Amundsen and the Gjoa

C.W. Jefferys' notes about this picture from The Picture Gallery of Canadian History Volume 3

In 1903-1906 Captain Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian (later the discoverer of the South Pole in 1911), made the voyage from the Atlantic to the Pacific by way of Bering Strait, in his little ship, the Gjoa. In 1942 the Royal Canadian Mounted Police schooner St. Roch, under Sergeant Henry Larsen, became the first ship to make the passage from west to east in one continuous voyage. She reached Sydney, C.B., nearly twenty eight months after leaving Vancouver, B.C., having been locked in the ice on the west coast of Boothia Peninsula from September, 1940 to August, 1942.