Thousands of whalemen sailed the Canadian Arctic and hundreds died there. At several lonely and desolate places the graves of the unfortunate dead may still be seen, their simple headboards wind-blasted and worn, the inscriptions fading into oblivion. At the wintering harbour of Niantelik (Niante Harbour) in Cumberland Sound, Baffin Island, a comparatively well-preserved headboard records the death of a fifty-two year old native of the Shetland Islands, where British whalers customarily completed their crews before sailing on to the arctic whale fisheries. His ship was the Dundee steam whaler Camperdown, which made voyages to Davis Strait every summer from 1860 to 1878, when the vessel was wrecked.
