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Whaling Stations and Harbours
The establishment of year-round whaling stations drastically changed the whaling industry about sixty years before its decline. Whalers were able to increase their catch and their profits and intermingle with Inuit hunters and families. Inuit were brought into long-term contact and collaboration with Europeans and Americans.
In 1851 Inuit hunters informed the captain of the New England whaler McLellan, William Quayle, that the best time of year to hunt in Cumberland Sound was in spring and fall. These periods were well outside of the short navigation season; whaling ships would be struggling to enter or leave Arctic waters to return home. Quayle subsequently made a decision that would change the nature of eastern Arctic whaling: The whaler McLellan became the first ship to intentionally leave crew to spend the winter in the Arctic islands in order to be ready for the next year's hunt. She put to shore a compliment of sailors at Qimmiqsut (Nimigen Island), in Cumberland Sound, among whom were Sidney Budington and George Tyson. They would go on to become successful whaling masters in their own right.
Initially, American and Scottish whalers began to adapt this wintering over approach by freezing their vessels in land-fast ice, setting up their ships for winter habitation, and getting ready for early spring whaling. Later, in 1857, the Scottish whaler William Penny would be the first to build onshore buildings in Cumberland Sound, one at Nuvujen and another at Kekerten. American whalers built a shore station at Singaijaq (Cape Haven) in the Hudson Strait where they wintered regularly from 1860 to 1905, at which time they sold the station to the Scottish.
In 1860, the brothers Edward and Christopher B. Chapel were the first American captains to venture into Hudson Bay, aboard their ships the Syren Queen and the Northern Light. They overwintered near Depot Island, not far from the current community of Chesterfield Inlet (Igluligaarjuk) and the overwintering port of Cape Fullerton, farther north. If Marble Island became a busy wintering harbour at one time, shore stations were later built at Southampton Island (1899), Wager Bay (1900), and Cape Fullerton (1913).
In the Davis Strait area, Captain James Mutch built a shore station at Igarjua near Albert harbour in 1903 for the Sabellum Trading Company of Scotland. This station was sold to Joseph Elzéar Bernier in 1910 who renamed it Berniera. In 1914 Henry Toke Munn, sailing on the Albert, built his own trading post at Button Point and later bought back Berniera from Bernier. Munn would sell this operation to the Hudson's Bay Company in 1922.
As the stock of whales became depleted by the end of the nineteen century, trading for furs, ivory, fish, and other kinds of country goods became the only remaining way to make a profit for whaling companies. This meant working ever more closely with local Inuit and is why it became essential to establish onshore whaling stations. In the early twentieth century the Hudson's Bay Company moved North into the Eastern Arctic and succeeded in establishing a monopoly of trade.