stefansson-wrangel-09-11-030-002

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in that country that Wrangel Island would be of great importance to
Japan when transpolar air commerce developed.

I now made up my mind to do something privately and secretly.
It happened that a number of men who had been members of my previous
expeditions were eager to go to the polar regions again. The two most
suitable of these happened to be citizens of the United States. One of
them, E. Lorne Knight, was eager to become a Canadian citizen for the
purpose of making our enterprise Canadian, but we found the law to be
such that the citizenship could not be acquired in time. In order to
make the enterprise indubitably British, even though manned by citizens
of other countries, I enlisted the help of my friend, A. J. Taylor, then
of the Credit Foncier Building, Vancouver, to organize a British company.
This was chartered under the laws of British Columbia as the Stefansson
Arctic Exploration and Development Company, At first we thought of
putting Mr. Knight in command but, still with the thought of making
the enterprise absolutely British, we decided upon legal advice that
it would be better to put the technical command in the hands of a
British subject. In this connection we secured the services of a very
admirable young man, Allan Crawford, of Toronto, and put him in command
of the enterprise. This was a little dangerous for, in spite of appar-
ently the best personal qualifications, Mr. Crawford was both young and
inexperienced. I think he thoroughly realized this inexperience, how-
ever. The understanding was that while he was in real command, he would
make the fullest use of the advice of Mr. Knight, who had accompanied me
on several of my sledge journeys, and Mr. Maurer, who had lived in Wrangel
Island for more than six months in 1914.

The documents in your hands cover pretty fully how the expedi-
tion was despatched from Seattle to Nome, a small schooner, the Silver
Wave, chartered in Nome, and the men landed on Wrangel Island in Sep-
tember , 1921. This enterprise ran smoothly and was wholly successful.
Our party landed on Wrangel before any other party had done so, which
kept clear our title to the island. They reached it without seeing a
cake of ice on the whole voyage and wrote back brief but enthusiastic
letters about the prospect of a favorable winter. It was understood
that we would send a supply ship to them and there was a tentative plan
that I would come North myself to use the island as a base for further
polar exploration.

However, I had many conversations with authorities on air navi-
gation and submarine navigation, the last including the officer of the
British Navy who had been in charge of submarine operations under ice
to the north of Russia during the war. I became more and more impressed
with the imminence of the development of transpolar air commerce and
transpolar commerce by submarine, both depending only upon enterprise
and international conditions, mechanical difficulties having already
been solved both as to air and water. This made me decide to give up
polar exploration entirely, my opinion being that all the polar regions
will be opened to our knowledge as a mere incident of commercial devel-
opment within the next decade or two. Anyone who now wants to explore
the polar regions must be doing so with a nervous fear as to whether
his work can be accomplished before development of another kind makes