whats your fav historical boat and why ??:)

Hello 🙂 I'm so glad you've asked this question and I promise to be extremely normal about it 🙂

I can find something to love in almost every polar and/or nautical expedition, but nothing has captured my attention and my heart like the Karluk, the flagship of the Canadian Arctic Expedition.

The ship herself was a disaster. Built in 1884 as a fishing vessel, she was repurposed as a whaler in 1892, then acquired by Stefansson in 1913 for the bargain bin price of $10,000. The Karluk was uniquely unsuited for polar exploration-- she was old, rickety, and had what chief engineer John Munro described as a "coffee pot of an engine" that was so ineffective that icebreaking was out of the question. Captain Bartlett almost refused to take her north, but in the end, he acceded to Stefansson's demands. He would come to regret this decision.

In the least surprising turn of events ever, the Karluk became trapped in the pack only a month into the voyage, hundreds of miles from her destination. She remained there until she succumbed to the pressure of the ice and sank five months later, setting the stage for one of the most unbelievable survival stories in the history of polar exploration.

Why the Karluk? For me, it's that the ship was such a perfect metaphor for the expedition itself, which is not always the case! For example-- Terra Nova was overloaded and leaked like a sieve, but the expedition she supported was meticulously planned. Endurance could not withstand the pressure of the pack, but even so, her entire crew survived. The Karluk, though? A nightmare ship with a nightmare (derogatory) leader and a nightmare (affectionate) crew for a nightmare expedition. No part of this should have worked, and it's a miracle that anyone made it home. If not for the selfless actions and basic human decency of a select few crew members and the kindness and generosity of the Indigenous peoples of the Arctic, no one would ever know what happened to them.

Stefansson was simply the worst leader imaginable for a venture like this. He was smug, aloof, selfish, willing to play games with the lives of his men, and hopelessly out of his depth. He failed to adequately provision the expedition, a decision that would prove fatal. The crew he hired were a mix of polar veterans with substance abuse and/or ego problems, Indigenous people (including a family with 2 small children), untested men recruited off the docks, and inexperienced scientists not coping well with the rigors of exploration, among others. I need you to understand that these are my boys and I love them, but they were a MESS. The atmosphere on the Karluk and in the subsequent camps was a toxic sludge of fear and anger and paranoia and egos. No one here was elevated by their suffering, there was no code of honor keeping the men in line, and there were painfully few moral leaders setting examples for the others. With apologies to The Terror, survival was a nasty piece of business. To top it all off, Stefansson abandoned the Karluk and her crew after the ship became frozen in. He went on a "hunting trip" but conveniently failed to return. Leadership!

Hopefully this helps to explain why the Karluk is a perfect metaphor for this part of the Canadian Arctic Expedition. Only an old, crumbling whaler with a tiny, ineffective engine could have shepherded this disaster team to the shores of Wrangel Island. The Karluk was not the ship they needed, but she was the ship they had, and even Captain Bartlett grieved as she sank.

For more information, I highly recommend checking out The Ice Master by Jennifer Niven and Empire of Ice and Stone by Buddy Levy. I also Karlukpost regularly, and you can find my screeching in the Karluk tag.

I hope this answered your question, thanks for a fun ask! ❤️

Just a good snapshot on what Turkic people are, and why I keep saying Turkic does not equal Turkish.

Also, if you want to get into the whole "Mamluk Kipchaks who ended up ruling over countries where they were sold as slaves", just Google "Sultan Beibarys".

Spoiler: a Kipchak boy sold as a slave in Egypt, ends up ruling it.

Cheers.

Abdürreşit C. Karluk: Kazakistan ve Özbekistan’ın Çin lehine oyu, Doğu Türkistanlıları derinden yaraladı

Prof. Dr. Abdürreşit Celil Karluk: "BM'deki Uygurlarla ilgili oylama sonucu, Kandaşlık ve Dindaşlık gibi değerlerin artık anlamsız boş şeylere dönüştüğünü daha açık bir şekilde gösteriyor."

Prof. Dr. Abdürreşit Celil Karluk: “BM’deki Uygurlarla ilgili oylama sonucu, Kandaşlık ve Dindaşlık gibi değerlerin artık anlamsız boş şeylere dönüştüğünü daha açık bir şekilde gösteriyor.” Ankara Hacı Bayram Veli Üniversitesi Uluslararası İlişkiler Bölümü Öğretim Üyesi Prof. Dr. Abdürreşit Celil Karluk, Birleşmiş Milletler İnsan Hakları Konseyinde Uygurların durumunun tartışılması talebine…

View On WordPress

personally i think it's pretty cool how quora has just automated its users posting factual inaccuracies & relegated it to a bot now

On January 11, 1914, the flagship of the Canadian Arctic Expedition, HMCS Karluk, a brigantine - ex whaler (shown here in 1913), was crushed by ice north of Siberia. January 1914 the ship was crushed and sunk. In the ensuing months, the crew and expedition staff struggled to survive, first on the ice and later on the shores of Wrangel Island. In all, eleven men died before rescue - 14 survived. 

oof um... modern grimm and law doing crazy little loops inside my head

wait is this why the guy from brother bear was named that

A fox catches a salmon from Karluk Lake. Kodiak Island, Alaska, 2018.

In my ongoing quest to make all of you read about my pet expedition the Karluk, I have assembled this collection of relevant images and presented them without context. Intrigued? You should be! Pick up a copy of The Ice Master or Empire of Ice and Stone and learn the whole story! 😘

Any favourite differences between typical Arctic expeditions versus typical Antarctic expeditions?

well there are a few big ones! arctic expeditions could expect to spend most of their time either onboard their ship (if they were trying to traverse the passage), moving around on land (if they were mapping coastlines), or sledging on sea-ice. so they didn't build home-base huts for overwintering like antarctic expeditions often did. this was one of the giveaways when amundsen switched from going north to going south in 1910—he had his carpenter assemble a prefabricated hut to take with them, which was confusing as that was something you absolutely wouldn't do if you were headed north.

also in the north there are obviously people there! many expeditions, including amundsen's, cook's, peary's, and stefansson's, hired and worked with indigenous people as guides, hunters, and translators. inuit hunters often brought their wives and children with them as conditions of employment—that's how you get entire families involved in disasters like the polaris and the karluk. meanwhile women didn't arrive in antarctica until the 1930s.

and finally there is YE CLASSIC DIFFERENCE: the arctic has bears, the antarctic does not! (conversely it has penguins, while the arctic has no penguins.) many people including various heads of state could not get their heads around this and would ask shackleton if he had shot any bears in antarctica. womp womp

Okay, so, I super don't have time to do this (I don't think I can argue that it's a valid thesis project for my Arctic and Northern Studies MA, tragically). But imagine:

Dracula Daily-style reading group for polar exploration journals, so we read the first-person accounts of different expeditions. Each one usually takes years, so the real-time element would convey the boredom and/or horror of the passage of time. Ideally this project would include the following:

Multiple journals from the same expedition, to show different perspectives (especially for ones where the parties separated, as with the Winter Journey)

Journals from expeditions where the goals/geography/other specifics overlap

Journals from expeditions with no overlap except for the time they happened, to show what is happening in different regions and how closely everything fits together

Imagine reading about the Jeanette and then later reading about the Karluk crew as they read about the Jeanette while trapped in the same ice drift. Horrifying. Exquisite. What a garbage fire this whole period was.

CATCH UP ｡*･♡;

tagged by @galedekarios 🖤

LAST SONG: Lovici - Ravn

CURRENTLY WATCHING: rewatching Call the Midwife now that I have access to BritBox 🖤

THREE SHIPS: HMCS Karluk, HMS Terror, and the Mary Rose. (Non-cheeky answer: Edward Little/Thomas Jopson, Alastor/Lucifer Morningstar, Javert/Valjean.)

FAVOURITE COLOUR: lavender c: which sadly wasn't a font colour option.

CURRENTLY READING: The Peasant King, by Tessa Afshar

CURRENTLY CONSUMING: passionfruit green tea with the little popping strawberry bobas.

FIRST SHIP: oh. Embarrassing. Atem/Yuugi, from Yu-Gi-Oh!, because I was an ancient Egypt fanatic from the age of five and when I was old enough to get into fandom and I realised YGO! had an ancient Egyptian arc, I was all for it.

PLACE OF BIRTH: the Great White North c:

CURRENT LOCATION: the Great Thawing North :c we're finally above zero after a week of below -20, but now everything is slush.

LAST MOVIE: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: trying very hard to finish a second fic for my latest obsession, though I'm also currently working on four of them concurrently (all for the same ship).

tagging: @herawell @mihrsuri @dobranocka @kirtlandswarbler @unholymilf @ltwilliammowett @jamesclarkross @kasugaya @theangryhistoriananna @cuthalions @valyrianpoem @penthesileas, and whoever else wishes to partake! 🖤

The Canadian Arctic Expedition team, 1913. The group initially met with disaster -- their main ship, the Karluk, was crushed in the ice, and 11 men died. Over the course of five years, they did discover some new land unknown even to the area's indigenous inhabitants.

{WHF} {Ko-Fi} {Medium}