Cape Flora

At the time of the sinking, "Godøy" was only 500 meters away. The crew of "Kap Flora" could not find "Godøy" in the snowdrift and made their way across the ice to the Murmansk coast. The crew of "Godøy" only heard about the sinking when they arrived in Tromsø.

In 1921, "Kap Flora" was seized in the White Sea together with D/S "Remø" and M/S "Polargutten". Brought to Arkhangelsk and held in custody there until late autumn of the same year. The crew was in Vardø and picked up the ship in Arkhangelsk in November/December.

In 1922, the "Kap Flora" and the "Sælbarden" went into East Greenland after the capercaillie hunt in the Denmark Strait to hunt live muskoxen and polar bears. "Kap Flora" got 6 live muskoxen and "Sælbarden" got 7. 9 of these animals were sold to zoos in Philadelphia, Washington and New York. More about the live capture of muskoxen here: https://www.ishavsmuseet.no/blogger/moskus-fra-gronland/

While fishing in Lake Kvitesjøen in 1923, the ship lost one of its men. He was supposed to retrieve a seal that had been shot on an ice floe and jumped off the line. None of the crew saw what happened, but they heard him fall into the sea. They threw a bamboo straw to him, but he didn't reach it. They launched a fishing boat as quickly as they could, but before it arrived the man had disappeared.

In 1924, the "Cape Flora" was on its way out of the White Sea with a full catch when the storm hit on April 24. That afternoon, the ice pressed in on the ship on the starboard side at the same time as the ice turned the ship up, and in this way it suffered great damage. The current carried the ship in the direction of Cape Orlov and thus great pressure from the shore. The situation gradually became so critical that the crew gathered their belongings and prepared to have to walk on the ice. In the evening, the ice also came crashing in on the ship from the port side, and "Cape Flora" was lying with a list to the port. You could hear the sea pouring into the bow. In the morning of April 25, the ship had been driven close to land at Cape Terki, but when the ice began to move again, the ship followed the tide out towards Cape Orlov again. Then there was another strong ice drift in the morning, and this broke the propeller sleeve and stem, which caused water to flow in there as well.

The crew sees that the situation has become so critical that they find it best to abandon the ship and get onto the ice, and then get to land while the ice is thick enough to walk on. They reckon the ship was so shattered that it would sink as soon as the ice loosened. After an hour of hard marching across the ice, the crew arrived at Orlov Lighthouse where they were well received. From the lighthouse on Orlov, the crew could observe that the ship was being carried back and forth with the current, but on the morning of April 26th they saw nothing more of the ship. The Russians were able to state that they last saw it at 7:00 p.m. on April 25th.

When "Kap Flora" went down, they had a catch of 3368 seals on board.