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must not be delayed beyond 1913 and that the scientific program of the expedition
should remain substantially as already outlined by me.

When we sailed north in the spring of 1913 one paragraph of our orders
from the Canadian Government instructed us to plant the British flag on any new
or partly unknown lands which the expedition should touch. This brought us
into direct relation with Wrangell Island, a land originally discovered by a
British naval expedition.

However, we did not have the intention to sail for Wrangell Island.
Indeed, our plan was to go in a different direction, but Fate took a hand. The
ice hemmed in one of our ships, the Karluk, late in the summer of 1913, and
carried her a prisoner west along the north coast of Alaska and then in the
direction of Wrangell Island, near which she sank in January, 1914, the men
landing early in March. Our expedition at this stage had three ships. I was with
the other two at Collinson Foint, in northeastern Alaska, ignorant for more than
a year of the fate of the Karluk, which was under the charge of her sailing master,
Captain Robert A. Bartlett, a native of Newfoundland and in Canadian employ
although then recently become a naturalized citizen of the United States. After
making a landing on Wrangell, Captain Bartlett instructed his men to remain there,
while he, with one companion, crossed the hundred mile ice bridge to the European and native settlements of Siberia
and then proceeded seven hundred miles across country to Emma Harbor to send out a
wireless call for help.

Many ships responded. The Russian Government instructed their
ice-breakers, Taimyr and Vaigatch, to proceed to Wrangell Island. They had not
been able to get within sight of the island, however, when they received a
wireless telling that the Great War had started and that they must return south.
The United States revenue cutter Bear made an attempt but also failed. Several
private ships tried. The successful one was the King and Winge under her owner,
Olaf Swenson, who had been induced to make the attempt by Burt M. McConnell, a former member of our expedition. Her Captain, A.T.P. Jochimsen, was used to the sort of
ice he had to contend with and wormed his way up to the island. Southward bound