Researchers hope rare find of wrecked whaler holds clues about sailors’ lives
CALGARY — Matthew Ayre was transcribing logbooks from British whaling ships in March when he became intrigued by entries describing a whaler that wrecked off the east coast of Baffin Island early in the last century.
Ayre says most of the hundreds of whaling ships that sunk in the North Atlantic over the years were crushed by ice in deep water and never found. But sitting in front of him were entries giving a good description of the spot where one vessel, the Nova Zembla, might be resting near shore.
Combined with newspaper accounts from the time, Ayre says it became possible to narrow down the search area to a reef off a beach in Baffin Bay.
“It’s at that point I realize it’s quite shallow and it’s quite accessible,” said Ayre, a climate historian with the Arctic Institute of North America at the University of Calgary.