Amundsen’s Gjøa Through the Northwest Passage (1903–1906)

Purchase by Amundsen

On March 28, 1901, Amundsen bought her from Asbjørn Sexe of Ullensvang, Norway, for his forthcoming expedition to the Arctic Ocean. Gjøa was much smaller than vessels used by other Arctic expeditions, but Amundsen intended to live off the limited resources of the land and sea through which he was to travel, and reasoned that the land could not sustain a larger crew (this had been a possible cause of the catastrophic failure of Franklin's lost expedition fifty years previously). Her shallow draught would help her traverse the shoals of the Arctic straits. Perhaps most importantly, the ageing ship was all that Amundsen (who was financing his expedition largely by spending his inheritance) could afford.

Amundsen had little experience of Arctic sailing, and so decided to undertake a training expedition before braving the Arctic ice. He engaged Hans Christian Johannsen, her previous owner, and a small crew, and sailed from Tromsø in April 1901. The next five months were spent sealing on the pack ice of the Barents Sea. Following their return to Tromsø in September, Amundsen set about remedying the deficiencies in Gjøa that the trip had exposed. He had a little 13 horsepower (9.7 kilowatts) marine paraffin motor, connected with a winch, for navigation in light winds and to facilitate handlings. Much of the winter was spent upgrading her ice sheathing, as Amundsen knew she would spend several winters iced-in.

Journey through the Northwest Passage

In the spring of 1902, her refit complete, Amundsen sailed Gjøa to Christiania (now Oslo), the capital of Norway. At this time Norway was still in a union with Sweden, and Amundsen hoped the nationalistic spirit which was sweeping the country would attract sponsors willing to underwrite the expedition's growing costs. After much wrangling, and a donation from the Swedish King, Oscar II, he succeeded. By the time Amundsen returned, Norway had gained its independence, and he and his crew were among the new country's first national heroes.

Amundsen served as the expedition leader and Gjøa's master. His crew were Godfred Hansen, a Danish naval lieutenant and Gjøa's first officer; Helmer Hanssen, second officer, an experienced ice pilot who later accompanied Amundsen on subsequent expeditions; Anton Lund, an experienced sealing captain; Peder Ristvedt, chief engineer; Gustav Juel Wiik, second engineer, a gunner in the Royal Norwegian Navy; and Adolf Henrik Lindstrøm, cook.

Gjøa left the Oslofjord on June 16, 1903, and made for the Labrador Sea west of Greenland. From there she crossed Baffin Bay and navigated the narrow, icy straits of the Arctic Archipelago. By late September Gjøa was west of the Boothia Peninsula and began to encounter worsening weather and sea ice. Amundsen put her into a natural harbour on the south shore of King William Island; by October 3 she was iced in.

San Francisco

Rather than sail her round Cape Horn and back to Norway, the Norwegian American community in San Francisco prevailed on Amundsen to sell Gjøa to them.

The ship was donated to the city of San Francisco, and the ship was dragged up the beach to the northwest corner of Golden Gate Park, surrounded by a low fence and put on display. Amundsen knew that because of the fame that his exploits aboard Gjøa had earned, he would be able to gain access to Nansen's ship Fram which had been custom-built for ice work and was owned by the Norwegian state. Therefore, Amundsen left Gjøa in San Francisco. He and his crew traveled back to Norway by commercial ship. Of the original expedition members, only Wiik failed to return to Norway, because he had died of illness during the third Arctic winter.

Souvenir hunters and vandals necessitated a fence be erected and a caretaker hired — the gentleman lived in the ship and was enumerated there during the 1910 United States Census...The city installed a seal tank behind the stern of the ship and, according to the Call, the Alaskan fur seal that occupied it acted as an additional nighttime guardian of the boat...Occasionally, the city would be spurred to make repairs and give the Gjøa a paint job (a 1968 visit to the city by Norway’s King Olav provided motivation for one such spruce-up), but generally the vessel that survived the crushing ice of the Arctic seas was a helpless victim to neglect and vandalism.