stefansson-wrangel-09-15-059

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INTERVIEW with Captain Joseph Bernard.

(In New York, about January 15 or 20, 1923.)

Q. - About when did you leave Nome?

a. - We left Nome around the 18th of August, 1922. Besides my crew there were three white men, one native and his wife, and photographers. (These had been engaged as members of the Wrangell Island colony to spend there the year 1922-23.) The first day was good weather, and the second day we ran into a heavy northwest wind. My intention was to take the northern passage which I thought at that time of year would be the quickest way of getting to Wrangel. The northern passage is to follow the Alaska coast beyond Cape Prince of Wales up to Point Hope and then shoot straight across for the Siberian coast. We ran into a very heavy northwest wind around Cape York and it would have been useless to attempt venturing Bering Strait. So we laid there.

While there, the mail boat Sea Wolf came in from the north and reported that Amundsen's vellel and other vessels that had gone up had been caught in the ice at Point Hope. I got the idea that they were still caught in the ice at that late date. That was about the 20th of August. With the wind that was blowing, it made me change my plan about going north. Instead, I went across to East Cape Siberia. We could get across there although we could not have gone north.

There were about five miles of ice off East Cape, and we went to the station for any news of conditions. The ice was pressing up but on the south side there was good weather. The next day a vessel came down the north Siberian coast. They had made an attempt to get to Tschaun Bay but only got a little west as far as Cape Wankarem. They found an opening in the ice leading north and went into it about twenty miles. Their first intention was to go to Tschaun Bay and when they saw this opening they thought they would try to get to Wrangel. But they only got about twenty miles.

The ship’s name was the EIskum (?). I had a talk with them and they told me that ice conditions would make it impossible to go north. At any rate they advised me to follow the coast. There was a heavy body of old ice right offshore which undoubtedly extended some distance north from East Cape. I thought it would be dangerous to go into the ice and get caught because the northern ice keeps moving north while the inshore ice until very late in the year keeps moving south and drifts you back south, if you do get caught.

I therefore took the inside route. We pushed along for ten, fifteen or twenty miles at a run. The ice would close and we would have to wait there until the next tide, when we could make another run. Staying in the inside waters we got as far as Wankarem. The farther we went the harder it was to go. At Wankarem we met a little trading schooner that had left Nome very early, more than month ahead of us, and she had gone only twenty miles farther than we and had had to give it up. Where they turned back was where the Eskum turned back and where the Silver Wave and other vessels had been caught. One of these vessels they thought would be unable to get out. The Silver Wave was frozen in inside of the inshore ice.

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I concluded it would be impossible to go any farther. I had a hard time to turn back there. I was sqeezed into the ice very tight off Cape Wankarem and it took us three days to draw the boat back. We came as far back as Koliutchin Island, which is a pretty high island. We went up to the top of it and on a clear day could see ice everywhere solid to the north and northwest. But to the east it showed a little open water. So then I went back and followed the coast back as far as Cape Serge, where it looked to me from the top of the island as if there were open water. I entered that lead of open water and started out for two days. In those two days we made around 55 miles, north-northwest off Cape Serge. There we came out into fairly open water where we had no more difficulty. It was foggy and we ran about ten miles into an open water or iceberg area where we didn’t have to buck ice. After making about ten miles we ran into the heavy northern pack, a different ice altogether.

All the ice we had gone through and all the ice we had seen before this time was shore ice. When we came here it was the heavy, old arctic ice, solid. We laid outside of it for two days. The next day it cleared off so we could see everywhere in every direction and there was no sign of open water, not even a mirage of water - nothing but that solid, heavy floe ice. That was around the 12th or 14th of September.

Long before this time everybody in the party that was going to stay there, became quite anxious to turn back. I was not afraid of getting caught as long as I didn’t enter the heavy floe. As long as I stayed in the inside ice we would be carried south into the open water. When everybody was quite satisfied that the attempt was good and strong, I turned back, but I had a lot of trouble getting out. As soon as I turned back the wind shifted to the northeast and packed the ice.

When I got turned back from Wankarem it would have been all right to go with dogs and sleds to Wrangel. (I do not agree - would have been very dangerous and unlikely to succeed. V.S.) But where I turned back from the pack it would at that time of year have been a pretty risky proposition, because it was a little too early to be on the ocean ice. Still, as far as we could see that ice would have been safe to travel on but it would have been very slow travel, full of water and very rough. But from Wankarem it would have been easy travelling along the coast with dog sleds even at that time of year. At Cape North, which is only 110 miles from Wrangel, it would be safe to take a chance in early November. Use as footnote. (I agree with this. Bernard probably did not mean to be misspoke himself quoted as he is in the first sentence of this paragraph. which seems to mean its opposite of this sentence. V.S.) The ice is pretty still there with no large openings. There should be no difficulty going with a sled from Cape North.

It took us about eight days to get to East Cape from where we turned back from the heavy ice pack. The boat only made about a mile and a half an hour with its power and I worked it hard because I wanted to get out quick. I could have laid there and drifted out in about a fortnight, but I pushed out. Lots of times I could see no water at all but the ice was not heavy, small pieces, perhaps half an acre in size. You could come against them and force them apart. Apart from binding the propellers, we didn't suffer any damage, though we chafed the sheathing a little.

We got back to Nome about the 15th of September. The Teddy Bear is now at Nome.

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The day after I got to East Cape, the Chukkak (?), owned by Swanson of Seattle, came in. She is a strong, powerful boat. She was one of the boats that were caught near Cape North. They were in pretty bad shape. They had twice given up all hope of getting out but they had decided, so the captain told me, that it was either get out or be frozen in. They damaged the boat a good deal. They said that the other boats could not get out. The Silver Wave and the Blue Sea could not get out because they were farther ahead, and as long as they could not get to their destination they had better winter where they were.

Q. - What is your idea of the best way of getting to Wrangell Island?

A. - That depends entirely on the conditions. In a fair open season the northern route would be the quickest way of getting there. But in the case of a small boat, if it was a season like this last summer it would be a rather risky proposition to take the northern route. If they did get caught say a hundred miles offshore from any land they would drift to the north like the Karluk did. So far as their lives are concerned there would be no risk but they might be imprisoned and unable to get out. The surest way of getting there would be to follow the coast, and the best boat to follow the coast is a shallow draft boat. After you get past Cape Serge you get a lot of shallow water like the north coast of Alaska. With a boat that can pass inside the ground ice you can go to Cape North where the ice breaks. The southerly winds cause the ice to open there. There you could shove into the ice and even if you did get caught in the ice you would be in a position to be able to go by sled to Wrangel at any time. My idea in making a safe, sure thing would be to push as far north from Cape North as possible, and if conditions looked bad establish a cache there - something to fall back on. Then make a strong effort to get across and if anything happened you could fall back on Cape North and still be prepared to make a sled trip.

Q. - When you got to Nome did you see Captain Hammer, who took the party in to Wrangel?

A. - I didn't see him when I got back to Nome because he was on the Silver Wave, but I saw him the fall after he came back from taking the outfit in to Wrangel Island. I saw him last spring also.

Q. - What did he have to say about the men and their outfit?

A. - Well, he said that he thought those fellows were either pretty courageous or foolish, the way he expressed it, to venture to winter in such a place as Wrangel with so small an outfit. I asked him how little they had or what they had. He said, "I don't know what there was in the cases but it amounted, as far as bulk is concerned, to nothing. I don't see how they could winter one winter with it." I reminded him, of course, that they could get stuff that doesn't bulk much but goes a long way. He didn't seem to have that idea at all. Of course, he is a man who had never outfitted before.

Q. - Did they have pemmican?

A. - I don’t know. If they had pemmican they must have got it in Vancouver or Seattle before they went up. (They had no pemmican. V.S.) The point that I criticized the most from the information I got was the fact that they didn't have a single dog. (They had a team of Nome dogs, considered by Lomen Bros. a fine dog team. V.S.) That is what I understood from Hammer. A sled didn’t matter so much, for they could make one. They had some lumber and a tent.

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Q. - How much ammunition did they have?

A. - I have no idea. I asked about that. Hammer said, "Yes, they had some but I don't know how much they had." In the outfit that they sent in by me this summer, as far as grub was concerned, they were long on flour and I had two tons of flour besides of my own. They could not figure on that. I was supposed to go to Wrangel, lose no time, get there as quick as possible, not stop on the way, and then if we got there successfully on the way back we could trade.

Q. - On the way back did you stop to trade?

A. - I was forced to stop in places but there was no trade. When I decided to turn back at Wankarem there was a trader there who said he would buy all the flour I had. I said I would not sell a pound until I returned. Then I was caught on the end of the point - there is a long peninsula and I was caught on the end of it. While I was there another schooner came down from the north and could not get by. He hauled up to the trader and sold his outfit. When I decided to give it up, the trader said he had bought this outfit and didn't need any more and didn't have anything to buy with. So I was out. I had thought I would sell my own part. Later I sold about $250 or $300 worth of stock belonging to the expedition. I had the bills and knew what it was worth. I turned it over for cost. It saved the lighterage in Nome. I sold possibly about $800 of my own stuff. I didn't make a dollar on it, just turned it over to save the lighterage. Out of the little stuff that was left about $50 worth was damaged. Really that is about all of what it cost as far as I know, that little damage, somewhere around $50.

Q. - About what was the value of the goods sent in by the expedition?

A. - Well, I had bills for around $1600. But there were quite a number of cases of dry goods that had been bought by the Lomens that were supposed to go to different members of the party that I did not have bills for. That was all taken back to Nome and returned to the storekeepers we got it from.

Q. - On the northward trip did you see any game?

A. - There were lots of walrus in that little open space or water that we came to before we were turned back by the heavy pack. The water was alive with them, every single piece of ice was covered with walrus. There must have been hundreds of thousands of them.

Q. - Did you think those were the walrus that usually go north?

A. - This herd that was fifty miles off Cape Serge was the herd that they usually call the Point Barrow herd, mostly cows and calves and only a few bulls. The Siberian herds were lying close up to the coast off Wankerem, and fifteen or twenty miles offshore from Cape Serge. The Eskum told me that they saw a herd a little north of Wankerem.

Q. - What is your idea of there being walrus north or where you turned back?

A. - That pack ice that we turned back from - walrus don't usually go into it. They will stay around the outskirts of it. I could not say just how it would have been say on the southwest and southeastern side of Wrangel Island. Undoubtedly that pack ice would have been lying against Wrangel. On that inside ice there might have been walrus. But it seems the

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general opinion from old timers there that this year would have been a bad year for walrus on Wrangel, because most of the herds were not far north and the Point Barrow herd was so far south. At that time (when we saw them) they should have been away up north in the 70's, and there they were just a little above the arctic circle. I have an idea that although there might have been a few walrus around Wrangel, I don't think the herd would have been very plentiful there this summer. Of course, it is pretty hard to tell when you are a hundred miles away what conditions may be there. Last summer and last fall after they landed there it should have been a good year for walrus. The walrus that year were clear beyond Wankarem. If the party provided and hunted in the fall, shortly after they landed, they undoubtedly could have made a big killing of walrus.

If they wanted to they could make a trip across to Cape North all right. They could get grub there because there are two vessels there with plenty of supplies - the Silver Wave and the Blue Sea that were caught in the ice and hauled inside the ground ice and let themselves be frozen in.

The Teddy Bear`s engines are in Seattle being overhauled, so that they will be like new next spring. I left her in charge of a ship's carpenter so as to have her all ready when I get there in the spring.