stefansson-wrangel-09-28-024

125

Chapter IX

THE HISTORY OF THE WRANGELL ISLAND DOCUMENTS

- ** -

The plan of this book is to tell the story chronologically, not
in the sequence in which things actually happened, but in the order in which they
came to my knowledge privately. In general this corresponds to the order in which
the events also became known through the press. The public got the news in
garbled form; but that, again, is another story.

The vicissitudes of the documents upon which we now base the history
of the Wrangell Island occupation and the reasons for the incorrect impressions given through the newspapers cannot be understood without a brief sketch of
the career of Mr. Harold Noice who was in charge of the Donaldson. Mr. Noice
was born in the United States. His education was chiefly in the city of Seattle
where he was in the middle of high school when he decided to discontinue his
education studies in favor of a motion picture enterprise. He had fallen in with
another young man who promised to furnish the necessary money for transportation
and outfit. The two of them were to go to Alaska and perhaps beyond, securing
such pictures as they could. One part of the eventual arrangement was that Mr.
Noice was taken as a passenger by Captain Louis Lane of the Polar Bear, which sailed
from Seattle the spring of 1915. The plan had been that Mr. Noice's partner with
the necessary funds would meet the Polar Bear in Nome, but neither the partner
nor the money arrived. Mr. Noice was then shipped as one of the crew, forced to take a job on the Polar
Bear to pay for his passage. The vessel ship proceeded eastward past the north coast
of Alaska and arrived eventually in Banks Island. I have told on pages 393-396
of "The Friendly Arctic" how they fell in with our expedition at Cape Kellett and
how we purchased the Polar Bear. The crew were given the option of staying with
the ship on salary from the Canadian Government or returning south with Captain
Lane. About two-thirds of the officers and men elected to remain with our