The Arctic ship Veslekari

• Published in: Polar Record
• Main Authors: Kjær, Kjell-G., Sefland, Magnus
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 2005
• Subjects: General Earth and Planetary Sciences; Ecology; Geography, Planning and Development; Arctic; Antarctic; The Antarctic; Greenland; Jan Mayen; Bjørnøya; Gaston; Antarc*; Iceland; Newfoundland; Polar Record
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0032247404003997; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0032247404003997

The ship Veslekari was launched in 1918 from Christian Jensen's shipyard near Kristiania (present-day Oslo), where Roald Amundsen's ship Maud had been built. Although primarily a sealer, she was also used extensively for other expeditions to the Arctic. She participated in several relief expeditions, including one in 1936 to Jan Mayen to evacuate people during a series of earthquakes, and another in 1939 to northeast Greenland to evacuate Count Gaston Micard, who was seriously ill. In 1928 Veslekari participated in the search for Roald Amundsen and his plane in the waters off Bjørnøya. Tryggve Gran, a member of Robert Falcon Scott's last expedition, sailed with her at that time. She was chartered four times as expedition ship for the American Arctic explorer Miss Louise A. Boyd. In the summer of 1940 Veslekari sailed to northeast Greenland to relieve Norwegian hunters and the crew of the Norwegian weather station, but she was impounded by British and Norwegian forces and taken to Scotland on order of the Norwegian government in London. She was chartered by the Ministry of War Transport and was based in Scotland and Iceland. In 1943 she was renamed HMS Bransfield and was prepared for service in the Antarctic. After the war she resumed sealing under Norwegian ownership until in 1961, when she was wrecked in the ice in the sealing ground off Newfoundland.