Amundsen’s polar ship raised after 85 years

Roald Amundsen.Photo: commons.wikimedia.org

After 85 years on the ocean floor in Cambridge Bay in Canada’s Roald Amundsen polar ship Maud has been raised. The next step is to bring the ship back to Norway.

The project to salvage the shipwreck has been going on for several years, and Saturday night, Norwegian time, was an important milestone, newspaper VG reports.

– It took a while, but it was amazing when I was able to swipe my hand under the keel in open water. This is one of our most important milestones ,  project leader Jan Wanggaard says.

If everything  ahead goes to plan , Maud will return to the place where it was built, in Vollen in Asker, and get its own house there in the future.
Polar explorer Roald Amundsen had  the ship built in 1917. The aim was to let it drift with the ice so that it would get as close to the North Pole as possible. However, before the expedition got the chance to get that far, Maud was forcibly sold as part of Amundsen’s bankruptcy in 1925. The buyers brought the vessel to Cambridge Bay, where it sank five years later.

 

Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today