stefansson-wrangel-09-14-109-002

-2-

that his comrades had of Lorne and the fact that a vote among them
would certainly have placed him higher than Noice when it came to a
judgement either of mental or physical ability. Calling them inexperi-
enced is inexcusable on Noice's part. Fred had less experience than
Lorne but even so he had been on two voyages totaling nearly three
years and had actually been on Wrangell Island six months. With sound
common sense and with experience he was at least as well fitted as I
to judge whether our undertaking had the margin of safety which we
ordinarily expect in polar work. Lorne's experience in the North was
between three and four years. He had accompanied me on one of my long-
est journeys and had been with Storkerson on one of the most remarkable
journeys ever made in the polar regions. He had actually traveled more
over moving ice than any explorer now living except Storkerson and
myself - much more than Noice who calls him inexperienced. When Fred
Maurer sailed North he had more experience than Scott had when he sailed
South in command of his second expedition, and Lorne had more experience
than Shackleton. In fact, the whole record of arctic exploration shows
but a very few men who have had more experience when they sailed on
their last expeditions than Lorne had in 1921.

I hope you will re-read in "The Friendly Arctic"
Chapters XIV to XVII. You will then understand what probably happened
to the three boys on their way to the mainland. If Noice had only
truthfully presented that as probably an accident and that of the kind
most common of all accidents in polar exploration, then Mrs. Crawford
would have been relieved from perhaps the most distressing element of
of the anguish she now feels. There is no reason to think that either
the men or the dogs of the Wrangell Island party were as much weakened
as our party were in the spring of 1917 when we had to struggle a hundred
and fifty miles ashore after Lorne and Noice became ill on the ice to
the northwest of Isachsen Land (see pp. 613-620). Still had we broken
through the ice and been lost on that journey it would have been wrong
to intimate that starvation had anything to do with it. It would have
been a simple accident such as those of which we have records in the books
of practically every arctic explorer.

In your correspondence with Mrs. Crawford you can deal
with only such points as she raises herself in her letters unless you wish
to make direct comments on what you have seen published by Noice. Bear
in mind in writing her that she is not nearly so well informed as you.
Both you and the Maurers have had the advantage of many conversations
with the boys and of knowing their attitude, while the Crawfords know
only the published Noice story.

Mr. J. I. Knight,
McMinnville, Oregon.