September 3 Beechey Island and Radstock Bay

 

Fossicking among the graves and ruins at Radstock Bay

For non-Inuit people, Beechey Island is significant as the gravesite of three seamen from the Franklin expedition and also the site of the ruins of Northumberland House built by sailors who came in search of Franklin, his ship and men. Macabre and yet fascinating for the history buffs on board.  It signifies a much more extensive tragic loss of life than I understood. Interesting also is that Roald Amundsen landed at here in 1903 during the first successful voyage to fully transit the Northwest Passage by ship. Although the land was rather spectacular, Lindsay and I didn’t go ashore. He was nursing some injuries and I watched from the balcony of our cabin as I couldn’t get excited by the futility of what the site represented.

Ari ancient landscape

This lone polar bear was spotted from the dining room at lunch time 

After lunch I went out in the Citizen Science zodiac. We were to have landed to explore on shore, but a bear was sighted and of course that engendered a lot of excitement.  As a result, the afternoon was zodiac cruising only. The scenery was rather spectacular with dramatic rock formations. Towering cliffs of Caswall Tower dwarfed the surrounding plains where evidently the stone remains of Inuit camps spread inland from the beach. Polar bears now occupy those ancient camps.  We saw a number of those polar bears wandering alone or as Mum and bub duos. I think our presence made them uneasy as we tended to linger a little too long (in my opinion).

Very ancient eroded landscape around Caswall Tower

Caswall Tower is a pretty impressive isolated tor. A scientist spent a season camped on the top of this towering monolith observing polar bears. It is fairly inhospitable. 

Bear watching

 Caswall Tower 

A wonderful nesting place for birds 

The arid landscape contrasted amazingly with the occasional glacier and iceberg and the blue of the water. Quite stunning. These are Palaeozoic rocks and shales dating back 300-600 million years. It looks inhospitable yet it supports life.  I find it starkly beautiful.

People are so desperate to see bears that activities focus on that to the exclusion of all else which is a pity given the unique nature of the land we were traveling through – but majority rules. We eventually spotted a mum and bub snuggled up together halfway up a hill and we and the rest of the zodiacs spent a couple of hours just looking and trying to sneak up – as if we were not obvious! They would have definitely smelt us even if they didn't spot us which is unlikely.  It felt a bit like stalking but  ....... 

Such a beautiful bay

The bear-seeking cluster

The best my iPhone could do - 2 white blobs circled 

We ended up not taking any science measurements as we had spent so much time watching the bears basically cuddling.  But a few people got some excellent photo!. It was bitterly cold and the ride back to the ship about 9 Km through very choppy waters, was not pleasant and pretty rough on the body. The trip had been a little foolhardy but it is one of those situations where you think 'just a little further and we might see it' and then just a little bit further .... And we didn't take much notice of the stunning ancient landscape wrapping around us. Oh well!