The Sixth and Seventh Thule Expeditions of Knud Rasmussen

Abstract

DR. KNUD RASMUSSEN called Thule Expeditions those which were fully or partially supported by the funds of his Thule settlement in the Cape York District. Of these the Fifth, the investigation of the NorthAmerican Eskimo and the long journey from Greenland to Siberia, is the most well known. The Sixth and Seventh Thule Expeditions were to the East Coast of Greenland, during the years I93I, 1932, and 1933, which years cover the period of intense interest in the East Coast arising from the dispute between Norway and Denmark, in which judgment was given at the Hague in April 1933. The Sixth Thule Expedition was rather a reconnaissance than an expedition in itself. The coast of south-east Greenland had been traversed by Commander Gustav Holm in 1884 in an umiak, or large skin boat; in 193 I1, conscious of changing ice conditions, it occurred independently to Knud Rasmussen and Watkins to challenge the still generally accepted notion that the umiak was the only means by which a passage along this coast could be successfully forced. Both therefore attempted the passage in small craft equipped with power. This was in Watkins' case an open boat with an outboard motor. The outfit retained the advantage of the umiak, that the boat could be hauled up on to an ice-floe in case of a squeeze. Knud Rasmussen neither retained this advantage nor had he such good acquaintance with the ice conditions; but in his Norwegian skerry-racer, teak built, extra strengthened and renamed Dagmar, he had a craft larger, faster, and utterly seaworthy. With the Dagmar a quick voyage was made from Julianehaab to Angmagssalik and back, at the same time as Watkins, Courtauld, and Lemon were working southwards along the coast. Nevertheless the Danes were unable to make any contact with Watkins, although the investigation of harbour facilities and the search for Eskimo remains took them into most of the fjords and bays. A less pleasant incident on the return voyage was that during a heavy September storm the Dagmar, rudderless, was blown out into Denmark Strait (where, as usual, a heavy sea was running) so far that it was afterwards twenty hours steaming at full speed before Greenland was in sight again. When, later, she was safely in Nanortalik in south-west Greenland and Watkins was still unreported, Knud Rasmussen went out on a search trip, but returned unsuccessfully. Then, as is well known, half an hour later Watkins came in on the last pint of petrol. The success of the reconnaissance and the awakened public interest in East Greenland encouraged Dr. Rasmussen to begin the much more ambitious Seventh Thule Expedition in I932. But the fact that two other Danish expeditions were working in the same year on the East Coast of Greenland, one of them a large expedition to which the resources of Denmark's richest scientific fund had already been promised, made the financing of the project so difficult that even Knud Rasmussen was at one time disheartened nearly to despair. However the expedition sailed at the right time with a strong staff