Jim H is not the only one with memory problems.
The two quotes shown below have triggered a memory, but only partially...
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The trick, of course, is that as ice conditions enable more traffic, then numerous intermediate destinations will be utilised for trade and no doubt export of resources which can now be exploited. This traffic may entail fewer all-the-way-through traverses, and more 'coastal' traffic between such origins/destinations.
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However a ship-count metric is not directly relevant or 'impressive' when it comes to trying to inform the great unwashed about the critically sad state of the Arctic ice.
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&
C3 is now at Gjoa Havn
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On Jim's Great White Con blog sometime last year (I can't remember when) , one of the Flat Earth brigade made the claim that, as far back as 1929, no fewer than 3 ships from the Hudson Bay company had made the traverse in a single year.
It would have seemed an obvious thing to check with the HBC archives whether such a thing had indeed happened, but had somehow been kept secret from the rest of the world. However, as most here realise, genuine scepticism is in extremely short supply amongst self-styled climate change sceptics.
In response to my query, one of the HBC archivists very kindly - and quickly - came up with the answer. What had happened was that 3 ships did indeed overwinter around the Cambridge Bay/ Gjoa Havn region, but that was simply the limit point for their respective trading/supply routes.
Two of the ships (
Fort James and
Fort Macpherson) had started from different ends of the NWP in 1929, but each had made it no further than Gjoa Havn before overwintering and then reversing their course. The third ship (
Baychimo) worked the Vancouver - Cambridge Bay route throughout the 1920's, and also happened to overwinter "near" the other two in 1929.
Yet another example of misinformation and deliberate twisting of the facts from the usual suspects.