The Rising Dawn and Greenland

The barque Rising Dawn, 516 tons, was built in Pleasant Cove, Nova Scotia, and made voyages across the Atlantic, stopping in ports along the American Eastern seaboard, England, Wales and Ireland. It was mastered by Captain William Dodge Robertson (1840-1904), of Yarmouth, Nova Scotia.

On 2 June 1866 the Rising Dawn, along with Captain Robertson and his wife, Sarah W. Robertson, set sail from Boston, Massachusetts, for Ivittuut, Greenland, where they were to obtain a cargo of cryolite mineral. By July, the ship and crew had entered the treacherous waters of the North Atlantic Ocean. The ship became trapped in the ice and, after six weeks, crushed and sank on 12 August 1866. All hands escaped the wreckage in three small crafts. The Captain’s party made their way in a longboat, the Captain himself manning an oar and Mrs. Robertson “took the helm, and steered the boat, she leading off bravely and imparting courage to all.” (Lawson, 238) Their small contingent rowed for sixty miles before arriving at Uummannaq, a barren island off the western coast of Greenland.

The party took shelter for two days on Uummannaq, and then set out for their original destination of Ivittuut, a small Danish mining town in the southwest of Greenland. En route, they encountered a settlement of Inuit. During their stay with the Inuit, Mrs. Robertson acquired a small wooden kayak. It was made by one of the Inuit and given to Mrs. Robertson as a gift and it remained in the Robertson family for over half a century.

The Robertsons did not give up on their goal of reaching Ivittuut and hastily departed the Inuit encampment with a guide to direct them for the remainder of their journey. Upon reaching Ivittuut, and spending eight days there, Captain and Sarah Robertson left Greenland and set sail for Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, thus ending their daring journey to the north.

Links to New Brunswick were forged later when Captain William and Sarah Robertson’s daughter, Annie Dodge Robertson, married Walter Rankine of Saint John. Their son, Andrew Dodge Rankine, gave the New Brunswick Museum some of his own belongings from his service in World War I and, clearly also felt that the Museum was an appropriate place to memorialize his grandfather’s adventurous career at sea.