SHIP HEADS HOME TO NORWAY

1 SOUTH POLE NAVIGATOR

The ship used by the first explorer to successfully travel to the South Pole has returned home to Norway, ending a 100-year-old chaotic expedition.

2 LAUNCHED IN 1917

Named the Maud, after Norway’s thenqueen, the ship was built in the Oslo subway of Asker and launched in 1917. She was christened with a chunk of ice.

3 AROUND THE POLE

Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, who became famous in 1911 when he beat Britain’s Captain Robert Scott to the South Pole, wanted to use the Maud to study the Arctic Ocean by letting the ship catch in the ice and drift around the North Pole. He successfully traversed the Northeast Passage, but he was unable to get close enough to the North Pole to launch an expedition.

4 SOLD AND RE-CHRISTENED

She was sold to the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1925 and re-christened the Baymaud after Amundsen filed for bankruptcy. It sank a few years later, at its moorings near Cambridge Bay, in Nunavut. In 1990 HBC sold the ship to the town of Asker, but the price of bringing her home and Canadian concerns over a lack of an archeological assessment delayed the project.

5 BACK THROUGH THE PASSAGE

At last in 2016 the hull of Maud was raised to the surface and she was towed through the Northwest Passage. After spending this past winter in Greenland, she arrived in Bergen, Norway, on Monday.