With his return in mid-September, Low's 1887 expedition was four months long, a short trip by his standards.
The next year, 1888, he returned to sail the boat from Moose Factory to Fort George, and from there into Hudson Bay to Richmond Gulf. In the following years, Low would use the same vessel to move men, provisions and canoes to and from his survey areas along the coast. The last record of its use was in 1896 when he sailed from Moose Factory to Richmond Gulf for his trip across Ungava to Fort Chimo. Although having served Low so well, the boat is never mentioned as having a name, and there is no confirmed photograph of it.
VOYAGES: UNGAVA BAY 1897 AND THE
EAST COAST OF HUDSON BAY 1898–1899
These voyages were all made in the same boat, a 35-foot yacht named the Alle, and covered most of the northern coast of what is now Quebec. During these years, Low became a sailor of Arctic waters, experienced in dealing with ice conditions in his fragile boat. Over a period of three years, he carried out the first accurate surveys of the shores of most of Ungava Bay and eastern Hudson Bay.
Low's 1897 voyage15 took advantage of the hiring of the sealing steamer Diana by the Department of Marine and Fisheries for its exploration of Hudson Strait during the summer of that year. This was the fourth of four government cruises into the area in the late 1800s, largely to determine the feasibility of using Hudson Strait as a sailing route between Britain and a soon-to-be established port in Hudson or James Bay.16 The Diana and her crew came from the United Kingdom colony of Newfoundland since the Canadian government did not have a suitable boat or trained crew available within Canada. According to Captain Wakeham, commander of the vessel, the purpose of the cruise was to test the earliest and latest dates for sailing through the Hudson Strait, in anticipation of commercial use of the route.17
The move from canoeing to yachting seems to have been due to the opportunity presented by the Diana's cruise, rather than any great priority for coastal mapping of the Ungava Bay area, although such mapping would benefit to any commercial vessels sailing that route. Low's assistant was his nephew, George Young,18 who had accompanied him on his canoe trip across Ungava in 1896. Three additional crew members, known only as D. Burgoyne, Jim Lantz and J. Greenland, completed the crew.
The Diana carried, on its very crowded deck, Low's yacht and a similarly dimensioned yacht for Robert Bell, who was on his way to survey the southern shore of Baffin Island, plus a 16-foot skiff for each yacht. This was prior to Bell's appointment as acting director of the Geological Survey in 1901. In March 1897, Low had gone to Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia, to supervise the construction of the two custom-built yachts. Each was 35 feet long, with a beam of 10 feet, a maximum three-and-half-foot draught, with a yawl rig and 800 square feet of sail and with two closed cabins for five crew, or for six in “close accommodation.” Cooking was done over two kerosene stoves in a tiny galley. However, planked with one-inch-thick pine, the hull was too soft to handle ice. The boat had no motor and had to seek the shelter of coves or bays during rough weather. It towed one of the 16-foot skiffs from the Diana for landing on the coast.19 This sailing boat was a real sea-going vessel and a great improvement over the open fishing boat used in 1887.
Leaving Isabella with their two surviving children, Estelle (now 11) and Reginald (now two), Low must have worried about her health. She had suffered from consumption for several years and her condition was becoming more serious. Low must have left with a great deal of uncertainty, not knowing if he would return a widower in the fall. Isabella's battle with consumption would steadily wear her down and finally lead to her death in less than a year later.
The Diana sailed from Halifax in early June. Ice conditions were such that it was not until July 16 that she reached Douglas Harbour on the south shore of Hudson Strait, the starting point for the trip. This harbour is a deep valley, cut into the high barren hills that drop almost straight into the water. Upon dropping the yacht into the water, Low christened it the Alle “after the hardy little auk.”20 Launching and loading the ship was complicated by large pans of ice which kept bashing into the yacht.
There are no direct accounts of what life was like on the Alle. But with its short keel, the boat must have rolled considerably and been difficult to tack. The five men slept crammed inside small sleeping quarters, made even more crowded by the two-month supply of food stored on board. Food was likely the same type of rations as Low used on his canoe trips — mostly salt pork and flour, but with more canned goods, supplemented by game and fish where possible. Clothing and blankets (they didn't use sleeping bags) were made of wool. It was damp within the cabins from both the wet weather and the many leaks caused by the yacht's frequent collisions with ice and rocks. The only heat source was the two kerosene stoves. Inside the cabin, the air was thick with the odours from drying woollen clothes and from the people who wore them, combined with fumes from the stoves, the large barrel of kerosene and the rack of meat from recently caught caribou or geese. When the crew lit up their pipes, the dank air inside the cramped cabins was stifling.21 Artificial light was from kerosene lanterns, a cut above the candles used on the canoe trips, but probably not much used in the very long daylight of the northern summer.
During the next six weeks, Low coasted along the shore of Ungava Bay wherever the ubiquitous ice and shoals permitted, landing at various spots to examine the geology and to climb prominent hills in order to sketch the shoreline. Sailing was hindered by the lack of accurate maps, by headwinds which threatened to jam the Alle against the rocks, by the often large tides which would leave the Alle stranded, and by very shallow bottoms covered with boulders which often forced the Alle to stay miles from shore. The shore, if they could reach it, was perfect for geological inspection — almost barren, mostly exposed bedrock, with little vegetation and no trees to get in the way of the view.
George Young kept track of distance sailed by using a log,22 and of direction by magnetic compass bearing, supported by observations of the sun through use of a sextant to determine bearings and latitude. Interestingly, even though a sextant can also be used to estimate longitude, for some reason Low did not determine longitudes on any of his trips. The use of these tools led to the first accurate map of 650 miles (1046 km) of shoreline.
George Albert Young, reputedly the nephew of A.P. Low. He spent five survey seasons with Low. Courtesy of Natural Resources Canada, Geological Survey of Canada, photo KGS 2369-H.
During the first two weeks of the expedition, ice was a constant problem as the crew coasted east on the southern shore of Hudson Strait between Douglas Harbour and Cape Hope's Advance. The Alle was held in Douglas Harbour for four days, trapped by the ice blown in from the open strait. During this time, several walks were made to the top of the hills surrounding the harbour, the highest of which Low estimated to be 2000 feet and which gave magnificent views of the rolling, barren land. Once the harbour was clear of ice, the Alle set course to the east, passing the “Maiden's Paps” (now just “Maiden's”) islands, where they met a group of five Inuit families in Fisher Bay.
The Inuit were hunting for beluga whales and seals. Dressed in caribou skin clothing and living in tents made from caribou skins, their guns, ammunition and a few metal implements were the only products of modern civilization that these people required. And tobacco. In return for taking some photos, Low gave “…a small present of tobacco to each man, woman and child. It was curious to see a mother take a short black pipe, filled with rank, black tobacco, out of her mouth and pass it backwards to the small child in her hood; the youngster evidently relished it, as there was always a cry when the mother resumed her own smoke.”23
Leaving the Inuit happily smoking, the Alle continued along the coast of Ungava Bay. Once it was trapped by ice for seven days. The huge tides of Ungava Bay made for some interesting sailing. In Whitley Bay, Low ran the Alle down rapids caused by the tidal current flowing into the bay. Entering Payne Bay the Alle ran rapids in two directions, first going inland with the current on a rising high tide. Later in the day, on a falling tide, the same stretch of river was run again, but this time in the opposite direction, back to Ungava