Wrangel Island

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or his mittens, and he was in a very pitiable plight. The most cheerful one seemed to be Murray. The Doctor appeared all in. They were doubletripping their stuff and Beuchat remained at the camp to look out for their things. Chafe wanted him to return to Shipwreck Camp but Beuchat would not. He knew we could not do anything for him there. The Doctor's party was never seen or heard of again, nor any trace of them found.

That evening the Captain informed me that on the 12th of the month I would leave with the two engineers, two firemen, Malloch, Chafe and one sailor. We would have two sleds and would go to Wrangell Island. The chief engineer was in command.

The next day we got everything ready. We had a lot of collapsible iron stoves for burning driftwood and I wanted to take two of them along to Wrangell Island so we could use wood for fuel. They weighed only a few pounds. The Captain did not approve of this, however, and gave us orders to burn kerosene instead of driftwood. We started with a light load and we were to replenish our loads as we went along from the depots which had been made at the Captain's orders at various intervals towards land. I should judge we had nine hundred pounds to a sled and five dogs. We had one Mannlicher rifle for each sled and three hundred rounds of ammunition for each rifle. We also had one .22 caliber rifle with five hundred rounds.

About nine o'clock February 12th the chief engineer's party started from Shipwreck Camp towards shore with me in it. We tried to follow the old trail made by the sledges when they were carrying out the supplies which had been cached. in several depots at varying distances from Shipwreck Camp along a line running towards shore. We found the trail broken by ice movement and difficult or impossible to follow. In some

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northern vegetation. Fossil ivory, both walrus and mammoth, is found in considerable quantities, both near the coast and inland.

The surprising thing about the diary for the summer is the absence of speculations as to whether a supply ship would come. Even I who knew their plans well, and who knew Knight and Maurer intimately, am surprised at this. That summer 1 was trying to arouse interest among Canadians in the patriotic little advance guard of their countrymen who had been lead by a vision of the approaching development of trans-polar air commerce to undertake keeping Canadian right alive in Wrangell Island, and I used, quite sincerely, the argument that if no ship were sent to them in 1922 they would feel themselves deserted and disowned by the country they were trying to

of the summer and autumn scanning the ocean for a sail. I cannot even now believe that this picture was wholly wren®, but it must be said there is

little support for it in Knight*s diary. It seems, on the contrary, that

jbk&Wt.

they had taken more to heart than I had myself what I had said before they

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sailed north about the possibility that I might fail in 1922 to get the money for a ship to communicate with them. Unable ay self to believe that I could fail to grouse either the public or the government of Canada, I had taken the precaution nevertheless to remind them forcibly of that possibility. That I had done so I had forgotten, but they had not.

I did not really quite fail with the Canadian Government « it wag only that ay importunities did not prevail till the season was nearly over, fifct it turned out that th© ocean ice as seen from Wrangell Island had been so

y . impregnably massed the whole summer that the Wrangell party considered, i#:.

"Yv* AthSM? S

immaterial whether a ssMb had triad to come or

serve*

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possible for all of us to stay at the main camp, for there is just enough grub there for three people to last until the seals and birds come. This is the first explicit statement in the diary of the secondary motive for the Nome journey - in addition to reporting progress by telegraph. The argument that having some of the party go away would relieve the island [comisariat?], must have begun to present itself about Christmas, as we can infer from the entries of that time indirectly I would like to make this trip but I reslly do not feel able. This is just a rough outline of our plans; more later. A fairly fresh bear track seen going east."

January 20, they were "Home again, finding the three people comfortably living in the 10 x 12 tent. Wonderful going. Saw the sun today (its first appearance after the midnight twilight)."

On January 21, "The woman is busy making clothing. It has been decided that Crawford, Maurer, and Galle will attempt in a few days to go to Nome vs Siberia. I will remain here as camp keeper for the reason that I think I would be unwise to attempt the said trip, because of illness. It is impossible for two men to make the trip, I think, with only five dogs, but as grub is short here, it is essential for the party to split. It is very likely that Stefansson will be expecting news from us this Spring, for when we left him in Seattle (in August 1921) he suggested the trip. The woman and I will have about six hard bread each per day until the seals and birds arrive. This is not counting what foxes I hope to catch on the two trap lines that I intend to take over, or perhaps a bear. We will also have about five hundred pounds of seal fat and five or six gallons of bear oil."

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The entries from January 22 to January 27 are routine, the making of clothing, tending of fox traps, etc.

On January 28: "They’re off. At 9:10 A.A., a nice clear day, warmer than usual and all in their favor. They were going due south when last seen, and were soon out of sight."

January 29: "Blowing a howling gale from the east. This camp is very comfortable and a little wood goes a long way. Yesterday and today, I have been busy fixing the place up, making it convenient for two people. Now we are well fixed until the snow starts to melt in the spring. All of the boxes outside will then have to he cleaned out (the snow removed from them), the roof and walls of the house dug away, and numerous other things will keep us busy. If only a hear would wander into camp, we would he fixed in greet shape, for with only two of us and no dogs a bear would go a long way. In a couple of months, the females will be coming out of thoir holes with their cubs and then we should have plenty of meat. My left leg just above the knee is considerably swollen and is giving me some pain. Whether it is from scurvy or not, I am not sure, and although it does not lay me up, it makes moving rather painful. Fresh meat will fix me up, I am sure."

This, the day after the party left, is on the whole a cheerful entry, and also on which gives an answer to many of the questions that have been asked since the tragic outcome was published. Few of the theories that have pleased the journal-

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PREFACE

This book has been written under difficulties that are not ordinary. Crawford, Galle, Knight, Maurer and I were friends and disciples of a common faith; two of them had been with me on a former expedition through illness, hunger and shipwreck. Now they were dead and I had to write their story. in that writing I found myself continually handicapped by too strong a sympathy for the aims of the work I was describing and too personal an affection for the heroes of the stern romance I was trying to tell. Fearing I might say too much, I have, I fear, said too little, especially about the nobility and unselfishness of their motives. They were patriots in the Canadian and the Imperial sense through what they did; but in their minds was a larger patriotism, for they believed in the coming unification of the English-speaking peoples and throught that whatever they might do either for the Empire or for the United States they would be doing for both. Wholly apart from that, they were gallant adventurers in the Elizabethan sense of the word, pioneers of whom our race should be the more proud the fewer they become through the softening effect of our coddling civilization.

I was, then, handicapped in the writing of this book by the fear that my sympathies might lead me into what would seem over-zealous advocacy or intemperate praise. These were, in a sense, pleasant handicaps, for I am proud to be so closely associated with men who were noble and with work that must be admired by whoever understands it. But there have been other handicaps that could not have been more painful or in every way more deplorable. I wanted the story of Wrangell Island to consist of documents edited only for clarity. But after the initial and in a sense unavoidable misfortune that the diaries of the three men who were drowned were lost with them, we suffered the unbelievable experience that some of the remaining records were deliberately destroyed (as related in this book) after they had been brought back to civilization. Other documents were withheld for about five months from the relatives and from those who had a right to them. Meanwhile painful, sensational and in some respects untruthful stories were being published through the newspapers of every country by the very man who had destroyed or was withholding the documents upon which his writings were in part based. We could not even deny effectively at the time what we were morally certain were incorrect statements about what had happened at Wrangell Island, for these statements were alleged to be based on the records, and we could not for the time being get a chance even to see the records.

The mutilition and withholding of the Wrangell Island documents is gone into reluctantly but fully in the body of this book. We must mention it here to excuse in advance certain defects of composition which the reader cannot fail to notice.

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He will inevitably detect repetitions but will, I hope, blame me less for them when he learns that the main body of the book had to be written on the basis of a diary from various parts of which a total of thirty-six pages were at that time missing. The book had been promised for early publication before we suspected we would have any difficulty in getting at all the documents that had been saved. But it turned out that we suffered some legal delays in getting the main part of the diary back from an innocent purchaser and that when we received it we found that thirty-six pages had been torn out. It took us five months to get back twenty-six of the thirty-six pages which had been removed. There are thus still missing ten diary pages in addition to numerous paragraphs that have been erased from the main part of the diary.

Thus we were compelled to write the first draft of "The Adventure of Wrangell Island" on the basis of a very incomplete record, bridging the gaps in the documents as best we could by conjecture. Then, when some of the missing pages were at length returned to us, we had to interpolate their information. At this stage I was so crowded with work incidental to a trip to Australia for which I had contracted before the Wrangell Island tragedy became known, that the interpolating of the new material was done badly in many places. Few, if any, contradictions will be found, for my conjectures had been right. There will be repetitions, however, because I could not remove the conjectures without destroying the fabric of the book, and I was unwilling to omit the direct quotations from the diary.

The delay in recovering the pages torn from the diary explains also why this book will appear at least six months later than the date originally announced by the British publishers. The American publishers were fortunately protected from making a premature announcement.

Neither in this preface nor anywhere in any way can I make adequate thanks or show sufficient admiration for the manner in which the crushing loss of son, husband or brother has been borne by the relatives. But I can at least thank especially the families of the two veterans, Lorne Knight and Frecerick Maurer, for their tireless efforts ot lesson the grief of the parents of the younger men, Allan Crawford and Milton Galle, by sharing with them the better understading of arctic life and conditions which they had secured from their explorer sons when they had been at home in the intervals between their expeditions. For Knight had been north with me three years between 1915 and 1918 and Maurer had been in the Arctic twice, the second time with me when he was shipwrecked on Wrangell Island itself in 1914.

With a heart too full for words in any case, I have attempted in this book no eulogy of the dead. Their actions and worthy motives are their best monument. What their thoughts and deeds were is shown by the fragments of records we have received from Crawford, Galle and Maurer and especially by the one preserved diary, that of Lorne Knight, upon which this book is

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THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGELL ISLAND

CHAPTER 1 The Background of the Story

The story of Wrangell Island has developed into adventure and tragedy, but it began in a new scientific conception of the nature of the earth as a whole and the relative position and importance upon it of the so-called Arctic regions. It hinges also upon the developments in aeronautics which began twenty years ago last December when the Wright Brothers flew at Kittyhawk.

"As impossible as flying" and "as worthless and the Arctic" were solemn figures of speech as the beginning of our century. The first is now ridiculous; the second is beginning to be questioned even by the general public - otherwise the value and ownership of Wrangell Island would not have occupied so much space during the last two years in the newspapers, those faithful mirrors of the interests of the average man.

The newspapers have been telling us that at least three great centuries - the United States, Great Britain and Russia - have legal claims to Wrangell Island, and are either pressing those claims or considering whether the intrinsic or positional value of the island may justify pressing them later. Such public interest and such international negotiations would not be conceivable if the leaders of thought still held the ideas about the climate and character of the Arctic which were nearly universal twenty years ago. But granting the change of thought of the last two decades, keen public interest would still remain unthinkable but for the recent developments in air transport.

Our views on air transport are new; but there is one sense in which our "new" ideas about the Arctic are 400 years old.

Few beliefs have ever had such universal support as that of the

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to Europe, and that the dignitaries of the Church were thankful for the contributions which the Greenlanders made in those articles towards the support of the Crusades.

The early fur traders who sailed from England and France to Hudson Bay may have related a tall story now and then, but in the main they described the profits in furs and the feasibility of making money. It was probably the canny directors of the companies who sat in European offices who first devised the policy by which the later fur traders represented the country they were exploiting as a frozen wilderness - the directors knew that if farmers were to throng in, the fur animals would disappear. The early seventeenth century voyage of Hudson to Spitsbergen began a gigantic whale-fishing industry which prospered for more than two hundred years, and again profits and the rosy aspect were on every tongue.

The northwest passage was discovered by Sir John Franklin’s expedition seventy-five years ago and the northeast passage by the expedition of Baron Nordenskiold about thirty years later. Various commercial companies are gradually developing these waters although the northeast and northwest passages in their entirety are seldom used.

With the Franklin tragedy a change came over the spirit and motives of polar exploration. The explorers were thereafter no longer pioneers of commerce and began to compete with each other not as men do in business but rather as athletes in a race or sportsmen eager to be first to scale a mountain. This tended to revive the ancient and mediaeval general conception that the Arctic was ferocious and barren.

With a passion for symmetry and simplicity, all but a few scholars now assumed that the "Frozen Region" was approximately circular with a "North Pole" for center that corresponded to the top of a mountain. On this idea was based the struggle to reach the North Pole, it being assumed that he who got there

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and most of the arctic lands are low. We know there are many hundreds species of flowering plants in the region formerly supposed to be covered by eternal ice and that there is more eternal ice in Mexico than there is in an equal area of arctic and subarctic continental Canada. We know that bees and butterflies go about among the midsummer flowers on the northe coasts of the most northerly lands in the world.

But we might have in our minds all this and more of the new knowledge about the Arctic and still the realization of the hopes of the Middle Ages about a short route to the Far East might be as remote as ever. The climate is not eternally cold, for the summers are warm; the lands are not eternally ice-covered, for few of them are mountainous; the sea is not covered with one vast expanse X of ice, for the ice is not strong enough to standl the strain of even moderate []wind, and is broken, X over in mid-winter and summer alike, into millions of floes of varying sizes drifting about and jostling each other, with large patches of open water between them. All these things are true and still it remains equally true that for ordinary ships the Arctic is not a navigable ocean on the direct route from Europe to the Pacific.

But there lies above the partly ice-filled water the wide unjhampered ocean of the air, free to be navigated in every direction by ships of the air.

The most optimistic students consider that flying conditions over the Arctic throughout the year are on the average better than over the north Atlantic. The most pessimistic consider them probably worse, but conquerable. Those who hold a middle ground think that the Arctic is perhaps more favorable than the Atlantic in summer but that it would be less favorable in winter.. Some of the highest authorities have said that January flying across the Arctic will probably turn out to be not only easier than north Atlantic flying in January but actually easier than arctic flying in July. The authorities differ partly because some think only of our flying technique as it is to-day. But there is likely to be as much progress in aviation during the next five years as there has been during the past five, and many of the difficulties of to-day will be conquered

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to the west. Our progress was pretty slow, for in addition to searching for the trail we had to chop a road through pressure ridges frequently with the pickaxes. Our reason for trying to follow the old trail was to see if we could find any of the depots. When we arrived in a locality where we thought one of the depots ought to be, we stopped for several hours or perhaps over-night to make a search. I did not expect to find any of them but we did find one which by good luck was in the middle of an old ice floe that had escaped crushing.

The second morning out I shot a small bear, but the rest of the boys would not eat it as they weren't hungry enough yet, so I fed it to the dogs. This was better for them than the pemmican ration.

The morning when we left camp the wind was freshening from the northeast. It gradually increased to a blizzard and kept up for five or six days. In the morning of the sixth day we arrived at the pressed-up ice where the edge of the landfast floe is constantly torn and ground by the moving pack. This proved to he about forty miles north of Wrangell Island. The ice was crushing and tumbling so that we just had to wait for it to stop. I picked out what I thought was a good cake for camping. I then went to have a better look at the ridge and found the ice in a frightful condition. I got on top of a small pinnacle which was not moving just then and found the ridge extended about three and a half miles through such ice as I had never before seen in my twenty-five years' knowledge of the arctic sea. Nothing could he done till the crushing stopped. I had grave fears for the Doctor's and the Mate's parties if they got caught in this - fears which later [proved] only too well justified.

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