{"id":5839,"date":"2012-08-20T15:31:00","date_gmt":"2012-08-20T15:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/one-ocean-expeditions-northwest-passage-beechey-island\/"},"modified":"2012-08-20T15:31:00","modified_gmt":"2012-08-20T15:31:00","slug":"one-ocean-expeditions-northwest-passage-beechey-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/2012\/08\/one-ocean-expeditions-northwest-passage-beechey-island\/","title":{"rendered":"One Ocean Expeditions – Northwest Passage – Beechey Island"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n

Ship: M\/V Akademik Ioffe
Operator: One Ocean Expeditions
www.OneOceanExpeditions.com<\/a>
Itinerary: Northwest Passage 12-26 August 2012 <\/p>\n

Date: Mon 20 August 2012. Temp: 3\u00b0C
Location: Beechey Island, Nunavut, Canada.
74deg 42.3’N, 091deg 45.8’W
Distance travelled: 1475NM <\/p>\n

Ioffe landed here just after breakfast and we spent some time walking into a stiff and chilly breeze pondering the fate of the many men who came here on such a fruitless search and of those who never saw home again. <\/p>\n

Forlorn Beechey Island is the last resting place for three of Franklin’s men who died in early 1846 during the expedition’s first winter as they camped on this desolate shore. A fourth grave was added ten years later when one of the men from the search vessel, Investigator, died. Beechey Island is technically not really an island as a sandy spit joins it to the much larger Devon Island on the northern perimeter of Lancaster Sound. <\/p>\n

Beechey has become something of a shrine for mariners and adventurers with many makeshift cairns and memorials added over the years. Ray, one of our expedition crew, found a marker left by his shipmates aboard HMCS Labrador in 1956 when they called here during a cold war submarine patrol. There are also the remains of a winter refuge hut imperiously dubbed ‘Cumberland House’ built in 1852 from timber salvaged from a wreck. It served for 50 years until it too finally succumbed to the fierce elements of Lancaster Sound, leaving scattered tins, wood, nails and assorted debris as a memento to man’s struggle against the forces of nature. <\/p>\n

The weather holds while we’re ashore (just), but the afternoon’s Zodiac tours are erased when a nasty bit of wind and sleet blows up. Ioffe heads due south into Prince Leopold Inlet toward the final link in the tortuous Northwest Passage. <\/p>\n

Image: The anguished face of John Torrington frozen in time. The 20 year old from Franklin’s expedition was buried in January 1846 and Ray McMahon examines a cairn laid by his navy shipmates in 1956. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ship: M\/V Akademik Ioffe Operator: One Ocean Expeditions www.OneOceanExpeditions.com Itinerary: Northwest Passage 12-26 August 2012 Date: Mon 20 August 2012. Temp: 3\u00b0C Location: Beechey Island, Nunavut, Canada. 74deg 42.3’N, 091deg 45.8’W Distance travelled: 1475NM Ioffe landed here just after breakfast and we spent some time walking into a stiff and chilly breeze pondering the fate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[362],"class_list":["post-5839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-one-ocean"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5839\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}