222 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1945 



as a "floating police detachment," carrying supplies and doing routine 

 patrol work without fanfare, through the same difficult ice conditions 

 which had cost so many ships and lives among the early explorers. 

 These hardy adventurers were able to brave only one or two winters 

 in the Arctic, but the sturdy St. Roch has spent 11 of her 16 years 

 frozen into the ice of some Arctic harbor. In 1928-29 she wintered at 

 Langton Bay. Four successive winters, 1930-34, were spent at Tree 

 River, in Coronation Gulf, and three winters, 1935-37 and 1938-39, 

 were passed frozen in at Cambridge Bay. Aided by modern equip- 

 ment and radio communication, the R. C. M. P. boat has been perform- 

 ing feats of Arctic ice navigation equal to those history-making voy- 

 ages of less than a century ago. But to Staff Sergeant Henry A. 

 Larsen, who has been the unassuming captain of the schooner during 

 all these years, this difficult work of navigation and long winter dog- 

 sled patrols are the usual routine in maintaining law and order in the 

 Canadian North. 



On June 23, 1910, the St. Roch left Vancouver, British Columbia, 

 beginning the historic voyage which was to make the 80-ton schooner 

 the first ship to complete the elusive Northwest Passage from west to 

 east. The voyage northward through the Inside Passage and across 

 the North Pacific to the Aleutians was uneventful. The St. Roch 

 entered Bering Sea through Unimak Pass and anchored at Akutan 

 Harbor to check her engines and fill the fresh-water tanks. The 

 schooner continued to Dutch Harbor in the Aleutians on July 8 to 

 load a supply of fuel oil for the diesel-powered engines. Adverse 

 weather, with strong winds, rain and fog, was met in crossing Bering 

 Sea and, after stopping at Teller Harbor for a day, the St. Roch passed 

 through Bering Strait in a dense fog and entered the Arctic Ocean 

 on July 17. 



On July 23, the St. Roch rounded Point Barrow spit and met the 

 first loose-scattered ice floes. By evening the blocks had become more 

 numerous, and the St. Roch began the familiar task of slowly "working 

 the ice" — twisting and turning from one lead to another opening, edg- 

 ing around large floes and pushing aside small blocks, drifting with 

 the pack and waiting for a lead to appear; Larsen and the St. Roch 

 had been doing this patient work in partnership since 1928. Progress 

 was slow and it became apparent that this was going to be a bad year for 

 ice along the northern Alaskan coast. 



Ice conditions are unpredictable in the Arctic, and are greatly de- 

 pendent upon prevailing winds. The polar pack ice, which moves in a 

 general clockwise direction in the Arctic Ocean, presses southward 

 against the Alaskan coast. In years when prevailing winds are east- 

 erly or southerly, the ice is moved westward and leaves an open strip 

 along the coast; but northerly winds will pack the floes against the 



