Gamle Fox

[shipstamps]

It was not the Greenland Trade Department, but the Cryolite
Company, who sent the first power-driven ship to Greenland.
this took place in 1865 when the business partner I. P. Suhr &
Son employed the screw-propelled schooner bark Fox, measuring
185 BRT with a 30-hp steam engine, to sail between
Copenhagen and Ivigtut.
The ten-year-old ship had already had a chequered career. She
had been built in Aberdeen in Scotland as a yacht, but only two
years later her owner died, and Fox was put up for sale. She
immediately found a buyer: the widow of the English polar
explorer Sir John Franklin, who in 1845 had departed with two
ships and 129 men to find the North-West Passage, never to be
heard from since.
Lady Franklin reinforced and equipped Fox and sent the ship into the waters between Baffin Land and
Northwest Greenland to find any traces of her husband’s expedition.
Captain MacClintock, who commanded the ship, actually
succeeded in returning home with information, shedding
light on the fate of the catastrophic expedition.
Lady Franklin was so grateful for this information that she decided to give the
ship to Captain MacClintock, who immediately sold her again,
and in 1865 Fox ended up with I. P. Suhr.
In 1893 transatlantic navigation ended, and during the following
12 years Fox acted as a tug in the Arsuk Fiord. In the years 1906
to 1912 Fox was used for coastal navigation by the Greenland
Trade Department and ended her days as a wreck on the shore
near Godhavn.


Issued 20.10 2003 Greenland Philatelic

[aukepalmhof]

The stamp designer Martin Morck has drawn and engraved for the Post Greenland the eleventh part of the series about significant Greenland expeditions. The Arctic accomplishments of Dane Carl Petersen in the mid-1800s are celebrated on this stamp. The mint sheet shows in the margin the FOX.
Johan Carl Christian Petersen (June 28, 1813 – June 24, 1880) was a Danish seaman and interpreter who participated in several expeditions in Northern Canada and Greenland in search of the missing British explorer John Franklin.
Petersen was born in Copenhagen. At the age of about 20 he moved to Godthab (now Nuuk) in Greenland where he made a living as a carpenter and sailor. In 1841 he moved to Upernavik, at the time the most northern Danish colony in Greenland. There he married a native Inuit and took on their customs and way of living, in the process he became a quite skilled hunter, dog sledge driver and observer.
He worked on William Penny’s Expedition (1850–51), Elisha Kane’s Second Grinnell Expedition (1853–1855) into Kane Basin, Francis Leopold McClintock Expedition (1857) and Isaac Israel Hayes North Pole Expedition (1860–61). He wrote two book about these expeditions.
On Kane’s expedition he worked together with the young Eskimo Hans Hendrik who has Hans Island named after him.
After these expeditions he moved back to Denmark, and died in Copenhagen, aged 66.
Greenland 2013 31.50Kr sg?, scott?
Source: Greenland Post. More info on the ship http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_(ship)