MISSING BAYCHIMO

Evening Post, Issue 11, 13 July 1936, Page 7

MISSING BAYCHIMO

GHOST SHIP OF ARCTIC

NO TRACE FOR TWO YEARS

(From "The Post's" Representative.) VANCOUVER, June 17. The ghost ship of the Arctic, the Hudson Bay Company's vessel, Baychimo (pronounced "Bay-shimaw".), has not appeared since 1933, two years after she was caught in the ice near Point Barrow, homeward bound Vto Vancouver, after delivering supplies to posts in the Western Arctic, and loading furs. Speculation is rife as to whether she has foundered, but many who come and go in the Silent Placed believe she will reappear, as she did" several times, inextricably fastened in the ice. When the vessel caught, west of Barrow, her crew, composed mainly of Scots from Vancouver, produced a football and erected goal posts on the smooth, new ice. During the game, their gaze wandered frequently to the x funnel, hoping to see smoke streaking westward, under the beat of an offshore wind. Eskimos, with dog teams, appeared, shaking their heads over chances of liberation. After tea, on October 8, while a football game was in progress, a black line appeared in the middle of the field. The ice pack commenced to push towards the beach. Believing the ship would cave in, the players scrambled aboard, put together a few belongings, and got ashore across the ice. Meantime, wireless messages were sent to London and Winnipeg, and aeroplanes were commissioned from Nome, six hundred miles to the south. It was the dreaded "in-between" season for flying in the Arctic, when machines await a hard freezeup to change from pontoons to skis. Judge of the sailors' surprise ' when, on October- 15; two I aeroplanes made a perfect landing on {the icefield on wheels. The pilots, /Victor Ross and .Hans Mirow, wrote a. new chapter of Arctic history in ■ several' subsequent flights, bringing out traders, officers, and ,'crew, and fur >_ cargo, valued at over'l,ooo,ooo. dollars. \ The airport, at Nome..was bare of snow. The two machines shuttled back and forth over precipitous mountains, open sea, and '• snow-covered barrens. Passengers vahd-crew were able to. catch the last southbound steamer before navigation. closed; but not before the airmen encountered blizzards and forced landings; ' Captain Cornwell and fourteen men stayed by the Baychimo. r_hey built a makeshift cabin on the beach with hatch covers, tarpaulins, and lumber torn from the lining of the vessel, and denned up for five months with the cheerfulness of British sailors" in adversity. In November came a severe three-day gale. * No one dared go outdoors. When it subsided, there was no sign of the Baychimo. Later, an- Eskimo runner reported her drifting north, safely embedded in the centre of a big ice-pan. So she drifted into the long Arctic night. In the following spring the airmen took Captain Cornwell and his men to the railhead in the Alaska interio-