Chapters:
- Cleveland's Vineyard Childhood
- Shanghaied! The 1895 Voyage of the A. R. Tucker
- Shanghaied Again! The 1897 and 1899 Voyages of the Francis Allyn
- Article 1: "A White Man Alone in the Arctic When His Supplies Failed to Arrive"
- Article 2: "Spending a Winter Among the Eskimos - Adrift on a Big Floating Island of Ice"
- Article 3: "Post Sacked - Lone White Man Turns Eskimo - He Becomes a Witch Doctor of the Tribe"
- Article 4: "New Bedford Captain He Knew as a Boy Confiscated Cleveland's Stock of Furs"
- 1905-06 Newspaper Reports
- Article 5: "A Floating Trading Post in the Far North - Hunting Seals in the Company of Eskimos"
- 1910-1919: The Monjo Post at Cape Fullerton
- Article 6: "Conducting a Trading Post Farthest North - A Life That Gets Into the Blood of a Man"
- Cleveland's Last Year
- Sakuuaqtiruniq's Legacy
- The Nine Wives of George Cleveland
- Bibliography and Anthology
- George Cleveland's Children:
Capt. George Cleveland
Sakuuaqtiruniq, the Harpooner
This is the story of George Cleveland, a twice-shanghaied Martha’s Vineyard whaler, who in 1900 was abandoned by his employers almost two thousand miles from home to starve alone in the arctic tundra wilderness of Nunavut.
Rescued and adopted by the nomadic Aivilingmiut people, Cleveland learned the survival skills, Inuktitut language, and customs of his indigenous rescuers, eventually fathering at least fourteen children with nine women. When he was finally rediscovered by the outside world, Cleveland fought the famous whaling captain George Comer of his former company in a triumphant fist fight, and joined a Scottish whaling firm before eventually hitching a ride back to the Vineyard. Unsatisfied with American life, Cleveland returned to his family in the north and spent his last twenty years living among the Aivilingmiut and working as a trader for an American fur company and as the manager of the Hudson Bay Company’s northernmost outpost.
Cleveland recorded his adventures in six newspaper articles and his larger-than-life tales can be found in numerous books about the eastern arctic. He survived bear attacks, shipwrecks, famine, epidemics, and storms; once drifting lost at sea for five days on a slab of ice without food. He has been described as "loud," "imposing," and "bombastic," with a strong taste for alcohol and a complicated relationship with women; a "jack-of-all-trades" who was also “lots of fun.” He was the magnificent and eccentric Sakuuaqtiruniq the Harpooner, a northern legend.
In just over a century, George Cleveland’s families have multiplied exponentially - it would be fair to estimate that at least 1% of the modern population of Nunavut are direct descendants of Capt. Cleveland. His modern offspring includes professors, heavy metal musicians, website designers, prisoners, ministers, journalists, government officials, fishermen, CBC radio hosts, polar bear carvers, homemakers, poets, interpreters, and social workers. Cleveland River and Cleveland Harbour in Nunavut are both named after him.
This is his story. (Can you add to it? Please sign the guestbook or contact me!)