It took a hundred years to get her back to her homeland. It was June 7, 1917 when the Maud ship it was launched to travel long sea routes. It was a means born to cross the ice, as reported on the pages of corriere.it. “You are made for ice - it is read - and in the ice you will spend the best years of your life". The design of this boat bears the name of the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. Famous for having conquered the South Pole, he also wanted to reach the other side of the world and challenge the ice of the North Pole.
But to succeed in this enterprise, a ship was needed that could withstand the worst weather conditions and very low temperatures. In 1918 Amundsen and his Maud ship they sailed from the port of Asker, Neighbor Oslo, to achieve it Bering Strait. To avoid the German submarines, however, he miscalculated and was stuck in the ice for two years. According to the story, the explorer was in danger of dying on two occasions: first from a bear attack, then from carbon monoxide inhalations while he was doing scientific surveys inside an unventilated tent. After two years, on July 27, 1920, the Maud ship managed to reach theAlaska, but never the North Pole. Amundsen's attempts stalled in 1925, when he decided to permanently abandon the mission.
The 'Norwegian heart' of the Maud ship.
The boat, blocked in Alaska, was auctioned and bought by Hudson Bay Company with the new role of weather station. But it didn't last long. He arrived in Canada but in 1930, due to an opening in the keel, the ship sank. The idea that the Maud ship could disappear forever into the abyss seemed to be pure utopia. To keep alive the hope of being able to see it in its entirety was precisely the ice, which by blocking a part of it caused it to emerge from Canadian waters. Thus became one of the most important tourist attractions, but the heart of the Maud ship belonged to the Norway.
In 2016, three Norwegian brothers decided to take action to recover the wreck and bring it back to their homeland. At the symbolic figure of one dollar, the Maud ship it was sold to the municipality of Asker. A team of experts recovered the wreck, which floated again and then headed for Norway. Last Monday the ship docked in the port of Bergen, a stone's throw from the bay where he was born, more than a hundred years ago. His 'job' now is to capture the attention of tourists visiting the Norwegian Fjords.
