[3] Klengenberg began his seagoing career at age 16 as a cook's assistant on the Iceland, bound from Sweden to New York City.

They made a home in Point Hope where Gremnia taught Klengenberg how to snare ptarmigan, set out trap lines, and the job of floor whaling.

Though he had planned to return home to Point Hope after this trip, he signed on instead to the whaler Mary D. Hume, spending the summer whaling in the Beaufort Sea.

While anchored off Banks Island, an area that whalers thought to be uninhabited, he went ashore and found Inuit footprints and made a secret decision that he would return here eventually to trade with them.

While at Herschel Island, Klengenberg met Stefansson and recounted his meeting of blond Eskimos, people who had never seen white men previously.

After the news reached Alaska, Klengenberg turned himself in, was transported to San Francisco, and was tried and acquitted in 1907 because of contradictions in the crewmen's testimony.

In 1916, he moved his family to the western Coronation Gulf, establishing a trading post at Cape Kendall, north of Coppermine.

After moving the trading post several times, in 1919, he settled at Rymer Point, Cape Krusenstern (Nuvuk), on Victoria Island's Wollaston Peninsula.

But on the trip back to Baillie Island, the RCMP's Constable MacDonald disappeared, with only his parka and notebook found in the icy waters.

But the incident was investigated as the drowned man was the grandson of Sir John A. Macdonald, the first Prime Minister of Canada and founder of the RCMP.

[7][12] Daughter Etna married Ikey Bolt ("Angatilsiak Anutisiak"), of the Canadian Arctic Expedition, and Coronation Medal awardee.

[18] Helen Klengenberg was appointed as Nunavut Language Commissioner for a five-year term 15 June 2017, but resigned in 2019 and was replaced by Karliin Aariak.