The Kirkella’s yellow and white facade bathed in bright January sunshine as workers loaded pallets of food and other essential supplies onboard the imposing 81-meter fishing vessel.
That evening, she departed the port city of Hull in northeast England for the freezing waters and punishing conditions of the Arctic Ocean, a perilous voyage usually reserved for summer, when the days are not so bleakly dark and the ice so treacherously thick around the archipelago of Svalbard.
