Gjøa: The Little Ship That Conquered the Arctic

On October 19, 1906, a modest 70-foot sailing vessel slipped into San Francisco Bay. Compared with the large steamships and ocean-going vessels that crowded the harbour, she appeared unremarkable. Yet the small ship had attracted a small crowd that day, for she had just accomplished one of the greatest feats in the history of exploration.

The vessel was Gjøa, and aboard her were the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and six companions. After a voyage lasting more than three years through the frozen waterways of the Canadian Arctic, they had become the first people to successfully navigate the Northwest Passage—a route that generations of explorers had sought, and many had died trying to find.

Roald Amundsen arrives at Nome aboard Gjøa, dated 31 August 1906. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

The Northwest Passage is the sea route between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through the maze of islands and ice-choked channels of the Canadian Arctic. Such a route promised a shorter path to the riches of Asia, sparing ships the long and dangerous voyage around South America or Africa.

The search for the passage became one of the greatest quests in the history of exploration. Beginning in the sixteenth century, expeditions led by men such as Martin Frobisher, John Davis, Henry Hudson, and later William Edward Parry pushed ever deeper into the Arctic. They mapped vast stretches of previously unknown coastline but were repeatedly defeated by sea ice, brutal winters, scurvy, and starvation. Ships became trapped for months or even years, and many crews never returned.

The most famous and tragic of all these ventures was the 1845 expedition of John Franklin. Commanding the ships HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, Franklin sailed from England with 129 officers and men, intending to complete the final unexplored section of the passage. The expedition vanished without a trace. Over the following decades, numerous search parties scoured the Arctic, uncovering only scattered clues. Evidence eventually revealed that the ships had become trapped in ice, Franklin had died early in the expedition, and the surviving crew had abandoned the vessels in a desperate attempt to reach safety on foot. None survived.

"The Sea of Ice", a painting by Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) depicting the artist's interpretation of an Arctic landscape, with a shipwreck half-buried in the ice.

Ironically, the many searches launched to find Franklin contributed enormously to geographical knowledge of the Arctic and brought explorers closer than ever to solving the riddle of the Northwest Passage. The quest finally ended in 1903–1906 when the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen successfully navigated the passage aboard the small vessel Gjøa, accomplishing what generations of explorers had sought for more than three centuries.

With a net tonnage of just 47 tons, Gjøa was considerably smaller than the vessels typically employed for Arctic exploration. The square-sterned sloop had been built in 1871, the same year that Roald Amundsen was born. Originally a humble fishing boat, she was named after the wife of her owner. In 1901, Amundsen purchased the vessel and began preparing her for a voyage across the top of the world, from Greenland to the Bering Strait, while also hoping to observe any movement of the magnetic North Pole along the way.

The Gjøa’s smaller size suited him because Amundsen intended to live off the limited resources of the land and sea through which he was to travel, and reasoned that the land could not sustain a larger crew. Her shallow draught would also allow her to traverse the shoals of the Arctic straits. Perhaps most importantly, the ageing ship was all that Amundsen (who was financing his expedition largely by spending his inheritance) could afford.

At the time, Amundsen had little experience sailing in Arctic waters. Before venturing into the polar ice, he therefore decided to undertake a training expedition. He enlisted Hans Christian Johannsen, Gjøa's former owner, along with a small crew, and sailed from Tromsø in April 1901. The next five months were spent sealing among the pack ice of the Barents Sea. When they returned to Tromsø in September, Amundsen immediately began addressing the shortcomings that the voyage had revealed.

Among the improvements was the installation of a small 13-horsepower paraffin engine, linked to a winch, which could be used in calm conditions and greatly eased the handling of the vessel. Much of the following winter was devoted to strengthening Gjøa's ice sheathing, as Amundsen expected that she would spend several winters imprisoned in the Arctic ice.

In the spring of 1902, with Gjøa's refit finally complete, Amundsen sailed her to Christiania (now Oslo), Norway's capital. At the time, Norway remained united with Sweden, and a wave of nationalism was sweeping the country. Amundsen hoped to harness this patriotic fervour to secure the financial backing needed to meet the expedition's escalating costs. The effort proved difficult, requiring months of negotiation and fundraising. Ultimately, however, he succeeded, aided in part by a contribution from King Oscar II of Sweden. By the time Amundsen and his men returned from their voyage, Norway had achieved independence, and the explorers were celebrated as some of the young nation's first heroes.

Amundsen served as both leader of the expedition and master of Gjøa. His carefully chosen crew numbered six. They included Godfred Hansen, a Danish naval lieutenant who served as first officer; Helmer Hanssen, the second officer and a skilled ice pilot who would later accompany Amundsen on several of his most famous expeditions; Anton Lund, a veteran sealing captain with extensive experience in northern waters; Peder Ristvedt, the expedition's chief engineer; Gustav Juel Wiik, second engineer and a gunner in the Royal Norwegian Navy; and Adolf Henrik Lindstrøm, the expedition's cook.

Captain Roald Amundsen and crew aboard the Gjøa in Nome, September 1, 1906. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Gjøa departed the Oslofjord on June 16, 1903, and headed west across the North Atlantic toward the waters off Greenland. From there, she crossed Baffin Bay and threaded her way through the narrow, ice-filled channels of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Progress was slow and often difficult, but by late September the little vessel had reached the waters west of the Boothia Peninsula. There, worsening weather and encroaching sea ice brought the season's navigation to an end. Amundsen guided Gjøa into a small natural harbour on the southern coast of King William Island, and on October 3 the ship became locked fast in the ice.

What had been intended as a wintering place became home for nearly two years. While Gjøa lay frozen in the harbour, her crew made numerous sledge journeys across the surrounding landscape. These expeditions were undertaken to gather scientific observations, particularly measurements intended to determine the precise location of the North Magnetic Pole. Equally important were the lessons they learned from the local Inuit, whose knowledge of Arctic travel, clothing, hunting, and survival proved invaluable.

The sheltered harbour where Gjøa spent those long winters was known to the Inuit as Uqsuqtuuq. In time, a permanent settlement grew there, becoming the only community on King William Island. Today it is known as Gjoa Haven, Nunavut, a thriving Arctic community with a population of more than a thousand residents.

On August 13, 1905, Gjøa finally departed Gjoa Haven and resumed her westward journey. Carefully navigating the hazardous channels south of Victoria Island, she passed through some of the most difficult waters of the Northwest Passage before emerging into the Beaufort Sea. The long-sought route was now effectively conquered, but the Arctic was not yet finished with her. By October, advancing winter ice had once again trapped the vessel, this time near Herschel Island off the Yukon coast.

A map recreated from the original with English translation. The blue line indicates Gjøa's journey. The purple line traces the Maud Expedition (1918–1920). The green line traces the first Trans-Arctic Flight over the North Pole.

Determined to announce the expedition's success to the world, Amundsen left his companions aboard the icebound ship and undertook an 800 km journey by ski and dog sled to Eagle, Alaska, where he delivered the news that the Northwest Passage had finally been navigated. After spending the winter away from the vessel, he returned in March 1906, only to find Gjøa still imprisoned by the ice.

The ship was not released until July 11. Once free, she continued west and south, reaching Nome, Alaska, on August 31, 1906. From there, Gjøa sailed to San Francisco, where she arrived on October 19.

Rather than sail her round Cape Horn and back to Norway, Amundsen decided to leave the ship in San Francisco and traveled back to Norway by commercial ship. Gjøa was dragged up the beach to the northwest corner of Golden Gate Park, surrounded by a low fence and put on display. Despite the initial enthusiasm that the community showed towards the Gjøa, the ship soon fell victim to neglect and vandalism.

For more than sixty years, the ship lay exposed to the high winds, ocean salt and sand, until 1972, when the ship was returned to Norway, where it was displayed in the Norwegian Maritime Museum in Bygdøy, Oslo. In May 2009, the ship was transferred to the Fram Museum in the same city, where it has been on display.

A memorial pillar now stands near Gjøa's former home in San Francisco.

Gjøa at its former location at the Norwegian Maritime Museum in Bygdøy, Oslo. Credit: Wikimedia Commons