Download The SS Baychimo: The History and Mystery of the Famous Arctic Ghost Ship AudioBook Free
By the early generations of the 20th century, the hair trade experienced tapered off some from its heyday in the 19th century, but it still proven profitable enough for hunters to reside for months at the same time in remote parts of Alaska. Their only contact with the exterior world consisted of the company ships that came up to buy their furs and bring them provides. Among these vessels was the machine Baychimo, a Hudson's Bay Company dispatch that plied the treacherous waters off Alaska, Arctic Canada, and Siberia for quite some time, supplying remote outposts of Inuit and Anglo trappers and delivering back their capture of furs. Her sailors were experts at handling Arctic waters, but one year the weather proven too much on their behalf. In October of 1931, the Baychimo was carrying $1 million in furs for the Hudson's Bay Company when it was trapped by early on winter pack snow in the Beaufort Sea. Ice is a robust force of characteristics that can crush even the strongest of ships, therefore the captain experienced no choice but to order his staff of 14 men to unload all equipment essential for their success and get away from the Baychimo. The cargo was too valuable to give up, however, so they retrieved lumber from the ship's carpentry stores with which to build a small house on the close by snow. The captain hoped the snow would transfer and free his vessel, of which point they might use one of the lifeboats to row back to the Baychimo and vapor back home. In the worst-case scenario, they would have to spend the winter on the snow and wait for spring thaw. They wouldn't be the first Arctic staff to have done that. The Hudson's Bay Company airlifted out part of the crew, as the captain and left over sailors hunkered down for a long wait, hoping the snow would break apart soon. Nature experienced other ideas.
