People
From North Norfolk to the Northwest Passage Earlier this year local author Jane Maufe’s book The Frozen Frontier was published by Bloomsbury, charting her landmark voyage through the Northwest Passage and back with David Scott Cowper. Amanda Loose finds out more Jane at the McClintock memorial, with Polar Bond at anchor in the distance. The plaque was erected at Fort Ross by members of the McClintock family, in recognition of their ancestors’ search for the Franklin expedition
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ACK in 2011, Jane received a Christmas card from old friend and sailor David Scott Cowper. In it, he asked Jane to accompany him on his next expedition to transit the Northwest Passage. This treacherous sea route connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through the Arctic Archipelago and proved so elusive for so long, that many did not believe it actually existed. There are seven possible routes through the Northwest Passage and David had sailed through most of them single-handed. “David was only the 39th person to make the transit back in 1986-89 (as he got frozen in) in his converted Watson class lifeboat, Mabel E. Holland. He was, however, the very first person to do it solo,” says Jane. Now he was proposing to sail through the sixth and most northerly route, from ocean to ocean through the McClure Strait, accompanied by Jane as crew aboard Polar Bound. If they succeeded, they would be the first private vessel to make this transit. But passage depends on the ice giving way for enough time to allow vessels through. If you don’t make it, you’re stuck there for the season, or worse. Sometimes the ice does not melt at all in the short summer six-week period. Polar Bound is a custom built, 30 ton aluminium self-righting, all weather vessel based on the lines of a lifeboat. She is regarded as the strongest surface vessel for her size in the world and is 12 times the required Lloyd’s specification. “My husband died in July 2011 and then David Cowper sent a card asking me if I would like to go on his next voyage. I was very flattered as normally he goes on his own. I was very pleased to go with him and it was wonderful to rekindle our friendship,” says Jane. There was also a compelling family connection for Jane too. She is the four times great niece of Sir John Franklin on her father’s side. Sir John was lost (along with his 129 crew) trying to chart and navigate a route through the Northwest Passage, in the middle of the 19th century. The sea and adventure is clearly in Jane’s blood. Her dinghy on the North Norfolk coast, Sorceress, is named after her grandparents’ Bristol Channel pilot cutter in which they voyaged to Biscay and beyond. Jane is a very experienced sailor; indeed when she first met David in London at the age of 23 or 24, Jane was studying the Captain OM Watts Postal Navigation Course. David gave her tips on how to remember the points of the compass. Later she met her husband crossing the Atlantic in a sailing boat. “When we got married we bought our own sailing boat, a Bowman 40. We
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NORTH NORFOLK LIVING SPRING 2017
took our infant son to the Mediterranean. Conrad spent his first birthday hove to in a gale off the Straits of Gibraltar and when it came to bath time, it was just possible to wash him in the galley sink. Following the sale of our boat, we often used to charter.” But back in 2012, Jane was contemplating a very different kind of trip, aboard Polar Bound, one that would prove extremely physical, and also mentally challenging. “My slight misgiving was that David would not like his bachelor stronghold invaded by a woman, but I think the idea of having a cook and watch keeper on board was quite appealing to him. “David carries 10 tons of fuel in five different holding areas, running on one tank for a bit then he goes to a tank on the opposite side to balance the fuel consumption. I wouldn’t have had a clue how to do that, and if David had had a stroke I would have been a sitting duck.” After much preparation, Polar Bound left Whitehaven on 29 July 2012, with, Jane writes “a plentiful supply of Christmas puddings which had made the journey around the world at least once…” David had already made six circumnavigations of the globe, single-handed. The outward journey “was fairly straightforward although we did meet pack ice,” says Jane. But it was also extremely gruelling. “Sometimes the physical exhaustion and sleep deprivation were agony. The north Atlantic is a very lonely place. Nobody goes there. “I always went to bed right away, as soon as supper was over. I’d climb into my bunk and in less than a minute would be asleep.