Our first stop after crossing Baffin Bay is Pond Inlet around 5:00 p.m. This is a town of approximately 1300 people; 95% are Inuit. We visit their Co-op store and attend a short concert organized just for us in their Cultural Centre. We reciprocate by singing a song in Intituit that Aaju, one of our lecturers, taught us. Our trip continues down Lancaster Sound with a stop on Devon Island to see the abandoned RCMP barracks where they had personnel stationed between mid-1920's and mid-1960's; a horrific hardship post where no other people lived. Thank goodness it was finally closed down.
While hiking on Devon Island, we see a group of muskox, and later an Arctic hare. Then while on a cruise in Crocker Bay amid icebergs, we come across ring and harp seals bobbing in and out of the water.It is quite exciting to see these northern creatures. The Clipper Adventurer continues west until we anchor just off Beechey Island, and here we go ashore to see the graves of three of Sir John Franklin's men. It is here just off this island that Sir John Franklin and 129 men and their ships, Terror and Erebus, spent the winter of 1845-46. During that time, three of the sailors died and were buried on Beechey Island. It is known that the ships had continued on to William Island, but no trace of the ships has ever been found.
We have a little extra adventure here when the crew on our ship informs our leaders that a polar bear is heading our way though he is still four km away. There is a big scurry for the Zodiacs as they ferry us back to the ship. By the time the last load is carried to the ship,the bear was less than a km away; he was traveling fast. We watched as he sniffed around the Zodiac loading area, then up around the graves. Our ship continued on sailing down Peel Sound.
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