The largest uninhabited island on Earth.
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At 74º latitude, Devon Island is nearly 5,000 miles north of Hawaii—and more than five times the size. Remote, windswept, and harsh, the isle is classified as a polar desert, with barren mountains rising above frost-worn beaches, where seabirds fill the skies and the occasional muskox wanders along the shore. Lying along the storied Northwest Passage in Nunavut, Canada, Devon Island remains uninhabited.
But that’s not to say humans haven’t tried. People have failed to live on the Arctic isle for centuries, with the last settlement occurring in 1951. Ancient Inuit settlements sit alongside a military ghost town, relics of doomed expeditions, and even a NASA research station perched at the edge of a massive crater. Today, Devon Island showcases the long, long art of human survival to its few visitors.
Devon’s forgotten stories
If Devon Island sounds familiar, that’s likely because of the Lost Franklin Expedition. In 1845, 129 men on the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror set out to map the fabled Northwest Passage for Great Britain—never to return. Search parties began in 1848, and the first Franklin clue was found in 1850: a naturalist’s rake discovered on Devon Island. Other finds included a piece of canvas marked “Terror”; 700 empty, lead-lined meat tins; and dozens more traces of the Franklin crew, from clothes to iron, rope, and pipes.In 1852, Sir Edward Belcher led the last rescue attempt for the missing men. Staying on Devon Island, the team lined a small bay with survey and marker cairns—an area now known as Port Refuge National Historic Site. Though Belcher’s rescue mission was unsuccessful, one of his ships, the HMS Resolute, would find quite the legacy. Its timbers later helped build one of the world’s most iconic pieces of furniture—the Resolute Desk, still used by U.S. presidents today.
Once the Northwest Passage was successfully mapped some 70 years later, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) wanted to stake their flag on Devon Island. In 1924, three RCMP officers—and 52 forcibly displaced Inuit—were sent to rule over the high Arctic at Dundas Harbour, where the island’s ragged cliffs and rocky beaches overlook Lancaster Sound. “It really was about asserting a presence—they weren’t necessarily policing,” says Kaylee Baxter, an archaeologist with Adventure Canada. “It was more about boots on the ground, keeping other nations from claiming the Arctic as their own.”
Within three years, two of the officers were dead: One had committed suicide, and the other had accidentally shot himself—or so the story goes. As for the remaining officer and Inuit families, they soon abandoned their isolated home. The RCMP shut down the post in 1933, reopened it in 1945, and then shut it down for good in 1951.
The regularly maintained graves of the two officers remain, resting on a hill above the forlorn outpost, in the most northern cemetery in the world. The grave of an Inuit girl lies unceremoniously a few steps away. “It’s a pretty accurate representation of colonization in the Arctic,” says Baxter.
Compared to Devon Island’s first inhabitants, Canada’s “Mounties” and those wayward British explorers are modern visitors. A stone’s throw from Belcher’s cairns at Port Refuge National Historic Site, archaeologists have found artifacts up to 4,000 years old, offering evidence of ancestral Inuit contact with the medieval Norse colonies of Greenland. Asiatic artifacts have been found here, too, denoting far-reaching, northern trade routes spanning half the globe.
At Dundas Harbour, just steps from the RCMP post lies the rocky remains of a roughly 1,000-year-old ancestral Inuit “neighborhood.” The Morin Point Thule site holds clues to the first pioneers crossing the eastern Arctic—and it’s eroding away. “It’s a great example of coastal erosion at archaeological sites,” says Baxter, who is helping to record the site before it disappears. “A great example in the worst way.”
Simulating survival on Mars
NASA and the Mars Institute are the latest to take on Devon Island’s challenges. With the island’s extreme cold, limited communication systems, and lack of sunlight and vegetation, scientists are carrying out analog missions—or practice runs—simulating Mars exploration. The Haughton–Mars Project allows astronauts to train in formidable conditions, test equipment to its limits, and research plant growth and long-duration spaceflight challenges.Of course, the island is deemed too harsh for a permanent research station. Modular summer tents are set up at the 14-mile-wide Haughton impact crater, one of the northernmost craters on the planet. But even NASA’s best-equipped teams avoid the island’s brutal winters.
Planning your own expedition
While Devon Island may be uninhabited, Nunavut’s northern communities, like nearby Pond Inlet and Arctic Bay, are very much alive. “There’s so much culture here,” says Jason Edmunds, vice-chair of the board at Travel Nunavut and one of Canada’s only Inuit expedition leaders. “When you’re in the region, think about the culture itself. Don’t just concentrate on the impacts of another culture on it.”Today, most visitors explore Devon Island and its Arctic neighbors via expedition cruise. Companies like Adventure Canada and Lindblad Expeditions offer itineraries through the Northwest Passage, where travelers can engage in wildlife viewing, hiking, and exploring ancient Inuit settlements and relics from past expeditions. Though, it’s essential to understand the crux of expedition cruising. Your itinerary will flex with the ice, just like every journey here has since that first Inuit explorer.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/devon-island-arctic-explorers-nasa-mars-missions
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Looks a lot like Mars, except for the sunlight and water.
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@Jolly It is quite interesting that you posted that. There was just another article about the Franklin expedition.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/11/science/franklin-lost-expedition-cannibalism/index.html
Archaeologists have identified the cannibalized remains of a senior officer who perished during an ill-fated 19th century Arctic expedition, offering insight into its lost crew’s tragic and grisly final days.
and
In April 1848, exactly three years after the vessels departed England, the expedition crew abandoned the ice-trapped ships following the death of Franklin and 23 other men. Fitzjames helped lead 105 survivors on a long retreat; the men pulled boats on sledges overland in the hope of finding safety. However, the men all lost their lives during the arduous journey although the exact circumstances of their deaths remain a mystery.
“It went horribly wrong, horribly quickly,” said archaeologist Doug Stenton, an adjunct professor of anthropology at University of Waterloo in Canada, who led the research.
Old exploring trips really fascinate me. One of the best books that I read on the subject was "In the Kingdom of Ice"
https://nodebb.the-new-coffee-room.club/topic/95/what-are-you-reading-now/78?_=1729215595068
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Darn it! I had a really thoughtful reply here (I even wrote bullet points on paper as I was thinking about it) before the forum issue. Oh well. I think my points, similar to @taiwan_girl was:
- I really enjoy viewing satellite maps, zooming in on remote towns around the world, viewing their stores (if they even have one) and other details
- I went down the wikipedia blackhole about the northwest passage (NWP)
- Further read about Amundsen and his trek to the south pole, then north pole, the 3-year journey to make it through the NWP.. even how he celebrated by docking in San Fran in 1906... but the town was a little busy with something that happened earlier in the year (the massive earthquake)
I thought they should make a movie about Amundsen... guess they did make one (foreign film) in like 2019 that I'll have to check out
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https://uwaterloo.ca/news/media/dna-matches-identify-four-more-sailors-franklin-expedition
Researchers have identified four more members of Sir John Franklin's 1845 expedition, one of whom was the subject of great debate lasting for more than a century.
Anthropologists from the Faculty of Arts at the University of Waterloo led the work that analyzed DNA samples extracted from skeletal remains and found matches with DNA donated by living descendants. These new discoveries bring the total number of identified sailors of the Franklin expedition to six.
In April 1848, after the two Franklin expedition ships Erebus and Terror were frozen in Arctic ice for nearly two years, 105 survivors attempted to save themselves by walking and dragging boats on sleds along the west coast of King William Island, Nunavut. All 105 died trying to escape. Remains of expedition members have been found on King William Island and the Adelaide Peninsula since the mid-19th century.
The additional identifications deepen our understanding of events that occurred during the final stages of the Franklin expedition and solve a 166-year-old mystery about the identity of one of the sailors.
“Three of the sailors we have identified are from HMS Erebus, and they all died at Erebus Bay. The fourth, the only sailor from the HMS Terror to be definitively identified by DNA analysis, was found 130 kilometres away,” said Dr. Douglas Stenton, Adjunct Assistant Professor of anthropology at Waterloo.
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Yes, it is crazy what those guys went through.
Not about the Franklin trip, but a really really good book about arctic explorers in the 1800's is "In The Kingdom of Ice". Highly recommend to read.
In the late nineteenth century, people were obsessed by one of the last unmapped areas of the globe: The North Pole. No one knew what existed beyond the fortress of ice rimming the northern oceans.
James Gordon Bennett, the eccentric and stupendously wealthy owner of The New York Herald, had recently captured the world's attention by dispatching Stanley to Africa to find Dr. Livingstone. Now he was keen to recreate that sensation on an even more epic scale. So he funded an official U.S. naval expedition to reach the Pole, choosing as its captain a young officer named George Washington De Long, who had gained fame for a rescue operation off the coast of Greenland. De Long led a team of 32 men deep into uncharted Arctic waters, carrying the aspirations of a young country burning to become a world power. On July 8, 1879, the USS Jeannette set sail from San Francisco to cheering crowds in the grip of "Arctic Fever."
The ship sailed into uncharted seas, but soon was trapped in pack ice. Two years into the harrowing voyage, the hull was breached. Amid the rush of water and the shrieks of breaking wooden boards, the crew abandoned the ship. Less than an hour later, the Jeannette sank to the bottom, and the men found themselves marooned a thousand miles north of Siberia with only the barest supplies. Thus began their long march across the endless ice - a frozen hell in the most lonesome corner of the world. Facing everything from snow blindness and polar bears to ferocious storms and frosty labyrinths, the expedition battled madness and starvation as they desperately strove for survival.
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Yes, it is crazy what those guys went through.
Not about the Franklin trip, but a really really good book about arctic explorers in the 1800's is "In The Kingdom of Ice". Highly recommend to read.
In the late nineteenth century, people were obsessed by one of the last unmapped areas of the globe: The North Pole. No one knew what existed beyond the fortress of ice rimming the northern oceans.
James Gordon Bennett, the eccentric and stupendously wealthy owner of The New York Herald, had recently captured the world's attention by dispatching Stanley to Africa to find Dr. Livingstone. Now he was keen to recreate that sensation on an even more epic scale. So he funded an official U.S. naval expedition to reach the Pole, choosing as its captain a young officer named George Washington De Long, who had gained fame for a rescue operation off the coast of Greenland. De Long led a team of 32 men deep into uncharted Arctic waters, carrying the aspirations of a young country burning to become a world power. On July 8, 1879, the USS Jeannette set sail from San Francisco to cheering crowds in the grip of "Arctic Fever."
The ship sailed into uncharted seas, but soon was trapped in pack ice. Two years into the harrowing voyage, the hull was breached. Amid the rush of water and the shrieks of breaking wooden boards, the crew abandoned the ship. Less than an hour later, the Jeannette sank to the bottom, and the men found themselves marooned a thousand miles north of Siberia with only the barest supplies. Thus began their long march across the endless ice - a frozen hell in the most lonesome corner of the world. Facing everything from snow blindness and polar bears to ferocious storms and frosty labyrinths, the expedition battled madness and starvation as they desperately strove for survival.
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No one knew what existed beyond the fortress of ice rimming the northern oceans.
I would have thought at least one person would have guessed the answer: more ice.
No one knew what existed beyond the fortress of ice rimming the northern oceans.
I would have thought at least one person would have guessed the answer: more ice.
One of the major theories at the time, was that at the top of the world, there was a tropical island surrounded by water, and there was the ring of ice that had to be broken through to reach the island.
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No one knew what existed beyond the fortress of ice rimming the northern oceans.
I would have thought at least one person would have guessed the answer: more ice.
One of the major theories at the time, was that at the top of the world, there was a tropical island surrounded by water, and there was the ring of ice that had to be broken through to reach the island.
No one knew what existed beyond the fortress of ice rimming the northern oceans.
I would have thought at least one person would have guessed the answer: more ice.
One of the major theories at the time, was that at the top of the world, there was a tropical island surrounded by water, and there was the ring of ice that had to be broken through to reach the island.
The Democrats believed that but the Republicans knew it was just more ice.
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