stefansson-wrangel-09-15-059-003

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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 north-
ern 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 cour-
ageous 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, con-
sidered 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.