Henry Larsen

The title of this article is ambiguous. Further meanings are listed under Henry Larsen (disambiguation) .

Henry Larsen on St. Roch

Henry Asbjörn Larsen (born September 30, 1899 in Hvaler , Norway, † October 29, 1964 in Vancouver , Canada) was a policeman and navigator in the Arctic . His most significant accomplishments include several early crossings of the Northwest Passage .

Life

Larsen completed his compulsory military service with the Norwegian Navy, later hired as a seaman on merchant ships and passed the exam to become a mate at the seaman's school . After a few years on Norwegian ships, including a job as chief officer on a transatlantic liner, he emigrated to Canada in 1924 , where he took British citizenship in 1927 . On the way to Vancouver he read that the Danish trader Christian Klengenberg was looking for a helmsman, applied and was immediately hired on the old trading schooner “Old Maid of Seattle”, which he made two trips on, in the Canadian western Arctic. In April 1928, Larsen joined the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) as a constable when they were looking for experienced volunteers to serve in the Arctic. He graduated from the Canadian Police College . In April 1929 he became a " Corporal " and six months later a " Sergeant ". In 1935 Henry Asbjörn Larsen became a member of the Freemasons ' Union , his lodge the Mount Newton Lodge No. 89 , is in British Columbia .

In the following two decades he was often used as the captain of the schooner St. Roch, which was put into service with the RCMP in the same year, for sea patrols. At the beginning of the ship's first Arctic voyage, Larsen still served as mate, but was appointed captain as soon as the ship had reached the Arctic. In the first twelve years up to the start of World War II in 1939, Larsen and his crew carried out 12 summers and 7 winters on patrol and supply trips for the RCMP's scattered posts in the western Canadian Arctic. The construction of the ship was designed to stay frozen in the ice throughout the winter. In the winter, the St. Roch acted as a floating outpost of the RCMP, from which the police crew patrolled with dog sleds. At that time, the ship was Canada's only sovereign representative in the far north. Larsen Hanorie was called Umiarpolik (Henry with the big ship) by the indigenous inhabitants of the Arctic .

Larsen's most important achievement was the first crossing of the Northwest Passage in a west-east direction with the St. Roch , which was carried out from 1940 to 1942 . It lasted a total of 28 months (most of which wintered on Victoria Island and the Boothia Peninsula ) because of the large ice masses blocking the McClintock Canal and Franklin Strait and was his route after the first crossing by the Norwegian Roald Amundsen Larsen followed on the outward journey, the second execution of the Northwest Passage ever. On the return trip from Halifax to Vancouver (which only took three months due to better ice conditions) in 1944, Larsen chose a more northerly route that had never been completely navigated before, over the Lancaster and Viscount-Melville-Sound through the Prince-of-Wales Road (between Banks Island and Victoria Island) to Beaufort Sea . He had thus succeeded in making the first round trip on the Northwest Passage. The trip from 1944 also represented the first crossing without wintering.

For the last few years of his career, Larsen was the senior RCMP police officer in the Arctic. After his first Northwest Passage, he was promoted to " Staff Sergeant " in November 1942 , after the second crossing to " Sub-Inspector " (September 1944) and " Inspector " (1946). In 1949 he was appointed officer commanding of the RCMP Division G, which was responsible for the Northwest Territories and the Yukon Territory , and was thus responsible for all of the RCMP's Arctic departments. Since then he has been stationed in Ottawa. Most recently in 1953 he was " Superintendent ". In 1961 he retired and moved with his family first to Lunenburg (Nova Scotia) , then to Vancouver. When Larsen died in 1964 after a brief illness, he was buried in the RCMP cemetery in Regina, Saskatchewan . He left his Vancouver-born wife, Mary Hargreaves, whom he married in 1935, with a son and two daughters.

Honors

Larsen's numerous honors include the Silver Polar Medal in 1943 for the captain and his crew in recognition of the Arctic voyage from 1940 to 1942, as well as the Gold Patron's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society in 1946 , of which he also became an Honorary Fellow in 1947 . Larsen was also a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and received its first Massey Medal in 1959 for outstanding personal contribution to Canadian geography. He was also a Fellow of the Arctic Institute of North America . In May 1961 he received from Waterloo University College a Doctor of Laws honoris causa. According to him, which is Larsensund (between James Ross Street and Franklin Street) named, in addition, the 1987-built icebreaker CCGS Henry Larssen of the Canadian Coast Guard .

The RCMP schooner St. Roch is now the centerpiece of the Vancouver Maritime Museum . The ship has been permanently anchored in a dry dock since 1958 . The museum building was built around this. In 2000, on the occasion of the turn of the millennium, the RCMP renamed one of its ships the St. Roch II and had Larsen's first Arctic voyage repeated.

Web links

• Henry Larsen (Norwegian)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Independent Canadian citizenship was only introduced in 1947 by the Canadian Citizenship Act of 1946 .
2. ^ Famous Freemasons Henry Asbjörn Larsen , Homepage: Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon (Retrieved April 25, 2012)
3. ↑ Across the Northwest Passage: The Larsen Expeditions on the University of Calgary's Arctic Expedition , accessed May 18, 2013
4. ^ Canadian Coast Guard: CCGS Henry Larsen. Retrieved July 16, 2017.
5. ↑ athropolis.com: St. Roch II expedition. (English), accessed December 25, 2009.