Baffin Bay is the reported site of the loss of Jacob Baxter’s two ships, a description that gives the Arctic voyage its public shape while concealing the deliberate actions Patrick Sumner later says were part of it. The bay’s significance lies in that tension: it is presented as a dangerous whaling region and as cover for a financial plot whose consequences reach beyond the sea.

The Arctic whaling setting

The expedition’s northern progress is marked by changing weather, ice, and the seasonal work of the hunt. Sailing north from Lerwick, the crew endure fog, sleet, and gales before reaching sea ice near Jan Mayen Island; they then hunt seals as other whaling ships compete for the same pack. After three weeks from Jan Mayen to Cape Farewell, the crew prepare their whaling equipment, and by the last week of June they cross into the North Water. These passages establish the hazards and commercial pressure of the northern voyage, though the narrative names Baffin Bay specifically in its later account of the ships’ losses.

The scale and methods of the trade form part of this setting. Arthur Brownlee expects a successful hunt, but Baxter argues that the older era—when a small boat and harpoon might bring wealth—has passed. Modern whaling, he says, requires expensive steam power, harpoon guns, and luck, with no assurance of a profitable return. The novel sets that economic decline against concrete catches: a large seal harvest is valued by its skins and projected oil yield, while the crew’s first whale is estimated to yield ten tons of oil and more than half a ton of whalebone. The Arctic is thus both a working environment and a contested source of diminishing commercial opportunity.

Ship losses and the insurance account

In a later conversation, Baxter summarizes the accepted story as two ships sunk by ice, with Sumner miraculously saved by passing hunters. The account presents the losses as misfortune and survival as extraordinary good luck. A report of Baxter’s fortunes likewise says that both his ships went down in Baffin Bay and that the underwriters paid him; he has since left whaling for the coal-oil and paraffin business. The bay therefore appears in the aftermath as the location attached to a profitable insurance settlement as well as a maritime disaster.

That account is not the whole truth. Sumner tells Baxter that some of what happened was accidental and some was not, and reminds him that he knows about the killings. He later accuses Baxter of arranging for Cavendish to sink the Volunteer, saying that the plan depended on Sumner and Henry Drax being killed so that the secret would die with them. Baxter denies Sumner’s explanation and redirects attention to the two men dead in the timber yard, one killed by Sumner. The exchange makes Baffin Bay’s reported shipwrecks part of a larger struggle over evidence, blame, and profit.

Narrative significance

The bay’s meaning is shaped by the contrast between the official-looking explanation and the knowledge Sumner carries away. Ice supplies a plausible account of loss, while the discussion of insurance and the planned scuttling of the Volunteer gives the wreck a second, commercial dimension. Baffin Bay is not merely the backdrop to a failed voyage: in the retrospective account, it is where the difference between accident and design becomes difficult to separate—and where Baxter’s public prosperity is linked to ships and lives lost.