228 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1945 



the lead and then to follow the twisting, grinding opening to the 

 safety of a deep anchorage among this small group of high islands. 

 A strong current set back and forth through the islands, with the 

 regular 5-foot tide, and on August 29 Larsen decided that the leads 

 looked promising. They worked northward to Dixon Island and then 

 found easier going to Bellot Strait. 



With the Northwest Passage practically in their grasp, tragedy 

 almost struck the St. Roch and crew in Bellot Strait. The western 

 end of the strait was free of ice, but the tide was changing direction to 

 the eastward as the vessel entered. The ice from Peel Sound was 

 carried in behind them. Half-way through the strait, Larsen sud- 

 denly saw that an ice jam had formed ahead from shore to shore. They 

 could not turn back and were headed for a large, thick, grounded floe. 

 Then, just as they were about to crash and be wrecked, a smaller floe 

 hit the larger one and broke off its southern half. The next moment 

 the St. Rock's prow went into the widening crack and she drifted for- 

 ward between the two floes. 



The St. Roch left Fort Ross on September 2, surrounded by moving 

 floes, and worked north in Prince Regent Inlet, with young slush ice 

 already forming. The Nascopie, on the Eastern Arctic Patrol, was to 

 have entered this inlet later in the month, but although she had reached 

 Fort Ross successfully for five previous years, she was stopped this 

 time by the ice which was already threatening the St. Roch. The 

 hurrying schooner entered Navy Board Inlet and stopped at the Pond 

 Inlet post on Northern Baffin Island to discharge stores and coal for 

 the police detachment and to pick up Constable Doyle. On September 

 10 it left this eastern Arctic post and traveled through numerous 

 bergs and storms southward along the Baffin Island and Labrador 

 coasts. 



After stopping at Labrador, Newfoundland, and Sydney, Nova 

 Scotia, the St. Roch and crew arrived in Halifax on October 11, hav- 

 ing traveled 2,840 miles en route during their third summer season. 

 The historic news that the St. Roch was the first ship to complete the 

 west-to-east voyage through the Northwest Passage in Northern Can- 

 ada was then released. The trip of 27^ months bettered Amundsen's 

 time, and, with improved weather and ice conditions, it might well 

 have been less. To Staff Sergeant Henry A. Larsen this historic feat 

 was an achievement of which to be proud, but nothing about which to 

 become excited. He and his police crew had been traveling around 

 amid the ice floes of the western Arctic in good and bad seasons for 14 

 years and had conquered the Passage as a side activity while success- 

 fully carrying on with their other police duties. Larsen discounted 

 his long winter patrols by Eskimo dog team and sled as something 

 which the R. C. M. Police are doing every winter throughout the 

 Arctic in keeping contact with our migratory Eskimo population. 



