Florence in 1877. He was searching for Inuit to relocate to northern Ellesmere Island as part of an American scheme to establish a colony there. He was also supposed to offset costs by hunting whales. Tyson refused to let his Qallunaat crew leave the ship for long periods unless they had Inuit clothing, and he supplied over 20 Inuit with American food in exchange for fresh country food. He recognized his reliance on Inuit, writing, "We have to depend on the Esquimaux for aidif it was not for themI could accomplish but very little here". When the ice broke up, Tyson somehow convinced 15 Inuit men, women and children to sail with him to Greenland and then to Ellesmere Island. He did not list all their names, but he referred to five of them as Ete-tun, Nep-e-ken, O-cas-e-ak-ju, Chummy and A-lo-kee. When the Florence arrived in Greenland, Tyson learned that his American employers had abandoned the colony project. He returned to Cumberland Sound and dropped the Inuit off at Naujaqtalik, offering them a whaleboat, four guns, ammunition, clothing, bread, molasses, a tent and two pairs of binoculars for their trouble.
Tyson never went to sea again. He published two books about his experiences, but neither of them sold well. His family fell on hard times, and he took a job with the Navy Department in Washington, DC. He developed heart disease and died at home in 1906.
NOTES :
Blake, ed., Arctic Experiences, 91.
Howgate, ed., The Cruise of the Florence, 122.