Info on the expedition under the name GAUSS you can find under that name.
see http://www.shipstamps.co.uk/forum/viewt ... 9469#p9469
Built as a wooden polar expedition vessel under yard No 371 by Howaldtswerke at Kiel for the German Government (Department of the Interior), Kiel.
02 April 1901 launched as GAUSS.
Tonnage 762 gross, dim. 46.00 x 11.27 x 6.30m.
One triple expansion steam engine 325 hp, speed under engine.
Bunker capacity of over 400 tons of coal.
Barquentine rigged.
Built of oak and pitch-pine.
1901 Completed. Building cost 1.2 million Mark.
Used for the German Antarctic Expedition under Drygalski between 1901 and 1902.
1903 Bought by the Canadian Department of Marine and Fisheries, for $75.000
Under command of Capt. Joseph-Elzear Bernier she sailed across the North Atlantic to Canada, where she was renamed in ARCTIC.
Thereafter used as a survey and patrol vessel with a crew of around 30, she supplied the outlying police outposts.
Between 1906 and 1907 she made under his command a voyage to the most remote areas of the Arctic Archipelago.
Over every uninhabited island, Bernier proclaimed Canadian sovereignty.
The next year 1908 till 1909 she sailed out again under his command, and during this voyage the ARCTIC was able to get so far west as Cape Hay on Melville Island and wintering in Winter Harbour. He erected there a tablet proclaiming the annexation of the entire Arctic Archipelago by Canada.
01 July 1909 she left this port and sailed back to Québec.
Her next voyage between 1910 till 1911 Bernier took her north to patrol the Davis Strait, Baffin Bay, Lancaster Sound, Barrow Strait, Viscount Melville Sound and McClure Strait; she wintered again in the north in the Admiralty Inlet.
During that winter shore parties made voyages across the region to conduct scientific surveys.
After her return in Québec Captain Bernier left the vessel and an other Captain took over, and under his command she made a four month government scientific cruise to the Hudson Bay.
After her arrival back in Québec she was in 1913 converted in a lightship and renamed LIGHTSHIP No 20, used during World War I as lightship in the lower St Lawrence River.
1921 Again renamed in ARCTIC.
From 1922 used again as a patrol vessel in the Arctic under command of Capt. Bernier., she was used a other four seasons, when Captain Bernier went with retirement she was taken out of service.
Sold to the Hudson’s Bay Company for $9.000.
She was dismantled by this company; where after the empty hull was towed across the river to a sandbar near the Levis shore, Québec and in 1927 abandoned.
Only the ships bell of the ARCTIC remains and is showed in the Bernier Maritime Museum in L’Islet.
Canada 1977 12c sg893, scott? As ARCTIC
French Southern and Antarctic Terr. (TAAF) 1984 9f sg195, scott?, 2002 2.44 Euro sg?, scott?
Source: http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic39-3-272.pdf Various other web-sites