Breadalbane (ship)

Breadalbane (left) and Phoenix off Beechey Island from the Illustrated London News
History
United Kingdom
Name:	Breadalbane
Operator:	McNeil & Co
Builder:	Hedderwich & Rowan
Launched:	1843
Fate:	Crushed by ice on 21 August 1853
General characteristics
Type:	Wooden merchant ship
Tons burthen:	428 bm
Length:	38.1 metres (125 ft)
Beam:	7.3 metres (24 ft)
Depth of hold:	5.5 metres (18 ft)
Sail plan:	Barque

Breadalbane was a British three-masted barque, a mid-19th century merchant ship that was crushed by ice and sank in the Arctic.

Notable as one of the northernmost shipwrecks known, she is also considered one of the best-preserved wooden ships ever found in the sea due to slow deterioration in the cold Arctic water. Historically, Breadalbane is considered to be a time capsule.

On 21 August 1853, she became trapped by an ice floe and was crushed. She sank to the bottom of the Northwest Passage near Beechey Island in Lancaster Sound, approximately 500 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Her entire crew of 21 abandoned ship in time, and were rescued by her companion, HMS Phoenix.

In August 1980, the wreck was discovered by a five-man team led by Dr. Joe MacInnis working from the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Sir John A. McDonald. Three years later it was designated a national historic site of Canada because the ship was used in the search for John Franklin’s lost expedition.

Breadalbane was built by Hedderwich & Rowan for a Scottish merchant consortium in a shipyard on the Clyde River, in Scotland in 1843. The ship was originally used to transport wine, wool and grain to Europe, and spent her first ten years sailing between England and Calcutta carrying various goods.

Breadalbane was a 428-ton, wooden square-rigged sailing ship. The design was similar to hundreds of other trans-oceanic ships used in early Victorian times. She was 38.1 metres (125 ft) long, with a beam of 7.3 metres (24 ft) and a hold depth of 5.5 metres (18 ft).

In the spring of 1853, the Royal Navy called the ship into service to transport coal and other supplies to the North Star, a depot ship. She left the Thames River in 1853, accompanied by HMS Phoenix (the first propeller ship in the Arctic), and arrived at a rallying point at Beechey Island later that year. Her new mission would be to carry supplies to Sir Edward Belcher's high Arctic search expedition in the Resolute Bay area (now part of Nunavut). Since 1852, Belcher's expedition had been searching for the Franklin Expedition. The ship and crew had gone missing while searching for a passage through the Arctic seas. Belcher's expedition both the largest, and the last sent by the Royal Navy.