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The Active
The steam whaler Active is still remembered today in many Eastern Arctic communities. She was one of the last Scottish ships to chase whales after 1900 in this region. By this time, whaling captains relied heavily on Inuit to crew the whale boats and make the kill. The decks of the Active carried many Inuit from South Baffin to Hudson Bay; she would usually stop in the Big Island area, close to Kimmirut (Lake Harbour) to take on Inuit crew before sailing westward. The ship, with special Inuit living quarters in her hold, also carried many Inuit from the Kivalliq to South Baffin, and even to Scotland.
The Active was a whaling schooner of 348 tons and 117 feet in length, built in Peterhead, Scotland in 1852 for Captain David Gray. Upon her maiden voyage in 1853 along the coast of Greenland, Gray declared her the best ship of his fleet. In 1867 Captain Gray sold the Active to another Peterhead owner, Mr. J. Brown, who would install in 1871 a steam engine as auxiliary power. By this time, it had been demonstrated that steam provided a serious advantage in navigating icy arctic waters. With the decline of the Peterhead whaling industry, in 1873 she was sold again, this time to a Dundee owner.
The Active is sadly known for having transmitted fatal diseases to the Inuit population. Historians of the whaling era hold her presence responsible for the extermination of the Sadlermiut Inuit around Southampton Island in 1902-1903. In 1899, Captain John Murray had established a whaling station on the island. The Active, owned now by Robert Kinnes & Sons Ltd of Dundee, re-supplied the station and also brought Inuit whaling crews from the Hudson Strait. According to the logbook of Captain George Comer who later visited the area, after the visit of the Active in 1902, the population of Sadlermiut of approximately 70 individuals was wiped out by an infectious disease transmitted by one of the Active's sailors.
In the later years of the whaling era, Alexander Murray Jr. was captain of the Active. His brother, John Murray, was captain of the Ernest Williams, a vessel used by Robert Kinnes & Sons as a floating whaling station at Repulse Bay/Naujaat. The Active re-supplied the Ernest Williams with goods and men and carried its valuable cargo back to Dundee. The Active was not specially built to freeze in the ice and so would usually return to Scotland before freeze-up. Alexander Murray Jr. probably spoke Inuktitut as he spent most of his young life with his father, Alexander Murray Sr. in the Cumberland Sound, as did his brother John.
In 1912, Alexander Murray Jr. decided to winter in the Arctic at a place called Etoile Bay, in the Ottawa Islands. On November 11, he died from an internal tumour, according to the Active's log book. Captain Murray's son, the late Ikidluak of Lake Harbour (Kimmirut), who was on the ship at the time, told journalist and historian Dorothy Harley Eber that Captain Murray had died from drinking too much and that he was bound up by his crew (Eber: 142). Captain John Murray eventually returned the ship to Dundee.
That same winter, when the Inuit from the Active set up their winter camp on the island, they encountered a group of starving people whom they took care of. Members of this group of starving Inuit were Kenojuak and his wife, Takatak and his wife, and Silaqi, along with other young people. Silaqi would eventually become mother of the famous Inuit artist Kenojuak Ashevak, of Kinngait (Cape Dorset). All other people living on the island had starved to death.
On December 25, 1915, the Active and all hands aboard were lost in a gale off the Orkney Islands. She was owned at this time by the Hudson's Bay Company and was carrying war material destined for Northern Russia.