Next36. Hooper, William Hulme (1827-1854)
Ten Months among the Tents of the Tuski, with Incidents of an Arctic Boat Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin. London: John Murray, 1853.
The yarangs or walrus-skin tents of the Tuski, from William Hooper, Ten Months among the Tents of the Tuski, 1853.
The reindeer-drawn sleighs of the Tuski, William Hooper, Ten Months among the Tents of the Tuski, 1853.
In 1848, the Admiralty sent a depot ship, the HMS Plover, into the Pacific and up the Bering Straits, where they were to wait for Franklin’s ships, should they make it through the Northwest Passage.
They would wait for six years, and the only ship they would meet coming out of the Arctic Ocean was HMS Enterprise, which they saw enter from the west five years earlier, on its own search for Franklin.
During their first year, in 1848, the Plover wintered on the Chukchi Peninsula, on the Siberian side of the Bering Strait, and they encountered there the native Chukchi people, whom the English called Tuski.
William Hooper, who was a lieutenant on the Plover, wrote this engaging illustrated account of the Tuski, admiring their yarangs, or large translucent tents of walrus skins, and marveling at their ability to domesticate reindeer, which they harnessed to light sleighs.
