Henry Larsen (explorer)

For the first 12 years that the ship was in commission, Larsen and his crew took supplies to scattered RCMP posts in Canada's far north.

Documents found in the RCMP archives in the 1990s show that the voyage was somehow connected to a Canadian plan to occupy Greenland after the German invasion of Denmark.

After trouble with ice east of Point Barrow he decided to winter at Walker Bay on the west coast of Victoria Island at the entrance to Prince of Wales Strait.

In July 1941 the ship was released from the ice and Larsen followed the coast east and reached Amundsen's Gjoa Haven by the end of August.

In early September he found refuge at Paisley Bay on the west coast of the Boothia Peninsula near the North Magnetic Pole.

At the other end he found civilization of a sort at the Hudson's Bay Company post at Fort Ross on Somerset Island.

With about a month left before the ice would probably close in, he hurried west, passed through the Bering Strait and reached Vancouver on 16 October.

Some believe the real purpose of the voyages of discovery was not to patrol the Arctic searching for evidence of German infiltrators, but rather to protect Canadian interests from her American allies.

[4] Larsen Sound, a body of water located in the Arctic to the west of Boothia Peninsula and north of Victoria Strait, was named for him.