In 1857 Margaret Penny set off from Aberdeen, Scotland, with her husband, Captain William Penny, aboard the whaler "Lady Franklin" on a wintering voyage to what is now the eastern Canadian Arctic. Wives of British captains rarely sailed with their husbands and Margaret Penny was one of the few women to break with tradition, becoming the first European woman to enter Baffin Island. Incorporating the journal she kept during the expedition with commentary by W. Gilles Ross, this text aims to recreate 19th-century Baffin Island for the modern reader and provides a perspective on artic whaling, the Canadian Arctic, and the interaction between Inuit and European culture at the time of the voyage.