stefansson-wrangel-09-31

Dont forget editing [pIf ] about Pitt, etc.

Copy of Corrections sent Cape by Mr. Campbell, May 1925 Later corrections added July 15- 1925

THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

P.126- Professor Manley Hudson change later if his reply requires it-

BY

VILHJALMUR STEFANSSON The Friendly Arctic My Life With the Eskimo The Northward Course of Empire Hunters of the Great North

Kak, the Copper Eskimo (in collaboration with Violet Irwin)

Northword, Ho! (in collabroation with Julia Schwartz)

WRANGEL ISLAND 1922.

FRONT ROW LEFT TO RIGHT, CRAWFORD, ADA BLACKJACK AND GALLE. BACK ROW LEFT TO RIGHT, MAURER AND KNIGHT. CRAWFORD IS SEEN PULLING THE STRING TO OPERATE THE CAMERA.

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THE ADVENTURE of WRANGEL ISLAND

Written By VILHJALMUR STEFANSSON

With the Collaboration of JOHN IRVINE KNIGHT

Upon the Diary of Whose Son ERROL LORNE KNIGHT The Narrative is Mainly Based

New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1925 All rights reserved

Copyright, 1925,

By VILHJALMUR STEFANSSON

-------------------------- Set up and electrotyped. Published, April, 1925.

Printed in the United States of America by THE FERRIS PRINTING COMPANY, NEW YORK.

PREFACE

This book has been written under difficulties that are not ordinary. Crawford, Galle, Knight, Maurer and I were friends and disciples of a common faith; two of them had been with me on a former expedition through illness, hunger and shipwreck. Now they are dead and I have had to write their story. In that writing I found myself continually handicapped by too strong a sympathy for the aims of the work I was describing and too personal an affection for the heroes of that stern adventure. Fearing I might say too much, I have, I fear, said too little, especially about the nobility and unselfishness of their motives. They were patriots in the Canadian and the Imperial sense through what they did; but in their minds was a larger patriotism, for they believed in the coming unification of the English-speaking peoples and thought that whatever they might do either for the Empire or for the United States they would be doing for both. They were gallant adventurers in the Elizabethan meaning of that word, pioneers whom we have all the more reason to admire now that their frontier type is gradually disappearing from every country under the softening influence of our coddling civilization.

I was, then, handicapped in the writing of this book by the fear that my sympathies might lead me into what would seem over-zealous advocacy or intemperate praise. Obsessed by that fearI have been led into the contrary error of hiding my sympathies too well and writing as if I did not myself see the heroism and glowing romance

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viii PREFACE

between the lines of the mutilated and tragic diary of Lorne Knight. That defect of over-restraint, clear now too late when the book lies printed before me, I must at least explain in this preface written at the last moment.

We five were dreamers who would not believe what some told us, that the romance of territorial expansion by discovery and colonization is now a century out of date. So we planned exploits like those of Drake and John Smith and Captain Cook. We saw no reason why such adventures should cease, for the world still has an uncolonized fringe in the north, and beyond it lies the last remnant of the geographically unknown. Every book on international law we could find said that an island previously uninhabited and beyond the defined limit of any country’s territorial waters, belonged to the nation that first effectively occupied it, and doubly so if the occupying nation happened to be the one which discovered it. We knew of an island a hundred miles from any occupied country, British by discovery, American by first exploration, and now unoccupied by any nation. We decided to colonize that island to prevent some third nation from making it legally theirs by occupying it ahead of us.

We found no authority who doubted the British right to plant a colony, but it seemed that the Canadian Government, in whose service three of us had already discovered and explored arctic lands, did not consider Wrangel Island worth the bother of colonizing. We may have understood the Government wrongly, for I did not have a chance the summer of 1921 to talk with the Prime Minister or Cabinet and letters are unsatisfactory. But we felt sure that on the same legal basis they would have colonized an otherwise correspondingly placed tropical island. In other words, we thought they agreed with us

PREFACE ix

on law and ethics but not on the commercial and strategic values of Wrangel Island. But we five were as sure of the value of the island as we were of the law and the rights of the case, and we thought all men would come to agree with us on every point when they learned the facts we knew. In that, again, we may have been mistaken; but we could act only on what we thought. We were enthusiastically willing to do so. One of us, Fred Maurer, had dug at Rodgers Harbor the graves on which rested a small part of our legal and a big part of our moral claim to Wrangel Island. In his romantic moods he used to say he wanted to go back there and watch beside the crosses which he had raised over the graves of his comrades until the nation they died for began to see some meaning in their death.

We were all romantic and eager—three of us from the start and Crawford and Galle later. What led to action was that the four of them eventually said to me in effect, “Help us to get to Wrangel Island. We’ll continue the legal occupation until you convince the Government it will pay them to stand on their legal rights. If you can’t swing Ottawa, you’ll have better luck in the Old Country.”

So started our glorious adventure. It seems glorious to me still, though it has become tragic on their part and may easily become a failure on mine. They knew it was dangerous but they did not expect to die; I knew it was difficult to convince busy politicians of so new an idea as the value of an arctic island for a flying base, but I did not expect to fail. In that spirit we agreed that we would pool all the money we had; with it they would buy in Seattle and Nome as much as they could of what they liked for an outfit and go North without letting their

x PREFACE

plans be known. As to equipment, the choice was their own, for they and not I were going and Knight and Maurer had almost as much experience in the Arctic as I. Maurer had even been six months on Wrangel itself, while neither Knight nor I had ever seen it. In certain matters of plan and equipment, Maurer was therefore our guide and court of last resort.

Some friends who have read the proofs of this book as it was going through the press have said that the narrative makes it plain why I remained South while Crawford, Galle, Knight and Maurer went North; others say this needs clearer restatement in this preface, and perhaps it does.

From the point of view of the four who went, the reason I stayed behind was that such was the division of labor upon which we had agreed on the basis of what we thought of each other’s capacities. They were as well qualified as I to go North to hold our political rights in Wrangel Island, while I was supposed to be better fitted than any of them to convince the Government meantime that our rights were worth holding. The result may have showed that I was not well chosen for the subdivision of the common task that was assigned to me; he who reads this book will see that they succeeded far better than I.

Besides agreeing with my colleagues as just outlined, I had reasons of my own for not going. I had already served in arctic exploration longer than any well-known explorer—I had spent ten arctic winters, as against nine for Peary, who had previously held the record for polar service, and as against seven polar winters (arctic or antarctic), the highest record, so far as I know, for any living commander of polar expeditions.

In a way my length of arctic service was a reason for

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE.................................................................vii

INTRODUCTION, by John I. Knight.........................................xix

Chapter Page

I. The Background of the Story....................................... 1

II. The Early History of Wrangel Island.....................15

III. The Fatal Drift of the Karluk...........................27

IV. The Sinking of the Ship and the Journey Ashore..........44

V. The Summer of 1914 on Wrangel Island....................55

VI. The Planning of the New Expedition..........................67

VII. The Outfitting and the Voyage to Wrangel................91

VIII. The Difficulties of 1922 ................................ 118

IX. The Summer of 1923 and the Tragic News..................143

X. The History of the Wrangel Island Documents.............170

XI. The First Autumn on Wrangel Island......................180

XII. The First Winter and the Second Summer...........................210

XIII. The Second Winter and the Tragic End.............................232 XIV. Explanation and Apology of Mr. Harold Noice

XV. XIV. The Developments of 1924 ....................................... 297

APPENDICES

I. The Fragmentary Papers of Milton Galle..................315

II. Ada Blackjack...........................................327

III. The Report of Captain Joseph Bernard on the Relief Operations of 1922............................................................ 351

IV. The Vicissitudes of the Wrangel Island Documents .... 356

V. Further Consideration of the Charge by Mr. Harold Noice that

Ada Blackjack was Responsible for the Death of Lome Knight 380

VI. Summary of the History and Political Situation of Wrangel Island 393

VII. Plover Land............................................399

VIII. Discussions in the Parliament of Canada about Wrangel Island . 410

IX. The Russian Visit to Wrangel Island.....................414

X. Letter to the President of the University of Toronto about Proposed Expedition ..............................................416

XI. The Contributors to the Wrangel Island Relief of 1923 .... 419

v

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PREFACE xi

staying at home; and still not a good one, for he who loves his work, and the field of his work, should not retire till he has become useless. But there were good reasons. If I succeeded in getting government or influential private backing, I wanted to be south to organize a comprehensive arctic expedition, or series of expeditions. But whether I succeeded or failed in that, I wanted to remain south to continue my campaign of education with regard to the arctic regions. I wanted especially to try to reform the arctic sections of the geography textbooks and in general to influence school and college teaching. This seemed to me not only a duty to science but also particularly my duty toward my native land, Canada, whose future depends so much on what the arctic portions of her territory are worth, and on how soon their real nature can be understood and taken advantage of.

If I were to write here all my reasons for not going North in 1921, this introduction would turn into a prospectus of my hopes and plans for the rest of my life. That would not interest the reader. What I have said, when coupled with the narrative of the book, will surely make it clear enough why I stayed when my associates sailed away.

And who could be better qualified for going North than the four young men who went? Galle was only nineteen, it is true, but if you had seen him you would not have thought him too young. At seventeen, Martin Kilian of my 1913-18 expedition had proved himself one of our good men; Peary had found Borup at twenty-three one of the best men he ever had.

Insert

Crawford at twenty seems a little young only because he was to be called commander. But history is full of commanders and great leaders of various sorts who were at that age or near it. Alexander Hamilton was nineteen when he became one of the prime movers in the American Revolution. That was no mere flash in the pan due to accident, for the more his work is studied by historians the more his stature [grov]. in comparison with that of his colleagues and contemporaries. Alexander the Great was twenty when he took command of the armies and began his conquest of the ancient world. Lesser but famous captains in the armies, of nearly every country have been young men. ([centixxx] TP)

PREFACE

xi

staying at home; and still not a good one, for he who loves his work, and the field of his work, should not retire till he has become useless. But there were good reasons. If I succeeded in getting government or influential private backing, I wanted to be south to organize a comprehensive arctic expedition, or series of expeditions. But whether I succeeded or failed in that, I wanted to remain south to continue my campaign of education with regard to the arctic regions. I wanted especially to try to reform the arctic sections of the geography textbooks and in general to influence school and college teaching. This seemed to me not only a duty to science but also particularly my duty toward my native land, Canada, whose future depends so much on what the arctic portions of her territory are worth, and on how soon their real nature can be understood and taken advantage of.

If I were to write here all my reasons for not going North in 1921, this introduction would turn into a prospectus of my hopes and plans for the rest of my life. That would not interest the reader. What I have said, when coupled with the narrative of the book, will surely make it clear enough why I stayed when my associates sailed away.

And who could be better qualified for going North than the four young men who went? Galle was only nineteen, it is true, but if you had seen him you would not have thought him too young. At seventeen, Martin Kilian of my 1913-18 expedition had proved himself one of our good men; Peary had found Borup at twenty-three one of the best men he ever had.

Crawford at twenty seems a little young only because he was to be called Commander. But William Pitt was Chancellor of the Exchequer of the British Empire at Get [oges] of Alexander the Great when he took command of his armies, Jefferson and Hamilton at Decl. of Independence, and any other great young men. Then we must rewrite this.

xii

PREFACE

twenty-three, and Prime Minister, a more difficult task than the command of a polar expedition, at twenty-four. And Pitt was a real premier. Crawford proved a real commander, too, though he was placed in authority for tactical reasons only, as this book will tell.

Either Knight at twenty-eight with four years of hard and varied arctic training, or Maurer at twenty-nine with scarcely less experience, should have been the commander. And they really were commanders, in the sense that Crawford promised—and later kept the promise—to do everything by their advice. It was really a smoothly working committee-of-the-whole which governed the expedition. There was a theoretical danger that such extreme democracy might not work. We need theorize no longer, for the records are in. We now know that democracy worked on Wrangel Island, that co-operation never failed through the two years, and that the comrades were faithful to their trust and loyal to each other literally unto death.

There is some slight hope—very slight—that other records of the Wrangel Island expedition may be found to supplement our present knowledge. But, practically, we may feel that the evidence is all in. We are not afraid to place the case unreservedly in the hands of the jury of public opinion, as we do in this book. We who live have much to regret; they who died have nothing they could have wished to conceal.

********

Neither in this preface nor anywhere in any way can I offer adequate thanks or show sufficient admiration for the manner in which the crushing loss of son, hus-

PREFACE

xiii

band or brother has been borne by the relatives. But I can at least thank especially the families of the two veterans, Lorne Knight and Frederick Maurer, for their tireless efforts to lessen the grief of the parents of the younger men, Allan Crawford and Milton Galle, by sharing with them the better understanding of arctic life and conditions which they had secured from their explorer sons when they had been at home in the intervals between their expeditions. For Knight had been north with me four years between 1915 and 1919 and Maurer had been in the Arctic twice, the second time with me when he was shipwrecked on Wrangel Island itself in 1914.

With a heart too full for words in any case, I have attempted in this book no eulogy of the dead. Their actions and worthy motives are their best monument. What their thoughts and deeds were is shown by the fragments of records we have received from Crawford, Galle and Maurer and especially by the one preserved diary, that of Lorne Knight, upon which this book is mainly based. Through his laconic narrative, so frank that he evidently never even asked himself whether he was being frank, there stand out clear the personalities of four gallant gentlemen who remained staunch comrades through two difficult years of isolation. A record that is complete and matter-of-fact to the bitter end shows that not once did even one of them shirk a task or a responsibility. That this is no mere rhetoric the scholars of the world will eventually have a chance to see for themselves, for we shall present photostat copies of Lorne Knight’s diary to one or more leading libraries in Canada, the United States and England, and copies also of all the other records. The general frankness of the diary is such that the reader is unable to doubt that if

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PREFACE

there had been troubles or recriminations they would have been set down. That there were none to record is nearly, if not quite, unique in polar exploration. Many expeditions have concealed their bickerings; few have had none to conceal.

I always had great confidence that the Wrangel Island Expedition could trust the verdict of anyone who knew every action and motive. With that constantly before me I have tried in writing this book not only to be frank, but also to give the reader a chance to look deeper if he wants to and convince himself that we really have been frank. Within the limits set by my capacity and by the hurry and worry of composing a book before a certain date while at the same time fighting for the possession of some of the documents on which the story had to be based (as explained farther on in this book)—within these limits I had already done my best to tell the reader the whole truth, when I got, strangely late, an idea that should have been in my mind at the very first.

One man now living knows more than any other about the planning of the Wrangel Island Expedition and the relation to it of its four members—John I. Knight, the father of Lorne Knight. Not only had he heard his son talk for year after year about the varied experiences of his first four seasons in the Arctic and about his hopes and plans of further arctic work, but he knew also Fred Maurer and Milton Galle, who had visited his home at McMinnville, Oregon, as guests of his son. Although Maurer had been there for fewer days than Galle had been weeks, I knew that both Mr. and Mrs. Knight had formed a personal affection for them both. They knew Allan Crawford only through a day’s visit and through their son’s enthusiastic report, but even so the relation

PREFACE

xv

was personal. Mr. Knight knew what both his son and Fred Maurer thought of the arctic expedition of 19131918 of which they had been members, and what they thought of me who had been their commander then and was planning with them now a new expedition. Here was a man whose point of view the reader would value more than that of any other. And yet I had been planning until the last moment to get some famous authority on geography or world politics to read my manuscript and write an introduction for this book!

When it occurred to me to ask Mr. Knight to write the introduction, I was just taking ship for Australia. There was barely time for a letter to him and no time to receive his answer. I asked him merely to let me know his decision in Australia, saying I would not have wanted to review the introduction before publication even had I been in America, but that I was now in any case unable to do so, for the book must go to the printer in less time than it takes to send a manuscript to Australia and get an annotated copy back. I shall not know, therefore, until after publication what comment Mr. Knight may choose to make on this book and on the expedition. But I have asked him to do what he can do so much better than I—to speak of his knowledge of his son’s relations with his comrades both before the expedition and on it, and especially to quote what Lorne wrote about them in his letters home from Wrangel Island.

At the close I must speak once more of my gratitude to friends who have helped with money. I am trying to get for the appendix of this book from Mr. Griffith Brewer a full list of those who contributed to the sending of the Donaldson to Wrangel Island in 1923. By looking in the appendix the reader may see if it has been possible

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PREFACE

to make up this list. A. J. T. Taylor and John Anderson of the Combustion Engineering Corporation, Toronto, Canada, have had the thankless task of handling nearly all the outfitting and other commercial affairs of the Expedition. Their motives, aside from personal friendship, have been only those of a firm belief in the wisdom and importance of what we were trying to do; their only possible reward the same as that of the rest of us—the consciousness of having done their utmost for a cause they believe in. Lomen Brothers, of Nome, Alaska, (especially Ralph Lomen) have handled all our Alaskan affairs without pay—the outfitting of the Silver Wave in 1921, the Teddy Bear in 1922, and the Donaldson in 1923. The late Sir Edmund Walker, president of the Canadian Bank of Commerce, who helped to finance my first expedition to the Arctic in 1906, gave the largest Canadian contribution to the Wrangel Island Expedition and supported us in every way. For England I must mention that Colonel L. S. Amery,¹ not only contributed himself but secured for us contributions from others to the amount of more than £600. Several friends in the United States made me unsecured personal loans. It was Orville Wright of Dayton, Ohio, who loaned me the money which enabled us to outfit the Teddy Bear in 1922 a week before we got the grant from the Canadian Government. As stated elsewhere, Griffith Brewer of 33 Chancery Lane, London, loaned me (against anticipated public subscriptions) the money which outfitted the Donaldson in 1923, a loan which turned out to be considerably in excess of the receipts through subscriptions, so that we are still heavily in his debt.

So fan as loans are concerned, I have already begun to

¹ Now Minister for the Colonies.

PREFACE xvii pay off these debts and hope to manage the rest in two or three years. For I want to be eventually the only financial loser. But my gratitude to those who helped will remain undiminished when the money has been repaid.

Yilhjalmur Stefansson.

Sydney, Australia.

May 28, 1924.

Postscript

Many things have changed since I wrote the above preface in Australia. To begin with, we have received a retraction (from the author of certain misleading newspaper stories about the Wrangel Island Expedition) in exchange for which we agreed to re-edit the book. This has delayed publication another six months.

The book did not go to press as I had anticipated (without my seeing Mr. Knight’s introduction) while I was still absent in Australia. When I returned to the United States and saw the introduction, I got his permission to move certain parts of it into the body of the narrative. He has also since then read my manuscript over carefully and made valuable suggestions for changes. As time wore on his collaboration became so important that he is now in reality a co-author of this book—a very proper relation, since he understood our general arctic plans even before the party went north (though he did not know about their application to ]]Wrangel Island]]). A still more important reason for his appearing as co-author is that the book depends mainly on his son’s diary and other papers—for the records of ]]Crawford]] and ]]Maurer]] were lost, as were most of ]]Galle]]’s records.

PREFACE

xviii

When Mr. Knight and I decided to take joint responsibility for the whole of this book as co-authors, it was too late to change to “we” all the frequent personal pronouns. But the reader will not be greatly confused. I am writing this second preface just on going to press and Mr. Knight has not seen it. His name is specially signed to the introduction only, and he composed outright only a few other things. But there are important cases where I have modified my statements according to his suggestions, and he has just signified to me by telegram his desire that we shall be held equally and jointly responsible for everything that either of us has said.

Vilhjalmur Stefansson.

New York, February 16, 1925.

INTRODUCTION

In presenting this book to the world, Mr. Stefansson has been compelled to labor under the most trying circumstances possible; trying because of conditions created by the reprehensible conduct of Harold Noice and the strong public and private feelings that have been born of his newspaper misrepresentation mistreatment of the facts concerning the Wrangel Island expedition.

I believe that in writing this book Mr. Stefansson he has been actuated by one single desire, to do full and impartial justice to all with whom he has to deal.

I believe that one of the chief reasons for the partly or wholly wrong ideas held by the public is a lack of a comprehensive understanding of the situation in the great expanse of the North. When the news of the tragedy of Wrangel Island first came to me even I, too, was confused notwithstanding the fact that, having had a son in the Arctic from 1915 until 1919, I had kept a close watch on all that was published of the northern portion of the world, had always icept a map hanging handy so I could study the geography of the Arctic, and had learned a great deal more of that land than the average citizen and I deemed myself to have a pretty good understanding of the situation. Yet, when I talked later with many who had had personal experiences there, I realized that there was a vastness about the whole Northern area that made it very easy for me to form an erroneous conception of the conditions. I am slower now to say that such a man should have done so and so, and another should not have done as he did do.

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INTRODUCTION xx

My son, E. Lorne Knight, on whose diary this book is chiefly based, had had some wonderful experiences when he was with Mr. Stefansson for four years in the Arctic on a previous expedition and they all pass through my mind in a kaleidoscopic view as I write this introduction.

In 1915, Lorne went north as a member of the crew of the whaling schooner Polar Bear, Captain Louis L. Lane, owner and master, for a season’s whaling in the Arctic. On August 17, the ship connected with Mr. Stefansson at Cape Kellett, on Banks Land, and was bought by him. Thus Lome became a member of the Canadian Arctic Expedition. His discharge was dated, to a day, four years after his enlistment.

In company with Mr. Stefansson, Lorne and Harold Noice and an Eskimo travelled over the ice to a point at 80 degrees 28 minutes North, in the spring of 1917. On this trip, Noice was the first to develop scurvy, but Lorne developed the same a few days later, and they came near dying from the disease. I am convinced that had it not been for the recurrence of this disease in Lorne, on Wrangel Island, there would have been no tragedy, because the party would have been able to survive the difficulties of living off the country if he had kept well.

I base my opinion for this assertion on the fact that Lorne was none the worse for the experience of scurvy in 1917, for traveling the same summer on the ice, when he waded from knee to waist-deep for hours each day in the water on top of the ice, from having lain in a snow house for nine days with frozen feet, with no food except raw oatmeal, while a blizzard raged outside, and from having gone with Storker Storkerson and three other companions more than two hundred miles North from

INTRODUCTION xxi

the north coast of Alaska, where they took up their home on a floating field, or floe, of ice, living there and drifting with the winds from March until November. During the time of their stay on the ice floe, they had six weeks’ provisions lashed on their sled for travel, but this was not touched and they lived entirely from the food furnished by seals and polar bears which they killed, returning to the north coast of Alaska the day the armistice was signed. This shows Lorne’s physical qualities and the kind of schooling he had been through before he went to Wrangel Island.

During all of these experiences, his faith in Mr. Stefansson was 100 per cent, and continued so throughout all the time he was home; and it was based on this faith that the statement has been made that they staked their lives on each other, and that, “if Mr. Stefansson should say that he would meet Lorne on the moon at a fixed date, if it were possible, Lorne would be there, because he would know that “Stef” would be there too.”

It was this faith that caused him to stake his life on an enterprise backed by Mr. Stefansson.

It seems that the situation on Wrangel Island developed unusual qualities in Allan Crawford, because Lorne says, in his diary, that he will “put Crawford against any one he ever knew, old or young, except Stefansson.” That is the highest tribute he could pay his companion.

In saying this, he had no idea of discounting the qualities of Maurer and Galle, his other two companions. I have his diary in its original form, written by himself (all except the pages which have been torn out, and paragraphs erased by Noice under the circumstances which Mr. Stefansson explains in the appendix to this book), and in it all there is not a single word of complaint or criticism of the men

xxii INTRODUCTION

he had been associated with through the solitude of one and a half years in the fastness of the Arctic.

I had the good fortune to know Milton Galle, a lad of twenty with a brilliant mentality and a charming personality, when he lived with us in our home for a few weeks before they left for Wrangel Island. I met Frederick Maurer at my home, where Lorne brought him from his Chautauqua lectures, and I liked him. Allan Crawford, Lorne brought to our home, where Lorne’s mother took great pride in preparing a splendid dinner for him and Mr. Stefansson. Milton Galle was there spending a week with us. This day, for an hour or so, is all that I was ever permitted to be in company with Allan Crawford. This occasion and the presence of all of the boys, except Frederick Maurer, will always be a bright recollection. What an enjoyable two hours we had together!

I want to pay my respects to Harold Noice with regard to the narratives and charges concerning the Wrangel Island expedition which he has broadcasted through the newspapers. He was so fed up on notoriety, spiced with egotism, that he lost all sense of the propriety and fitness of things; and When he returned from Wrangel Island in 1923 with the startling news of the tragedy, he became intoxicated with his own greatness and insane over his imagined authority, and, with a high hand, he dealt out to himself glory, ignoring the rights and feelings of others.

He appropriated Lorne’s diary and sold it for his own gain, he mutilated it and gave a coloring to his writings which was unfair to the unfortunate boys and painful to their people. In one paragraph he speaks of Lorne as his “Pal,” his “Trailmate” and his “Friend,” because he

ax 30.0 in 11.6 Today we hauked ice + cut wood. I started to make a sled for wood hauling and of lumber brought from Nome. The ice covered with young, [Gnokiniup] ice. Fresh breeze from the East. Warm. Part by [dig].

Nov 3 Thursday ax 30.5 lan 16.5 Crawford and Galle each with a back pain started at P.M. for the [] to climb the large mountain North of camp. We have been calling this mountain Benny Peak, as shown on the map, but East of us can be seen another mountain; which may be "Benny Peak", and until we are sure of our location we do not know which is which. The explorers will leave a record and monument on the mountain and Crawford intends to do some apologized work. I worked on the wood sled + Maurer put in a floor, in Vic tents of split logs. Cloudy + light [] from the N. E. Ice is ice covered to the []

SPECIMAN PAGE FROM DIARY OF E. LORNE KNIGHT SHOWING ERASURE BY MR. HAROLD NOICE.

ADA BLACKJACK WITH MR. AND MRS. J. I. KNIGHT, THE PARENTS OF LORNE KNIGHT, AT THEIR HOME IN MCMINNVILLE, OREGON.

INTRODUCTION xxiii

knew that Lorne had many friends among those who knew him, and it was water on Noice’s wheel to speak of him thus, but, in the next paragraph, he would refer to him in uncomplimentary terms indicating his inferiority to himself.

Together with the diary which Noice piratically appropriated, were other papers, among them a personal letter which Lorne had been writing to his mother over a period from November, 1921, until August, 1922. Noice pilfered this also and kept it from us until he had made what use of it he could, returning it after several months, the heading torn off the first page and otherwise mutilated. What can I say of a man who will thus desecrate a private letter of a dead boy written to his mother?

Special tribute is due the unusual quality of the bighearted manhood and sympathetic philanthropy of that English gentleman, Griffith Brewer. When I first heard of his generosity I supposed him to be interested only in the brave, romantic and unselfish work of the four men on Wrangel Island. I thought he was merely wanting to help them to success or to prevent them from paying for their courage with their lives. But I have just learned that Mr. Brewer and Lorne had met at the home of Orville Wright at Dayton, Ohio, when Lorne and Mr. Stefansson were visiting there the winter of 1921. Mr. Brewer says that this gave him an added personal interest in the party, turned the scales in his mind, and induced him, not a wealthy man, to advance $10,000 F2,500 to finance the trip of the Donaldson to the Island for the relief of the boys. The fact that the Donaldson was too late to save the lives of the party in no wise dims the luster of his generous deed.

This book deals with a great many activities, both in

xxiv INTRODUCTION

the wilds of the Arctic regions and in civilization, in the United States, in Canada and in London, and especially with the political influences on the explorers and with the journeys of the individuals, but the inspiration for the book, the foundation of it, and the pivot around which it revolves is the group of four young men and an Eskimo woman isolated on an arctic island. Allan R. Crawford, whose record shows up so well through Lorne’s diary, was Commander. E. Lorne Knight was officially Second-inCommand, but his ideas gained through four previous years of stern arctic experiences on Stefansson’s last expedition, controlled the party. Frederick W. Maurer was also a veteran who had spent two summers and a winter as an arctic whaler with Stephen Cottle, one of the most famous of New England whaling captains, and then two other arctic summers and a winter with Stefansson—an invaluable preparation, especially as six months of it had been on Wrangel Island itself. And well did he make use of that experience and of excellent natural qualifications, as Lorne’s diary shows and as this book shows since it follows the diary. Milton Galle seemed to us promising when he visited his friend, our son Lorne, at our home while the expedition was being planned, and the record in Lorne’s diary and Crawford’s letter show that he measured up to every expectation. Ada Blackjack went along as a seamstress, for in the Arctic no white men’s clothes are half as good as those the Eskimos make. After the death of our son, whom she did her best to nurse safely through his last illness, she visited his mother and me at our home. I shall not attempt to express here my warm feelings for her, because Mr. Ste--¹ fansson has incorporated into the main body of this book what I think of her, of the charges against her published-

1 In the present edition this material has been placed in the appendix.

INTRODUCTION

xxv

by Mr. Noice, and (so far as I want to express it in print) what I think of Mr. Noice for making through the newspapers such cruel and unfounded accusations.

The tragedy of Wrangel Island was the culmination of an enterprise which was conceived by those who undertook it, as well as by Mr. Stefansson who was financing it. They appreciated the disadvantages under which they were going north, the limited financial resources of Mr. Stefansson, and the chances that the Canadian Government might not come to his support. They limited themselves in equipment and supplies, but they were all willing and glad to take their share of the chances. I believe that if they could be heard to speak now, not one of them would find any fault with any of their associates in the North or with Mr. Stefansson.

The heroism and fortitude of the four boys, all under thirty, with bright prospects for lives of unselfishness before them, can never be measured by dollars, it can never be appreciated by the World’s peoples who shall enjoy the fruits of their great sacrifice, and it can only be understood as the price necessary for the advancement of civilization.

These boys went willingly and eagerly into the Arctic and, as far as we will ever know, there was no disagreement or discord among them; there is not a word of complaint or of controversy in all Lorne’s diary, and, in spite of all the great sorrow we, their parents and relatives, must and do feel for their untimely loss, there is glory in their deaths, because they died as only real men die; none were yellow, none were quitters and none were traitors to their companions or false to their trust.

JOHN I. KNIGHT.

Note to British Editor: It would be a fine thing if you could get for the British edition any of the following, or several of them: 1. Portrait of Captain Kellett 2. Picture of H. M. S. Herald 3. Fac-simmile of any documents connected with Kellet's Land- librarian of Royal Geographical Society- would help you.

ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING PAGE

Wrangel Island Party, 1922 ...................................Frontispiece

Specimen Page from Diary of E. Lorne Knight showing Erasure by Mr. Harold Noice......................................................xxii

Ada Blackjack with Mr. and Mrs. J. I. Knight...............xxiii

The British Admiralty Chart as it was immediately after Captain Kellett’s discoveries were recorded on it................18

Map of Wrangel Island.................................19

Revenue Steamer Corwin................................24

Record left on Wrangel Island by the Corwin...........25

Rear Admiral Robert Mallory Berry, U.S.N., Retired Calvin Leighton Hooper, Captain U. S. Coast Guard Service.......37 John Munro, Chief Engineer

Stefansson’s party about to leave the Karluk, September, 1913 Hadley Bringing Home a Seal, Early Spring of 1914 Raising the Flag to Reaffirm the British Right to Wrangel .........60

The Karluk just before she sank The Flag at half mast by the Grave of George Malloch on.......61 Wrangel Island, Summer, 1914

Crawford, Maurer and Knight.........................118

Wrangel Island Proclamation ........................119

Maurer Watching for the Ship that Could Not Come .......138

The Main Camp. Taken from the Silver Wave Early Spring—the prairie partly free of snow but the mountains.....139 still as in winter

A Cluster of Flowers, Summer, 1922 Eider Duck on Wrangel Island, Spring of 1922................166

Milton Galle, Summer, 1922 Type of Shelter Against Wind and Sun Used on the........167 Summer Reconnoitering Trips

Crawford, Maurer and Galle starting off for a Hunt..........196

The Camp in Late Autumn Building the snow walls for the outer house within which....197 the tents were to be pitched for winter

Crawford and the Expedition Cat The Pet of the Expedition, named Vic...............208

Fred Maurer and the Baby Eskimo Girl, Makpek .......209

Barrels Filled with Seals’ Fat, and Inflated Skin Bags..........224 The Dory and the Dogs, Spring, 1922

xxvii

xxviii ILLUSTRATIONS

0/

Driftwood on the Wrangel Beach in Early Spring............. 225 Crawford and Maurer Cutting up a Walrus

Converting a Sled into a Boat by Wrapping it in a Tarpaulin....... 230 Crossing Lead in a Sled Raft

“Tracking” Umiak with Dogs Along Sea Beach in Calm Weather .... 231 Hauling an Umiak on a Sled

Crawford with a Block of Snow he has just cut for the House being built by Knight ....................252 Knight Building Snowhouse The Finished Snowhouse

Crawford Setting out for a Tramp............... 253 Maurer Equipped for Hunting

The Canadian Flag on Wrangel Island, Summer, 1914....................290

Ada Blackjack at the Grave of Lorne Knight............................291

Specimen Pages of the Memoranda kept by Galle from which he later wrote up his regular Diary....................................324

Hadley and Maurer just after they were picked up at Wrangel Island ..... 325

Ada Blackjack and Vic on the Donaldson..............................342 Ada Blackjack in Winter Costume

Knight with a Mammoth Tusk found on Wrangel Island Sawing Firewood—Maurer and probably Knight One of the Stout Team of Alaska Dogs which Accompanied the .....343 Party to Wrangel Island Ada Blackjack Removing Blubber from a Sealskin

Map of the Northern Hemisphere..........................end of book

THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

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THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

Chapter I

The Background of the Story

The story of Wrangel Island has developed into adventure and tragedy, but it began in a new scientific conception of the nature of the earth as a whole and the relative position and importance upon it of the so-called arctic regions. It hinges also upon the developments in aeronautics, which began twenty years ago last December, when the Wright Brothers flew at Kittyhawk, North Carolina.

“As impossible as flying” and “as worthless as — Arctic” were solemn figures of speech at the beginning of our century. The first is now ridiculous; the second is beginning to be questioned even by the general public— otherwise the value and ownership of Wrangel Island would not have occupied so much space during the last two years in the newspapers, those faithful mirrors of the interests of the average man.

The newspapers have been telling us that at least three great countries—Great Britain, the United States and Russia—have legal claims to Wrangel Island, and are either pressing those claims or considering whether the intrinsic or positional value of the island may justify pressing them later. Such public interest and such international negotiations would not be conceivable if the

1

2 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

leaders of thought still held the ideas about the climate and character of the Arctic which were nearly universal twenty years ago. But, in spite of the change of thought of the last two decades, keen public interest would still remain unthinkable but for the recent developments in air transport.

Our views on air transport are new; but there is one sense in which our “new” ideas about the Arctic are 400 years old.

Few beliefs have ever had such universal support as that of the flatness of the earth. It rested on the science of the day, on scripture as usually interpreted, and on common observation. No gibe that is now directed against those who believe the Arctic to be inhabitable and fairly pleasant is quite so amusing as those directed four hundred and forty years ago against the advocates of the roundness of the earth, pointing out that in such a case the water would be spilled out of the wells in China and the Chinamen themselves would be walking like flies on a ceiling, with feet upwards and pigtails hanging down.¹

But the nearly universal view of the earth’s flatness received such a blow from the voyages of Columbus and Magellan that it was only another two hundred years until the majority of Europeans ceased laughing about the inverted Chinamen and began to favor the view that the earth was probably round.

If the masses were slow-minded, the reverse was true of the leaders, who quickly realized that if the earth were

¹This refers to the beliefs of the numerical majority at the time of Copernicus. Many scholars then believed in a spherical earth divided into four land quarters by two ocean streams, one equatorial, uncrossable because of heat that would burn ships and sailors, the other meridional, impassable because of various terrors. Among the scholars a small inner circle of what we now feel like calling real scientists believed the “ocean stream” was crossable and that the other three-quarters of the earth could be reached by ships. For a full and lucid discussion of these and similar beliefs of the period, see "Geographical Lore of the Time of the Crusades", by John Kirtland Wright (New York, 1925).

THE BACKGROUND OF THE STORY 3

round it would be possible to reach Cathay by sailing west. They tried it; but the Americas barred the way and the route to China around the Horn was both long and stormy.

For men in whose lifetime the world had changed from a pancake to a sphere, it was easy to throw by the board as well all the other geographical conceptions of the ancients. They forgot or disregarded the Greek and Roman doctrine that human and animal life was not possible in the remote North, and boldly reasoned that, since the earth was a sphere, you could reach China not only by sailing west, but also by sailing north. This led to a series of voyages perhaps the most gallant in recorded history. They were productive in terms of knowledge, but negative with regard to the main purpose of finding a short cut to the riches of the East.

When ice barred the way to ships steering directly north, the navigators felt their way east or west along the margin, hoping for a thoroughfare. Long after they had concluded that a direct northerly route was impossible * they cherished the hope of circumventing either North America or Asia by what were known as the Northwest and Northeast Passages. Many countries gave to that search a list of dauntless names, but Great Britain was honored beyond them all in Hudson, Cook, Parry, McClintock, and a galaxy of lesser polar stars. The search continued hopeful, and for three centuries the Arctic was in men’s minds a potential highway to the East. But seventy-five years ago that period of thought came to a full stop with the colossal tragedy of Sir John Franklin. No expedition ever sailed with higher hopes or equipment more sumptuously and carefully provided. Yet no one ever returned from the voyage, and the story is

* This is only approximately correct, for the strange dogma of "An Open Polar Sea" was held as late as 1870 by many who were then considered as sound geographical authorities. See especially "The Open Polar Sea" by Isaac J. Hayle, New York 1867.

4 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

known only from the tiniest fragments of documents and from the scattered bones of a few of those who died.

The white and fearful wilderness which the Greeks had assigned to the northern portion of their flat world earth (whether spherical or flat had been banished from men’s minds for three centuries in favor of a potentially navigable ocean joining, on a round world, Europe to the coveted East. But the Franklin tragedy gave the lifeless northern wastes of the ancients their second innings. The world was still round, but at the “top” of it men now pictured to themselves an impassably frozen and desert ocean which no longer connected, but, instead, separated Europe and China.

Commercial endeavors have their roots in a firm optimism. Men hope for success, they hope for profit, and that general frame of mind colors everything they see. The old Norse Icelandic sagas tell that the discoverers of Greenland in 983 named the country so “thinking that colonists would all the more desire to go there if the land had a fair name.” When Eric the Red went among his Scandinavian Norse countrymen in search of colonists, he certainly told them no tales of hardship and terror, for he induced twenty-five ships to follow him from Iceland towards Greenland in 986, each loaded with men, women, children, dogs, cattle, horses, sheep, poultry and household goods. Some of the ships were wrecked and some were driven back by storms, but fourteen got through, and that autumn about 700 colonists landed on the west coast of Greenland. * They built up there at once in Greenland what we would now call a "dairy industry." Vatican documents show that the Popes of the Middle Ages knew that Greenland exported butter, cheese and wool to Europe, and that the dignitaries of the Church were thankful for the contribu-

* That was a larger colony than the first [contiguous] [?] by [England] to Virginaia, Massachusetts, or indeed to any of what became the Thirteen American Colonies. And so well did they understand their new environment that they seem to have had in the beginning fewer hardships than the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock.

THE BACKGROUND OF THE STORY 5

tions which the Greenlanders made in those articles towards the support of the Crusades.

The early fur traders who sailed from England and France to Hudson Bay may have related a tall story now and then, but in the main they described the profits in furs and the feasibility of making money. It was probably the canny directors of the companies, sitting in European offices, who first devised the policy by which the later fur traders represented the country they were exploiting as a frozen wilderness—the directors knew that if farmers were to throng in, the fur animals would disappear. The early seventeenth-century voyage of Hudson to Spitsbergen started a gigantic whale-fishing industry which prospered for more than two hundred years and again profits and the rosy aspect were on every tongue.

The Northwest Passage was discovered by Sir John Franklin’s expedition seventy-five years ago and the Northeast Passage by the expedition of Baron Nordenskiold about thirty years later. Various commercial companies are gradually developing these waters, although the northeast and northwest passages in their entirety are seldom used.

With the Franklin tragedy a change came over the spirit and motives of polar exploration. The explorers were thereafter no longer pioneers of commerce. They began to compete with each other not as men do in business, but, rather, as athletes in a race or sportsmen eager to be first to scale a mountain. This tended to revive the ancient and mediaeval general conception that the Arctic was ferocious and barren.

With a passion for symmetry and simplicity, all but a few scholars now assumed that the “Frozen Region”

6 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

was approximately circular with a “North Pole” for center that corresponded to the top of a mountain. On this idea was based the struggle to reach the North Pole, it being assumed that he who got there first would correspond (on a far greater scale) to the man who first climbed Mont Blanc. We have evidence of this, not only in the firm general idea which still holds, but also in the definite utterances of those who were engaged in the race. Especially is this clear in the titles of their books, as Nansen’s “Farthest North,” Peary’s “Nearest the Pole.”

Both the participants in the game of Arctic exploration and the spectators who watched it through newspapers and books knew about the Gulf Stream and the warm north Atlantic drift. They knew that these and other influences make Reykjavik, Iceland, about as warm, on the average, in January, as Milan, Italy, and Christmas night on the north coast of Norway, eight hundred miles north of Scotland, warmer, on the average, than at Minneapolis, which is farther south than the middle of France. They knew, but did not realize, that these and similar things causes prevented the possibility that the North Pole could be anywhere near the center of whatever icy area there might be in the Arctic. They had the data for calculating (if it had occurred to them to do so) that the North Pole is about four hundred miles from the center of the floating ice that troubles Arctic navigators and corresponds, therefore, to a spot half way up the slope of a gigantic mountain and 400 miles below its peak.

In recent years many have come to realize that the struggle to attain the North Pole was based on this misapprehension, and that the center of the ice, called the Pole of Inaccessibility, is near 84° N. Latitude and

THE BACKGROUND OF THE STORY 7

160° W. Longitude, about four hundred miles away from the North Pole in the direction towards Alaska. There lies the still unsealed peak of the greatest physical achievement in the Arctic. We have come to understand also many things vastly more important. We realize that on the lowlands in the Arctic, both in North America and Asia, midsummer temperatures are sometimes as high as at the south tip of Florida (85° F. to 95° F. in the shade, and even hotter). We know that the snowfall in the Arctic averages less than in Scotland and that all the snow of winter disappears in summer from every arctic land except those that are mountainous—and most of the arctic lands are low.

We know there are many hundred species of flowering plants in the region formerly supposed to be covered by eternal ice and that there is more eternal ice "eternal ice" in Mexico than there is in an equal area of arctic continental Canada. We know that bees and butterflies go about among the midsummer flowers on the north coasts of the most northerly lands in the world. Peary tells us that a bumblebee [ouet] met him out on the sea ice half a mile north from the most northerly coast line in the world- that of Greenland.

But we might have in our minds all this and more of the new knowledge about the Arctic and still the realization of the hopes of the Middle Ages about a short route to the Far East might be as remote as ever. The climate is not eternally cold, for the summers are warm; the lands are not eternally ice-covered, for few of them are mountainous; the sea is not covered with one vast expanse of ice, for the ice is not strong enough to stand the strain of even a moderate wind, and is broken, in winter and summer alike, into millions of floes of varying sizes drifting about and jostling each other, with large patches of open water between them. All these things are true, and still it remains equally true that for ordinary

8 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

ships the Arctic is not a navigable ocean on the direct route from Europe to the Pacific.

But there lies above the partly ice-filled water the wide unhampered ocean of the air, free to be navigated in every direction by ships of the air.

The most optimistic students consider that flying conditions over the Arctic throughout the year are, on the average, better than over the North Atlantic. The most pessimistic consider them probably worse, but conquerable. Those who hold a middle ground think that the Arctic is perhaps more favorable than the Atlantic in summer, but that it would be less favorable in winter. Some of the highest authorities have said that January flying across the Arctic will probably turn out to be not only easier than North Atlantic flying in January, but actually easier than arctic flying in July. The authorities differ partly because some think only of our flying technique as it is to-day. But there is likely to be as much progress in aviation during the next five years as there has been during the past five, and many of the difficulties of to-day will be conquered before 1930.

During more than eleven years of actual residence in the Arctic, the problems of the North were constantly before me, and I was therefore in a position to be one of the first to realize that the dream of the Elizabethan navigators was about to come true. The idea came to me vaguely about ten years ago; was put into print tentatively in the National Geographic Magazine for August, 1922, and more fully that same year in a book called “The Northward Course of Empire.” I had been urging it upon the Canadian Government in writing since 1918.

As we have said above, the difficulty in getting the ordinary educated person to take a fully rational view

THE BACKGROUND OF THE STORY 9

of the Far North is due partly to the recrudescence during the last seventy-five years of ancient beliefs about the polar regions. This is the fault of our school and college education. The Popes of Rome were in the habit of mentioning in bulls issued during the Middle Ages that Greenland exported butter and cheese, but the children of our schools today are in most places given the impression that Greenland is all covered with ice and snow. I have questioned a number of school children in Canada and England, and have found them uniformly of that impression, although they are usually unable to say exactly where they got the idea. In the United States, there is a song in popular use in the kindergartens and primaries with the refrain, “For in Greenland there is nothing green, you know!” Other parts of the Arctic resemble even less than does Greenland the conventionally desolate North.

Another reason for the misconceptions about the Arctic is that few care to read anything about distant countries except stories of adventure. If you spend five years in Spain, you may find when you come back that your friend the magazine editor does not care to print anything you have to say about climate or agriculture, but that he will be glad to publish an account of how you watched a bull-fight and what you thought of it. Similarly, an explorer may go through many placid years in the remotest Arctic to find that the editor does not care to print anything except the story of a narrow escape from being eaten by a polar bear. It is as if you were to tell Englishmen the story of a year in Chicago wholly in terms of the stockyards, motor accidents, and deaths from sunstroke.

Probably the most insidious and effective opponent of

10 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

a rational view of the earth is Mercator with his grotesque chart. The earth is flat in the idiom of our speech, it is flat when you look out through your window, and it is flat when you glance at a wall where hangs a map with Greenland looking twice as big as Australia, though it is only half as big, and with the north coasts of Alaska, Canada, and Siberia stretching horizontally from east to west. It is simple and natural to consider the earth as flat. The sailor knows how simple it is in theory to cross the ocean on the presumption of flatness, but he knows also that nobody but a fool would do it. Hence that picturesque expression “plane sailing,” which describes a thing so easy that any fool can do it.

The navigators are among the few people who have to apply day by day their knowledge that the earth is round. Most of the rest of us seldom feel ourselves under the same compulsion. We speak of the “top” of the earth, and we have on our wall Mercator’s chart with Canada and Siberia at the top. We see the arctic islands lying between continents on one side and the ceiling on the other, and we get the idea that they lie between Canada and Siberia on one side and infinity or nothingness on the other. This misleading presentation has actually led to the half-formulation of a doctrine of international law to the effect that one land belongs to another because of lying to the north. That would be logical if the earth were flat and had a farther edge. It looks logical on Mercator’s chart, but the logic wholly disappears when you consider the map of the northern hemisphere. Such maps are rare. The summer of 1923 I visited every wellknown shop in London and was unable to buy a map of the northern hemisphere, except on a small and practically diagrammatic scale as a sort of footnote to a map of the

THE BACKGROUND OF THE STORY

11

eastern and western hemispheres. Even the finest map collections in the United States were without a goodsized map of the northern hemisphere until, in 1922, one was issued by the U. S. Weather Bureau, perhaps under pressure of the modern necessity of considering the northern half of the earth as a unit from the aeronautical point of view.²

When we look at maps of the eastern and western hemispheres we are scarce better off. We do realize that the Arctic is not so huge as it seems on the flat Mercator, but it still remains at the top of the map and in so far confirms the Mercator illusion of its being at one end of the earth. Of course, there is nothing wrong about dividing the earth into eastern and western hemispheres. But neither is it wrong to picture the globe by northern and southern hemisphere maps, though it is seldom done. If we do it we see that the arctic frontier of the great land masses does not run in a straight horizontal line as on a Mercator, but forms instead a horseshoe. This horseshoe is much smaller than you would have thought, for the Arctic Ocean is tiny when compared with any of the other oceans. If it were dreadful and uncrossable by aircraft it could be avoided. If you can not cross the Gobi Desert you can always go around it.

Maps of the northern and southern halves of the earth show that the great land masses of the world are in the northern hemisphere. It is important from the political and economic point of view (since we do not inhabit the ocean) that the Arctic on such a map or on a globe looks like a hub from which the continents radiate like the spokes of a wheel. This gives it an immediate importance which is bound to increase as the settlements creep

2 For a map of the entire northern half of the earth, see back of this volume.

12 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

northward along the great Siberian and Canadian rivers. Major-General Sir Sefton Brancker, Director of Civil Aviation for Great Britain, said in a speech at Sheffield the summer of 1923 that carrying mails from England to Japan by way of the Arctic was a probability of the next ten years. Rear-Admiral William A. Moffett, chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics of the United States Navy, has announced that the American dirigible Shenandoah will cross the Arctic probably from Alaska to Europe the summer of 1924,³ and has said that “it must be realized that polar routes by air connecting England, Japan, Alaska, and Siberia are possibilities in the near future and that they will be of incalculable value in cutting down time and distance between those points.” Since these men are in high authority in two of the most progressive countries of the world, what they have said is more significant than my having said the same thing a year earlier (August, 1922).⁴ I was merely the prophet of the change; such men as Brancker and Moffett are It takes either capitalists or men in authority in the air ministries of wealthy nation to actually bringing the change about.

No single event ever caused such a profound revolution in human thought as did the voyage of Magellan around the world, for it transformed the earth from a stationary pancake, housed under a firmament, into one of a family of little spherical planets tagging along behind a somewhat larger sun on a possibly eternal journey through a perhaps infinite universe. When the new views of the Arctic get so firm a hold that they lead to action, as the Copernican doctrine of a round world led to the

³ A later announcement said that preparations could not be made in time for 1924, but that the plan of a transarctic voyage would probably be made had not been given up by the U. S. Navy in 1925although no date has been set.

⁴ See chapter on “Transpolar Commerce by Air” in The Northward Course of Empire, and article on same subject in The National Geographic Magazine for August, 1922.



THE BACKGROUND OF THE STORY 13

voyage of Magellan, then there is bound to follow a profound change of thought and outlook, not so profound as that of the Middle Ages, but nevertheless decisive enough to mark an epoch.

Or perhaps the coming change of thought is more exactly analogous to that connected with the development of ocean-going ships. From the earliest prehistoric times large bodies of water were must have been considered to separate the lands; but with the development of sea-borne commerce came the idea that the oceans connect the lands. Gradually this view got a firmer hold until it became a commonplace that a city a hundred miles in the interior was commercially and practically farther away than another a hundred miles across the sea. Were it not for the strictly modern development of railways, Pittsburgh would be farther from New York than London is. Similarly, air commerce will emphasize not only that the world is round from north to south, but also that the Arctic connects America and Europe quite as much as it separates them.

On our winter sledge journeys in the Arctic we are sometimes stormbound for days. Then we sit cosy in our snowhouses that are brightly lit and adequately heated by seal oil lamps which we trim so carefully that they produce neither smoke nor odor. On such occasions we speculate for hours upon things for which we do not spare minutes where telephones ring and movies lurk around every corner. The winters of 1914 to 1918 we used to talk a great deal about the coming era of northern development and the part which our respective countries would play therein. My companions were Canadians, Scots, Australians, Americans, Norwegians, South Sea

14 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

Islanders—men from more than a dozen countries. We talked much of the importance of Spitsbergen, to which Britain then had (it seemed to us) a stronger claim than any other nation. From the British point of view (and in the absence of such secret information as may repose in Government archives), I have thought it one of the serious blunders of the Paris Conference that they gave away Spitsbergen to Norway, not one-half aware of its mineral riches, not one-fourth informed as to its real climate, and apparently not at all conscious of its potential importance as a flying center. From the point of view of Spitsbergen itself, it may be a blessing to be under an advanced country that is not too large to pay attention to it. To Norway itself, the arrangement gives a wonderful pioneering opportunity. Although the group is not quite so strategically placed in the Arctic as the Hawaiian Islands are in the Pacific, I fancy it will not be more than two or three decades until air lines radiate from Spitsbergen somewhat as steamship routes do now from Honolulu.

We talked of various other arctic islands from this point of view and among them of Wrangel, the history, climate and resources of which we knew, and the importance of which seemed clear to us.

CHAPTER II

The Early History of Wrangel Island

The history of Wrangel Island begins in the scientific theorizing of the early eighteenth century. At that time it was supposed that most of the Arctic was occupied by a great continent of which Greenland was one corner. Another corner was thought to lie undiscovered just north of the northeastern coast of Siberia. An alternative view with similar implications was to the effect that the northwest corner of North America lay to the north of eastern Asia.

This was the time when the Russian Empire was expanding into Asia to form the country now politically described as Siberia, and the Czar's Government was more fully awake than the rest of Europe to the potential greatness of their Asiatic empire. It was only natural therefore that they should take interest in the theory of an arctic continent. Their traders listened carefully among the natives for legends about lands beyond the northern frontier of Siberia; and what they listened for they heard.

We now know that most of the natives of northeastern Siberia and northern Alaska have the legend of a great land to the north of each of these countries. The late Sir Clements Markham, then President of the Royal Geographical Society of London, was much concerned about these stories as recently as the beginning of my own arctic work (1906). The first polar expedition of 15

16 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

which I was a member (commanded by Leffingwell and Mikkelsen) was organized partly to test the view which Sir Clements favored that the stories of land to the north of Alaska were reliable. The results of the Leffingwell-Mikkelsen expedition were negative. My own expedition of 1913-18 definitely proved that the “land seen north of Alaska" was imaginary.

The prehistoric arctic trading center of Nijnei Kolymsk took on new life with the increased Russian traffic and the natives of northeastern Siberia frequented it even more than formerly. Some of these brought the story of a large,an inhabited land to the north of Cape Chelagskoi. Personally, I consider that this was only the same sort of legend which we later disproved to the north of Alaska; but since it happens that there is an uninhabited island if not an inhabited [continent] land, although uninhabited, northeast, if not north, from Cape Chelagskoi, it is possible to dispute indefinitely as to whether the stories which the Russians picked up were partly fact or wholly folklore.

To test the theory of a northern continent, Andreyev, a Cossack, made a journey in 1763 north from the mouth of the Krestvaya. From one of the Bear Islands he saw “to the eastward” a large land which he took to be an island. But a journey was made in the same region six years later by the Russian surveyors, Leontev, Lisev, and Pushkarev, who established the fact that there is no land east of the Bear Islands near enough to be seen from them. After extensive travels in the same region nearly forty years later still, Wrangel gave it as his opinion that Andreyev had probably been looking southeast rather than east and that what he saw was a part of the mainland of Asia.

When he came to the conclusion that Andreyev had

THE EARLY HISTORY OF WRANGEL ISLAND 17

seen no land other than Asia, Lieutenant Ferdinand Wrangel was on a journey to test the theory and the reports of a northern continent which were still believed by his employers, the Russian Government at Petrograd. He had traveled overland to the mouth of the Kolyma with orders to make a journey out upon the sea ice and to plant the Russian flag upon the supposed corner of the supposed continent.

Wrangel arrived at the mouth of the Kolyma in 1820. During the three years following he made journeys northwest, north and northeast over the winter sea ice searching for land. His route map shows that one of his parties once came within forty or fifty miles of where we now have Wrangel Island on the chart, but they saw no land. They picked up again, however, the native story that land had been seen; and they made, in April, 1824, a very creditable effort to reach by sled the place where the land was said to be. On being compelled to turn his sledges back towards Asia, Wrangel wrote: “With a painful feeling of the impossibility of overcoming the obstacles which nature opposed to us, our last hope vanished of discovering the land which we yet believed to exist. . . . We had done what duty and honour demanded; further attempts would have been absolutely hopeless, and I decided to return.” (P. 348 of the 1840 edition of the work described below.) Wrangel laid down upon his chart “from Native report” “the land which we yet believe to exist” in a position some forty or fifty miles west of where the island now named after him was later discovered.

On turning back from his third and last sledge exploratory journey, Wrangel said: “Our return to Nishne Kolymsk closed the series of attempts made by us to

18 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

discover a northern land; which, though not seen by us, may possibly exist.”

The statement just quoted is found on page 380 of the first English edition (published 1840) and unaltered on page 384 of the second edition (published 1844) of Wrangel's own “Narrative of an Expedition to the Polar Sea in the Years 1820, 1821, 1822, and 1823.” This is a translation from an earlier German edition which, in turn, was based on Wrangel's own Russian narrative written in 1825. Since the Soviet Government almost a century later quoted Wrangel in an entirely different sense, it is well to insist here that the above quotation is the more significant because it was not published by the author until fifteen years after he wrote it, and seventeen years after the expedition was over. thus giving him ample opportunity That, surely, gave him ample time to correct That surely, was ample time for him to correct his manuscript if there had been any correction to make.

The discovery of what we now call Wrangel Island was in a sense an accident. Sir John Franklin had been lost in the Arctic for several years, and more than a dozen expeditions were sent out in the great “Franklin Search,” which resulted in the discovery of so many new arctic lands. On one of these expeditions Captain Henry Kellett, in command of the H. M. S. Herald, found himself to the north of Bering Straits the summer of 1849. He sighted a small island, which eventually was named after his ship, the Herald. A landing was made on August 6th and possession taken in the name of Queen Victoria. From the top of Herald Island, and also from the ship, there were visible to the west and north what Kellett took to be several small islands with an extensive land beyond. The most easterly island was named by him Plover Island. The larger land was afterwards placed on the Admiralty Charts as “Kellett’s Land” or “Moun-

THE EARLY HISTORY OF WRANGEL ISLAND 19

tains Capseen by Herald.” The theoretical continent still obsessed the minds of geographers, and Kellett’s Land was considered to be not only the corner of the “Great Continent,” but also the inhabited land about which the natives had told the Russians and the one for which Wrangel had searched in vain.

In 1855 Commander John Rodgers of the U. S. S. Vincennes, landed on Herald Island, but failed to sight Kellett’s Land, doubtless because of the fogs so common in that region.

In 1867 the United States had just purchased Alaska from Russia. Through that transaction a former Russian Governor of the territory had become well known in the United States. He was the same Wrangel (now both Baron and Admiral.) That year several American whalers were cruising to the north of Bering Straits. One of them, Captain Thomas Long, came in sight of an island that was not down on the chart which he happened to have with him. Thinking it a discovery, and being familiar not only with Wrangel’s governorship of Alaska, but also with his earlier career as an explorer, Captain Long suggested to a newspaperman when he returned to the Hawaiian Islands that the land (which he supposed himself to have discovered) should be named after Wrangel. It was thus the present name came into popular use, although it was not generally adopted by mapmakers at that time.

During the season 1867 Kellett’s Land was visited by several American whalers, including Captains Thomas and Williams, who established the fact that “Plover Island” was merely a headland on Kellett’s Land. Thirteen years afterwards, a German, Captain Dallman, of Hamburg, claimed to have anticipated Long’s visit

20 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

to Kellett’s Land by a year, but after that lapse of time he was unable to produce his log or any member of his crew to support his claim.* *This paragraph and some other things in this chapter are paraphrased from the article which is a paper published by The Royal Geographical Society and reprinted in full, [past], as Appendix-

The erroneous reports on the extent of the eastern coast of Kellett’s Land gave fresh support to the false conception of its size. In 1869 one of the visitors, Captain Bliven, gave the opinion that it extended several hundred miles to the north, strengthening the apparent probability that it was part of “the Arctic Continent.”

The hypothetical continent was still in the minds of scientists when Lieutenant De Long was fitted out by the New York “Herald” in 1879. He steered the Jeannette boldly northward from the Pacific into the ice beyond Bering Straits, thinking that he could not drift far, for the “continent” would bar the way. But, fast in the pack, he did drift far—right across the theoretical continent and beyond what now proved to be Kellett’s Island rather than Kellett’s Land.

By 1881 it was feared that De Long’s expedition had suffered the fate of Franklin’s, and search parties were outfitted. The expeditions of the American Government, in the Corwin and Rodgers, sailed from the Pacific through Bering Straits. Both landed on Kellett’s Land. The Corwin, under Captain Calvin L. Hooper, remained only six hours (August 12, 1881), but it was a landing about which much has been heard, for she carried the famous author and naturalist, John Muir, and other scientists, among whom the most distinguished is Dr. E. W. Nelson, now Chief of the United States Biological Survey. The Rodgers, under Lieutenant R. M. Berry, came a few days later and remained for three weeks, making the map which was the only one available for the next thirtythree years. The American Navy assigned to this map

THE EARLY HISTORY OF WRANGEL ISLAND 21

the name of Wrangel Island, cancelling the designation of Kellett’s Land, which the island had borne for thirtytwo years, perhaps to emphasize that British discovery rights were considered to have lapsed through prolonged neglect and that American rights were being created in their stead through exploration.

Following 1849 Wrangel Island (Kellett’s Land) had been British by a discovery right that gradually lost its value through neglect, until the Americans (or any other nation) were free to occupy it; following 1881 the island was similarly United States territory. But it seems elementary logic that if thirty-two years of British neglect cancels British rights, an equally long period of neglect by any other nation would cancel the rights of that nation. We do not know of any record that anyone went ashore on Wrangel Island for thirty-three years following 1881, although it seems likely that of all the many American whalers who cruised in sight of the island between that time and the end of the whaling about 1906, some must have made a landing. Still, Wrangel Island was considered to have become once more a “No Man’s Land” open to colonization by any country that cared to go to that much trouble for the sake of acquiring ownership.

The Russian aspect of the story of Wrangel Island has been well summarized in an article published in “The Geographical Journal” of the Royal Geographical Society of London for December, 1923. The article is unsigned and therefore probably by the Editors of that journal. We quote entire the portion of this paper that relates to Russia.

“There seems to be.no record of any Russian ship having reached this island until 1911. In the previous year the ice-breakers Taimuir

*For an account by a Russian member of this, the only known, Russian landing, see Appendix IX, which is a statment by one of the members of the Russian expedition, [Leauteuard Transehe] is the Imperial Russian Navy.

22 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

and Vaigach had been fitted out at Vladivostok for the hydrographic survey of the Arctic Ocean and islands lying off the Siberian coast. No narrative of the first years of this work is accessible, but a summary of the geographical and hydrographical results was compiled in 1912 by Lieut. B. V. Davidov and printed for the Russian Admiralty. This expedition must have erected the tall beacon 35 feet high which stands north of the entrance to the lagoon in the sand spit between Blossom Point and Cape Thomas (‘Arctic Pilot,' 1920, p. 477). In the summer of 1914 these same ice-breakers tried to reach ORW. I must talk this our unit Trausche and charge it. Wrangel Island again, to rescue the crew of the Karluk (see below), but were unable to get within 30 miles of the island, and so far as can be ascertained, no Russians were ever on Wrangel Island before or after the single visit of 1911.

“Nevertheless the island seems to be claimed by Russia. At the end of 1916 we were informed by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs that he had received from the Russian Ambassador in London an official notification to the effect that “the territories and islands situated in the Arctic Ocean and discovered by Captain Vilkitski in 1913-1914 have been incorporated in the Russian Empire.” Attached to Count Benckendorf's note was a memorandum giving a summary of Vilkitski’s new discoveries off Cape Chelyuskin, claiming them for the Russian Empire; and the note continued thus:

Le Gouvernement IMPERIAL profite de cette occasion pour faire ressortir qu’il considere aussi comme faisant partie integrante de l'Empire des iles Henriette, Jeannette, Bennett, Herald et Oujedinenia, qui forment avec les iles Nouvelle Siberie, Wrangel et autres situees pres la cote asiatique de l'Empire, une extension vers le nord de la plate forme continentale de la Siberie.

Le Gouvernement IMPERIAL n’a pas juge necessaire de joindre a la presente notification les iles Novaia Zemlia, Kolgouev, Waigatch et autres de moindres dimensions situees pres la cote europeenne de l'Empire, etant donne que leur appartenance aux territoires de l'Empire se trouve depuis des sieves universellement reconnue.¹

Here see Appendix IX.

¹The Imperial Government takes this occasion to set forth that it considers as making an integral part of the Empire the islands Henriette, Jeannette, Bennett, Herald and Oujedinenia, which, with the New Siberian Islands,

THE EARLY HISTORY OP WRANGEL ISLAND 23

“The curiosly oblique reference to Wrangel Island seems designed to imply previous acceptance of what, so far as we can discover, had never before been claimed.

“The last stage in the history of the island is connected with the Stefansson Arctic Expedition of 1913-18.” ^{2 4}

In 1912 I had just returned from a four-year arctic expedition that had been successful enough so that I found myself in a position to organize another. I formulated ambitious plans which were laid before the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the National Geographic Society in Washington. These organizations, together with the Harvard Travellers’ Club of Boston, gave me $50,000; and two wealthy men of Philadelphia, largely through the advocacy of my friend, Henry C. Bryant, president of the Philadelphia Geographical Society, were going to give me, one of them a ship which I had already selected, and the other money enough to take her through dry dock into a first-rate condition. But I was Canadian by birth, and my two previous expeditions had been supported by the University of Toronto and the Geological Survey of Canada. I was anxious that my native country should again cooperate, and laid my plans accordingly before Sir Robert Borden, then Prime Minister of Canada. Sir Robert said at once that Canada ought to take the whole expense and responsibility of the expedition since our purpose was to explore the Arctic Ocean, in which Canada had a logical interest. Upon my suggestion he wrote letters to the

Wrangel and others situated near the Asiatic coast of the Empire, form an extension toward the north of the continental shelf of Siberia.

The Imperial Government has not judged it necessary to add to the present notification the islands Novaia Zemlia, Kolgouev, Waigatch and others of smaller dimensions situated near the European coast of the Empire, it being granted that their appurtenance to the territories of the Empire has been universally recognized for centuries.

^{2 4}For full text, see Appendix VI, at back of this book.

24 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

American scientific organizations concerned asking them to surrender the expedition. This they did upon the condition (laid down by the National Geographic Society) that our sailing date must not be delayed beyond 1913 and that the scientific program of the expedition should remain substantially as already outlined by me.

Show me this pgf. gthe orders - show me both its "order in Council" and also Mr. Desbort's ordrs. When we sailed north 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. "Any new or partly unknown land which the expedition would touch would be observed, positions first, + the British flag could be planted on these land." Order in Council, approved 22 nd February, 1913. This brought us into direct relation with Wrangel Island, a land originally discovered by a British naval expedition.

However, we did not have the intent to sail for Wrangel 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 Wrangel 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 Point, 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 Wrangel, 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

THE EARLY HISTORY OF WRANGEL ISLAND 25

instructed their icebreakers Taimyr and Vaigatch to proceed to Wrangel Island. Wrong - ORW. You ask Transche and charge acordingly both this and earlier reference. 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. P. Jochimsen, was used to the sort of ice he had to contend with and wormed his way up to the island. Southward bound a day later the King and Winge met the Bear thirty or forty miles from Wrangel and transferred to her (and to Captain Bartlett, who was on board the Bear) the men she had picked up. The Corwin (the same that had visited Wrangel Island in 1881, but now a private ship sent out by a friend of mine, Mr. Jafet Lindeberg) arrived at the island a day later to find the fresh traces of the luckier Kinge and Winge.³

Meantime the crew of the Karluk had spent the summer on Wrangel Island, formally reaffirming possession of it for the British Empire according to our instructions from the Canadian Government, and keeping the flag

³ I believe Mr. McConnell deserves the credit we have given him in this paragraph for his part in influencing Mr. Swenson. But the proof of this book has been read by a man who was in Nome at the time and who, therefore, knows the local situation. His belief is that the real influence which started so many ships trying to reach Wrangel Island was the announcement by Mr. Lindeberg that he would purchase the Corwin and outfit her with a year’s supplies for the single purpose of rescuing the marooned men during the summer or trying to reach them during the following winter. This informant considered that a damper had been thrown over the rescue efforts by the failure of the Revenue Cutter Bear to reach the island on her first attempt and that the situation might have been given up as hopeless by everyone but for Mr. Lindeberg’s announcement. When he made it, other commanders of ships were encouraged to try and some of them were able to put to sea while the outfitting of the Corwin was going on. Hence the failure of the Corwin to be the first to reach Wrangel Island although, in another sense, she deserved more credit than any.

26 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

flying for more than six months. That in itself is a long story of adventure and, unfortunately, also of tragedy. We can tell it best from two manuscripts. The one we shall mainly use is written by Jack Hadley, then a member of the company of the Karluk, but later captain of the schooner Polar Bear, of our expedition. For an introduction to Hadley’s story, we shall take a magazine article written by one of his comrades of the shipwrecked crew, Frederick W. Maurer, who later played such an important part in the story of Wrangel Island.

Consider putting Maurer first in this chapter, then Hadley.

CHAPTER III

The Fatal Drift of the Karluk

For me, at least, Captain Jack Hadley is the first big figure in the story of Wrangel Island. Baron Wrangel, who first searched for it as a continent (1821-24), did not find it or any other land. Kellett, who found it (1849), did not land on it, nor did he know it was an island. De Long, whose voyage proved it to be an island (1879-81), saw it only from a distance. The American whalers who first landed on it (1869) stayed only a few hours. Hooper, Muir, and Nelson, (1881) were ashore for only part of a day who first landed (1881), stayed only six hours. Berry and his men came a few days later and remained three weeks. From them we have an approximate map of the island, but the information about it in other respects is neither comprehensive nor detailed. Bartlett in 1914 remained only a few days, and the applicable part of his book, “The Last Voyage of the Karluk,” is only a few pages, with little but personal information of how the landing was made and why he had to leave his men there while he proceeded to the mainland of Siberia. John Munro was in command of the party on the island after Bartlett left, but he has given us no published account of what happened during the following seven months. Both McKinlay and Maurer published newspaper articles, and it is possible that other members of the party may have printed fugitive pieces that have not come to my attention. The only story that approaches completeness in narrative, in discussion of motives and methods, and in information about the climate and country, is a hand-

27

28 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

written manuscript by Jack Hadley now in the archives of the Department of the Naval Service at Ottawa.

Jack Hadley was in himself no less pleasantly unusual than his career was romantic. Of English parentage on both sides, he was born in Canterbury, and he told his various escapades as a choir boy in the Cathedral with greater relish than any of the other stories of his adventurous life. He had a love for music and a voice beyond the ordinary. Apart from the Cathedral choir he had no training, but he had listened to operas in big cities and to native songs in every corner of the earth, and whatever he heard he could reproduce, modified by his peculiar temperament and talents. He could play a variety of wind and string instruments and carried an assortment of them with him wherever he went.

And he went nearly everywhere. Besides sailing every sea, he had been a tramp in Australia and, I think, in Africa. He had run away from ships in tropical islands both of the East and West Indies. He had been an officer in the navy of Chile and had “fought” as lieutenant on a Chinese ship in the Chinese-Japanese War. When the United States sent its first revenue cutter to Herschel Island, in the Arctic, just west of the Mackenzie River, in 1889 to determine whether that central rendezvous of the new whalemen’s paradise was American or Canadian territory, Hadley was a minor officer on the ship. The island turned out to be well east of what had previously been agreed upon as the international boundary. The Government of the United States, therefore, lacked the power to regulate the rather turbulent whaler-Eskimo metropolis, and Hadley sailed west beyond Point Barrow.

The Arctic pleased Hadley beyond every country. The next twenty-five years he made occasional forays to San

THE FATAL DRIFT OF THE KARLUK 29

Francisco or England, but wintered in the Arctic more than twenty times, always whaling or trapping, except for a brief connection with the arctic coal mines near Cape Lisburne. No man whose name is found in reference books under the heading of “Polar Explorer” ever spent half that much time beyond either of the polar circles. Franklin died during his second winter, and Scott in his third. Shackleton spent three polar winters, Bartlett four, Nansen four. Amundsen has eight winters to his credit, and so has Sverdrup. Peary spent nine winters in the Arctic. I have ten polar winters behind me now, but my record was only half that when Hadley joined our expedition in 1914.

Hadley’s experience, besides being more extensive than that of any so-called explorer, was also in a way more varied, for he had been there as a trader, whaler, naval officer, coal miner and (the last four years) as an explorer. He had traveled on foot and by sledge and in every variety of sea conveyance—skin-boat, wooden whaleboat, sail ship and steamer. He had hunted and trapped on the arctic lands; he had traveled on the landfast sea ice and to some extent on the moving pack. On one occasion he and his party had been given up for dead when a terrific gale broke the ice on which they were whaling west of Point Barrow and carried them they knew not where, for they had no instruments of precision. When they sighted land after several weeks of struggle, it was four hundred miles from Point Barrow and about equally far from where they had supposed themselves to be.

As related in “My Life With the Eskimo,” I first met Hadley at Cape Smythe, near Point Barrow, in 1908, and liked and admired him from the first. When the

30 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

three ships of my expedition sailed past Cape Smythe in 1913, he was there and wanted to join, both because we had always been good friends and because he was beginning to consider the north tip of Alaska a little tame. I wanted to give him one of the chief positions of responsibility in the expedition but, since it had been organized before I knew he would join it, I found no berth for him at once, and without official rating, he was sharing my cabin on board the Karluk as my friend and traveling companion when an accident separated five others and myself from the Karluk, which drifted off, held fast in the shifting ice, while we watched from shore helpless. The ship was now under my official next in command, Captain Robert A. Bartlett, and Hadley remained without formal status as the sole occupant of my cabin during the Karluk’s thousand miles of ice-fettered drifting between September, 1913, and the end of that year. He did not, therefore, belong to the official machinery of the expedition when the Karluk broke and sank.

I did not hear of that wreck until a year and a half later, and I did not learn the full story until still another year had passed and Hadley had joined us again after the adventures of shipwreck, the march over shifting floes to Wrangel Island, the seven months on the Island, and the voyage to Victoria, B. C., after the party had been picked up in Wrangel Island by Swenson, Jochimsen and McConnell of the King and Winge.

Hadley had a pungent and inimitable way of speaking, only a faint flavor of which remains in what he wrote. I had every form of interest in the story as he told it, sometimes in casual fragments and sometimes in long chapters, when we were together between 1915 and 1918.

THE FATAL DRIFT OF THE KARLUK 31

I knew the ship that sank with many of my hopes and with many a book and memento treasured from childhood. I knew the dogs that died pathetically the first few days, and the men who died soon thereafter partly because those dogs had not survived to help them. I knew the other dogs that helped the seventeen people to reach Wrangel Island and that took the Captain and his one companion from there to Siberia. I knew the men who died later on Wrangel Island and the men who lived through. Some that died and some that lived were dear friends, and the responsibility for it all was mine to a greater or less degree.

During the expedition there had always been at least three theories aboard the Karluk as to almost anything that we did or failed to do. James Murray and Forbes Mackay, veterans of the Antarctic, had views from Shackleton’s expeditions which prevailed with them and confused those whom they tried to convert. Bartlett had his opinions gained under the leadership of Peary and from association with the Greenland Eskimos, who differ in many of their ideas and methods from those of Alaska. Hadley and I had ideas developed in the western Arctic, partly from association with the local Eskimos. The scientific staff and crew were divided and perplexed by these three sets of views.

As Hadley told me the story during long winter evenings, we talked much of what should have been done and might have been done, with condemnation, approval or regret. When he wrote the story at my request he naturally filled it with long discussions of what he himself and others had argued as to whether this or that were safe or wise. It has long been the custom to publish certain historical documents only after the men concerned

32 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

with them are dead. Some time Hadley’s manuscript will doubtless be published as he wrote it. It will then be far more enlightening than the fragments of it which we can now publish. Even so, I feel that Hadley should be allowed to tell at least part of the story in his own words, editorial discretion imposing silences and softening phrases here and there.

As we have said, Captain Hadley’s handwritten document as preserved in the Government archives at Ottawa is the fullest and most explicit story of the vicissitudes of the Karluk on her long drift. If a critical history ever comes to be written, the Hadley story can be checked and supplemented by the copy of Captain Bartlett’s log which is also in the same archives and has been published in the Report of the Department of the Naval Service for the Fiscal Year ended March 31, 1915. While this log is too fragmentary to form a connected story, it is of great value when used together with Hadley’s narrative or else together with Captain Bartlett’s own popular account as published in “The Last Voyage of the Karluk.” My own version of how the Karluk was first beset by the ice and how my small hunting party and I were separated from it by accident has also been published in “The Friendly Arctic,” Chapters V and VI, and some account of her drift in the appendix to that book.

We can, therefore, choose between many sources. Most logical perhaps would be to use Hadley as the basis of it all, but we have decided to tell the first part of the story in the words of Frederick Maurer. If we used any of the other versions we should have to condense for the purpose of this book; but Maurer has been so brief that we can afford to print his statement without change, except minor editing as where names are misspelled

THE FATAL DRIFT OF THE KARLUK 33

because he did not have the ship’s papers when he wrote. We have also omitted a few things which were pertinent then but which would now only confuse the reader, and we have corrected one or two errors into which Maurer fell in common with nearly everyone else, as for instance where he refers with apparent approval to the belief common at that time that I was dead because I had been absent on the ice to the north of Alaska for several months when I had “planned to be gone for only ten days.” The fact was, of course, that I had planned to be gone for a year, but that an incorrect report of my program had been circulated in such a way that the Karluk party, who had not been in recent personal contact with me, were led to believe, in common with the rest of the public, that my two sledging companions and I had starved to death.

There are reasons of sentiment also for taking part of our story from Maurer. It was he who eventually hauled up the British flag on Wrangel Island (July 1st, 1914). By his residence of seven months on Wrangel, he was fired with a desire to be an instrument in redeeming it from the unknown and bringing it within the circle of lands that are used and valued. Mountain climbers do not delight in their feats because they are easy, but their pleasures are not therefore less real than the lethargic joys of a winter resort. So it was with Maurer. Wrangel Island had always been to him a difficult place. There were hard times in 1914, but well before 1921 he had begun to long for an opportunity to try himself against these same difficulties again, just as the mountaineer wants to return to the fastnesses where he has had perhaps his greatest disappointments. Maurer had seen three of his companions die and he had dug their

34 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

graves and raised the crosses that stand on Wrangel Island. He wanted to carry forward the work so that these men should not have died in vain, and he was fearless and even enthusiastic about it, for he felt he had learned by experience how dangers and difficulties that had formerly been serious could now be overcome. He did not persuade Knight or me into the new adventure any more than we persuaded him. But he did give us the facts of climate and conditions upon which we based our plans.

I am sorry, therefore, that we have to prefer even Hadley’s narrative to Maurer’s for the main part of the Wrangel story. That is because Hadley has left us a long document. Maurer has left only four short magazine articles that were published by the New York “World” on June 6, 13, 20, and 27, 1915. Brevity dictated by the space which the magazine allowed makes the story unsuited for our uses insofar as the events after the shipwreck are concerned. But that very brevity makes it particularly suitable for a summary of the drift which preceded the wreck. We set it down here as published in “The World Magazine” for Sunday, June 6th, 1915:

Maurer’s Narrative

The Canadian Arctic Expedition, under command of Vilhjalmur Stefansson, in the barken tine Karluk, sailed from Esquimalt, British Columbia, June 17, 1913. The purpose of the expedition was to make scientific investigations along the northern coast of Canada, and to look for new lands supposed to lie somewhere in the great uncharted sea to the north and northwest of Alaska.

On August 6, the expedition passed Point Barrow, the

THE FATAL DRIFT OF THE KARLUK 35

northernmost tip of Alaska, and it was here that the Karluk encountered the first difficulties of her trip.

Our staunch little ship bravely bucked her way through the pack till August 15, when we found ourselves imprisoned and held helplessly in the relentless grip of the vast floe from which she never was liberated. We did not, however, realize the gravity of our situation at the time, still hoping that a lead would open and permit us to pass on our way and escape, as we thought, our temporary imprisonment.

At this time we were at Camden Bay, about seventyfive miles west of the international boundary line between Canada and Alaska, and twenty miles off shore. The weather was clear and cold, and the snow-clad mountains of Alaska were in plain sight. The proximity of the land gave us a sense of security, as the ice had now closed in to the shore and we could have left the ship at any time, had we so desired, and marched to land in safety.

Later our icefield started moving west, but it stopped in Harrison Bay. Our commander, Dr. Stefansson, belived that the early northern winter had closed in upon us. The Karluk was as well equipped and supplied with necessaries as any ship that ever sailed beyond the Arctic Circle.

We lay here a little over a month, when Dr. Stefansson organized a hunting trip to the mountains of Alaska for caribou in order to secure a supply of fresh meat. He took with him three white men, two natives and dogs and sleds. He was equipped for a two weeks’ hunt.

On September 20, Stefansson bade us “goodby” and started with men and dog teams for land. We watched him over the ice until he was lost to view. He has never been seen since by any of the crew that remained with

36 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

the Karluk. The white men who went with him were McConnell, Wilkins, Jenness, of whom McConnell only has returned to civilization, the other two remaining in the North and continuing their work for the Canadian Government (this was written in May, 1915).

Two days after Stefansson left us, a heavy fog settled over the entire region. It was so dense that we were able to see only a few rods in any direction. Almost simultaneous with the fog, a blizzard blowing from the southeast sprang up. The fog enveloped us for three days, and being unable to take any bearings, we were wholly unconscious of any movement of our position. When the mists cleared away the shores of the continent were no longer in sight, and upon taking astronomical observations, we found that we had drifted quite a distance from our former position.

When the Karluk started on her drift there were twenty white men, two Eskimo men, one Eskimo woman and two children, little girls, on board. We were well supplied with provisions, coal, arms, amunition, dogs, sleds, snowshoes and skiis, everything necessary for arctic travel. At first there did not seem to be much concern among the members of the expedition, except among the six scientists. They talked among themselves a great deal as to the probable outcome of our situation. The other members indulged in many conjectures, but passed the matter over rather lightly, always expecting some turn of good fortune that would liberate us from the grip of the ice. By taking observations daily, we knew that we were skirting the shores of Alaska, and at no time very far from them, although they were never in sight. We drifted past Point Barrow in the night, passing so near that we almost touched land. Our passing was later

REAR ADMIRAL ROBERT MALLORY BERRY U. S. N.- RETIRED.

CALVIN LEIGHTON HOOPER, CAPTAIN U. S. COAST GUARD SERVICE. BORN IN BOSTON, MASS., JULY 7, 1842. DIED IN OAKLAND, CAL., APRIL 29, 1900. USED BY COURTESY OF MRS. CALVIN L. HOOPER.

JOHN MUNRO, CHIEF ENGINEER, WHO WAS IN COMMAND OF THE Karluk PARTY ON WRANGEL FROM MARCH TO SEPTEMBER, 1915.

STEFANSSON'S PARTY ABOUT TO LEAVE THE Karluk, SEPTEMBER, 1913.

JACK HADLEY BRINGING HOME A SEAL, EARLY SPRING OF 1914.

THE FATAL DRIFT OF THE KARLUK 37

reported to Dr. Stefansson by a native who claimed to have seen us, and I believe he did, for he stated that there was no smoke issuing from our funnels. This was true, for we had blown down our boilers some time before.

When Stefansson returned from his hunting trip he found the Karluk missing. He then made his way overland to Point Barrow, three hundred miles distant, where he wrote a telegram reporting the loss of the Karluk, and sent it by a native to Nome, four hundred miles away, which was the nearest telegraph station. We learned later that he then returned to Herschel Island, where the Belvedere, which carried freight and additional supplies for him, was lying, and fitted out a dog sled expedition to make a dash for the unknown land which he believed lay somewhere in the uncharted area to the north of Alaska. He started with dogs and sleds taking with him two Norwegians, Storkerson and Andreasen, both experienced arctic travelers, on March 22, 1914. Up to the present time nothing further has been heard of him (May, 1915).

We must have passed Point Barrow some time before Stefansson arrived there, as we drifted rapidly between Camden Bay and that point, making as much as three knots an hour, or about forty miles a day, and we had probably seven or eight days the start of him. It seems that when he lost his ship he was seized with a desperate determination not to be balked in his attempt to reach an unknown land which he believed to exist. Returning to the Belvedere, he made the dash which in its very nature was little short of suicidal. The icepack to the north of Alaska is known to be the most treacherous in the arctic seas.

When we began drifting the sun was above the horizon

38 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

about ten hours each day. By the time we passed Point Barrow we had only five hours of sunlight, and on November 15, the sun disappeared below the horizon altogether and we entered upon the long Arctic night.

In the meantime Captain Bartlett set about taking measures for our safety. He first had us bank up the sides of the ship with ice for the purpose of forming a kind of cushion against the lateral pressure of the floe that held us. Then we blew down the boilers and began repairing the engines. This we did by taking them apart piece by piece and replacing each as soon as it had been gone over and repairs made if needed. Captain Bartlett had us remove all the sacked coal that we had on deck and place it on the ice beside the ship; also all the biscuits, kerosene, alcohol, sleds and skiis. We then put the ship and the portion of the cargo that remained on her in good and snug shape and made her our living quarters. Keeping us at work as much of the time as he could was the best thing Captain Bartlett could have done for us. As long as we were working it seemed that we were living for a purpose and were still a part of the busy world.

But we were drifting, drifting, we knew not to what haven, in the silent icy fastnesses of the North. On every hand there was an unbroken stretch of ice, level save where it had been forced into hummocky ridges by the lateral pressure of its own irresistible mass. So long as the sun was with us to measure the night and day it was not so bad; but when the orb disappeared a sort of sickening sensation of loneliness came over us. We did not despair, although we knew that the ice and the tides and currents were bearing us further into the gloom.

THE FATAL DRIFT OF THE KARLUK 39

After leaving the coast of Alaska our general drift was to the northwest. Of course, we did not travel in a direct line, but zigzagged about until we reached the latitude of 75 degrees North, then we took a southwesterly course to the point that is now designated as Shipwreck Camp on the maps and charts of Arctic exploration.

There is a peculiar weirdness in those shifty stretches of the ice-pack. Sometimes no sound is heard for hours or days, and then comes the boom or roar of ice breaking and grinding by its own great weight. The law of compensation is operative in the Arctic as well as elsewhere, for though we were deprived of the glories of the day, we often beheld the wonderful beauties of the far northern night. Most of the time the sky was clear and the stars shone brilliantly; the Pole Star was almost directly overhead, and the great constellations that rise and set where most people live made a nightly circuit of our heavens without setting. The displays of the aurora borealis were remarkable for their beauty and variety. We often stood upon our drifting world of ice and admired their shifting colors, forgetful of the dangers that were constantly threatening to destroy us without warning.

After we had been drifting several weeks, life consisted mainly in devising means to pass the time. The ship’s dogs lived on the ice, preferring the open to staying on board. We had built shelters for them, but they rarely went into them. All about the ship were ringlike depressions in the snow worn by the dogs lying there and melted by the warmth of their bodies. Each dog had his own nest. If one attempted to intrude upon the rights of another, bickerings were sure to follow; but this did not occur often, as these husky animals, though

40 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

shrewd and cunning, generally play fair toward each other. They are kind and friendly to their masters and faithful in their devotion to men.

The men spent most of their time aboard ship. There was about two hours’ work a day for each, and the remainder of the time was spent in sleeping, reading, playing cards, chess and checkers, and listening to music from our Victrola. We had an abundance of fine records that were an ever-living source of pleasure. We were well supplied with good reading, books and magazines. The forethought of Dr. Stefansson in supplying us with the means of entertainment was one of the wisest precautions he could have taken.

The Karluk was supplied with the best of provisions to last her three years. We also had large quantities of foods in more condensed form for use on the trail. While on the ship no restrictions were put upon the amount of food allowed to each man; everything was furnished in plenty. We procured fresh water from an ice floe that was several years old. The effect of the sun upon ocean ice is to draw the salt from it gradually.

We had been drifting so long without any unusual incident that our ship became a veritable home to us. We had comfort and plenty on board, and in a measure forgot our helplessness.

Day succeeded day in the same monotonous way, until one night in the early part of December we were suddenly aroused by a strong reminder of what was in store for us. About 9 o’clock in the evening, as we were sitting in the cabin entertaining ourselves with music, reading and games, we were startled by a heavy booming sound that was almost deafening. We hurried to the main deck and discovered that a lead had opened in the ice off the

THE FATAL DRIFT OF THE KARLUK 41

port side of the ship. The lead opened fifty feet from the vessel, was probably a half mile in length and four feet in width, and was in the old floe on which we kept dogs and on which we had previously stored provisions removed from the ship. When I tell you that where the lead opened the ice was solid and fifteen feet in thickness, you may have some idea of the terrific strain that caused it to part.

Our first care was to bring the dogs to safety. We did not mind about the coal and provisions, as we still had plenty on board. The dogs would not cross the lead of their own accord, so we had to leap across to them, take them by their chains, then recross the lead and drag the dogs after us. These northern dogs do not take kindly to the water; they will sleep on the snow and ice for months, but they have an instinct that teaches them the water is to be avoided. We knew that if we lost our dogs we would be helpless in case the ship was crushed and sunk.

In a few days this lead partially closed, leaving us in the same situation as before. By this time we had started on our southwesterly drift and were moving in the direction of Wrangel Island. We noticed, also, that whereas it had been a silent drift before, we now frequently heard the booming noises caused by the strain of the ice that told us leads were forming.

We were nearing the arctic midnight. Nothing further occurring to renew our fears, we settled back into the old routine of living and waiting.

We celebrated Christmas Day, 1913, on board the Karluk. It was the last Christmas on earth for many of our company. We held athletic sports and contests, such as running, jumping, sack races, three-legged races,

42 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

etc., for which prizes were given. All of us were in splendid health and good spirits. At 4 o’clock P. M. we sat down to a Christmas dinner, at which we had polar bear steaks, canned lobster, canned ox tongue, creamed peas, creamed potatoes (which we had saved the whole time just to have them for Christmas day), canned asparagus, plum puddings, cakes, nuts and different kinds of canned fruits.

In the centre of the table was placed a small artificial Christmas tree as the main decorative feature. It was a feast royal, the richest, I have no doubt, ever spread so far north of the Arctic Circle. Capt. Bartlett sent down a bottle of liquor to every five or six men, as an additional feature of good cheer. It was the only time since the expedition started that we were allowed any liquor except on the advice of the surgeon in case of sickness.

The week between Christmas and New Year’s Day was uneventful. We celebrated New Year’s Day by having a game of football on the ice. There were several Scotchmen with us who challenged all nations to play them. The game lasted an hour and was hotly contested. The allies won by a score of 8 to 3. We had a special dinner that day also. We might have had several more fine dinners had we known what was before us, for there were large stores of good things abandoned later when we were forced to leave the ship.

On January 10, 1914, at 5 o’clock in the morning, the crisis came. Without a moment’s warning, there was a crash and roar that awakened every one. Again all hurried out to see what had happened. We discovered that leads had opened in several directions fore and aft the ship and on both sides of her. The Karluk was right in one of the leads. Making a hurried examination, we

THE FATAL DRIFT OF THE KARLUK 43

found the ship uninjured, but the splitting of the ice had caused her to change her position slightly. After five minutes the sounds of breaking and crushing ice ceased and all was quiet again, and remained so until 7 o’clock, the evening of the same day, when the ominous and threatening roar of the grinding ice began again. This time it was closing in against the sides of the ship.

Next came a crash that sent us rushing to the hold of the vessel. We discovered that the side of the Karluk at the engine room had been crushed and she was filling with water. The ice still held her upright, and she remained in that position twenty hours longer.

End of Article by Frederick Maurer.

CHAPTER IV

The Sinking of the Ship and the Journey Ashore

[When the Karluk was about to sink, as Hadley will presently relate, there were aboard of her twenty white men, two Eskimo men, an Eskimo woman and two children, who were eventually divided into three parties. Captain Bartlett led safely ashore on Wrangel Island the following: G. Breddy, fireman; Ernest E. Chafe, cabin boy; John Hadley; William Laird McKinlay, magnetician; George Malloch, geologist; Bjarne Mamen, assistant to the geologist; Frederick W. Maurer, fireman; John Munro, chief engineer; Robert Templeman, steward; H. Williams, sailor; Robert J. Williamson, second engineer; the Eskimos Kataktovik and Kurraluk; the latter’s wife Keruk, and their two little daughters Makperk and Helen. Because of a difference of opinion as to methods and plans, Captain Bartlett permitted at their own request that four men should separate themselves to go, as they intended, first to Wrangel Island and then across Siberia to Petrograd, using “Shackleton methods of travel as developed in the Antarctic.” These were A. Forbes Mackay, surgeon; James Murray, oceanographer; Henri Beuchat, anthropologist, and S. Stanley Morris, sailor. Beyond the pathetic details which Hadley gives, nothing further was ever heard of them. Until Captain Louis L. Lane and W. D. M. LeBourdais made 192 ten years late the discovery which are described in the appendix -, posI Four other men acting under the Captain’s instructions were sent toward Herald Island—Alexander Anderson, first mate; Charles Barker, second mate; John Brady, sailor,

SINKING OF THE SHIP AND JOURNEY ASHORE 45

and A. King, sailor. These have never been heard of since, from sincewere also never heard of again, and beyond Hadley’s reasonable conjectures, there is nothing known.]

Hadley’s Narrative

The evening of January 4th (1914) there was a crack like a shot that brought everybody out on deck with a startled look. We found the ice had split with a narrow crack from the ship’s stem right out ahead. When we returned to the cabin there was a great discussion started among the scientific staff. Each one had his theory about it, but it seemed to be finally decided that the tides were at the bottom of the trouble. The Doctor asked me what I thought of it and I answered him that, as the wind was blowing pretty fresh from the north, I thought that might account for the pressure. Whenever there was pressure during our drift there was always a discussion about it.

The next Saturday about five A. M. all hands were awakened by a loud crashing and groaning of the ship and for a few minutes she was writhing in her ice dock as if her last hour had come. But after a while things quieted down. It happened to be blowing rather strong from the north and everybody was on the alert that evening. About seven P. M. we got a strong squeezing which seemed to lift the ship several inches. Fifteen minutes later there was a loud cracking of timbers, she heeled to starboard several degrees, and water commenced to pour into the engine room. A few minutes later the Captain gave orders to abandon the ship.

The only food that was taken out of the ship at this time was pemmican. The Captain detailed me to look out for all the bags of clothing that were in Mr. Stefans-

48 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

I think it was February 4th or 5th that the sleds returned to camp with the news that they had left the Mate’s party on the ice with about three miles of open water between them and Herald Island. They had one sled, three sled-loads of provisions and no dogs. The feet of one of the four were badly frozen already. I thought this a bad position for the Mate’s party to be in, for if the ice started to crush, which in all probability it would do, it was all off with his outfit. They might save themselves but they wouldn’t save much of their gear.

[After describing how, through differences of opinion as to methods between Captain Bartlett and the surgeon, Dr. Mackay, it was decided that the dissenters should be allowed to separate from the main party, Hadley goes on:]

There was great excitement in camp that evening. The Doctor’s party were planning to start out on their own account. The next day they got ready and packed their sled with fifty days’ rations for four men. The Captain told them they could have anything they wanted (except dogs—these would all remain with the main party).

I think it was the third morning after this that the Captain sent two or three sleds with loads of provisions to Herald Island with the intention to join the Mate’s party. About the 10th of February the sleds returned with the news that when they arrived at Herald Island they found the ice had done considerable crushing. They could discover no sign of the Mate’s party. They seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth. The search party camped about three miles from Herald Island for they could not get ashore because of water and slush ice. Next day they hunted again for signs of people living or

SINKING OF THE SHIP AND JOURNEY ASHORE 49

dead but found none. During the next night the ice commenced working. The piece they were camped on was a small, solid cake. The next morning at daylight they found they were adrift on it with water all around them, going to the west at a mile or two an hour. [Some similar thing had probably happened to the Mate’s party]. After drifting a few hours, their cake touched the pack and they were able to get off. One of their sleds collapsed, so they cached their load—which was never found again. On the return trip they met the Doctor’s party and found them in pretty bad shape. The sailor, Morris, had blood poisoning in one of his hands and poor Beuchat had frozen both feet from the ankles down and both hands from the wrists solid. He couldn’t get his boots and stockings on or his mittens, and he was in a very pitiable plight. The most cheerful one seemed to be Murray. The Doctor appeared all in. They were double-tripping their stuff and Beuchat remained at the camp to look out for their things. Chafe wanted him to return to Shipwreck Camp but Beuchat would not. He knew we could not do anything for him there. The Doctor’s party was never seen or heard of again, nor any trace of them found.

That evening the Captain informed me that on the 12th of the month I would leave with the two engineers, Munro and Williamson, the two firemen, Breddy and Maurer, and Malloch, Chafe and one sailor. We would have two sleds and would go to Wrangel Island. The chief engineer, John Munro, was in command of our party.

The next day we got everything ready. We had a lot of collapsible iron stoves for burning driftwood and I wanted to take two of them along to Wrangel Island

50 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

so we could use wood for fuel. They weighed only a few pounds. The Captain did not approve of this, however, for he had never been in those parts of the Arctic where driftwood is available for fuel, and gave us orders to burn kerosene instead. We started with a light load and were to replenish as we went along from the abovementioned depots which had been made at the Captain’s orders at various intervals towards land. I should judge we had nine hundred pounds to each sled and five dogs. We had one Mannlicher rifle for each sled and three hundred rounds of ammunition for each rifle. We also had one .22 calibre rifle with five hundred rounds.

About nine o’clock February 12th, the chief engineer’s party started from Shipwreck Camp towards shore with me in it. We tried to follow the old trail made by the sledges when they were carrying out the supplies which had been cached in the several depots at varying distances from Shipwreck Camp along a line running towards shore. We found the trail broken by ice movement and difficult or impossible to follow. In some places we would come to where the trail ended abruptly along a line of ice movement and after long search we might find it two or three miles to one side or the other. Usually it was found to the left, for the farther away from Wrangel Island the ice was, the faster it was drifting to the west. Our progress was pretty slow, for in addition to searching for the trail we had to chop a road through pressure ridges frequently with the pickaxes. Our reason for trying to follow the old trail was to see if we could find any of the depots. When we arrived in a locality where we thought one of the depots ought to be, we stopped for several hours or perhaps overnight to make a search. I did not expect to find any of them, but we

SINKING OF THE SHIP AND JOURNEY ASHORE 51

did find one which by good luck was in the middle of an old ice floe that had escaped crushing.

The second morning out I shot a small bear, but the rest of the boys would not eat it as they weren’t hungry enough yet, so I fed it to the dogs. This was better for them than the pemmican ration.

The morning when we left camp the wind was freshening from the northeast. It gradually increased to a blizzard and kept up for five or six days. In the morning of the sixth day we arrived at the pressed-up ice where the edge of the land-fast floe is constantly torn and ground by the moving pack. This proved to be about forty miles north of Wrangel Island. The ice was crushing and tumbling so that we just had to wait for it to stop. I picked out what I thought was a good cake for camping. I then went to have a better look at the ridge and found the ice in a frightful condition. I got on top of a small pinnacle which was not moving just then and found the ridge extended about three and a half miles through such ice as I had never before seen in my twentyfive years’ knowledge of the arctic sea. Nothing could be done till the crushing stopped. I had grave fears for the Doctor’s and the Mate’s parties if they got caught in this—fears which later proved only too well justified.

We camped and waited for the ice to stop crushing. That evening about eight o’clock we were all in our blankets and I was listening to the ice we were on groaning and vibrating when, snap! it cracked right across the floor of our house. We tumbled out as quickly as we could, packed the gear on the sled, hitched up the dogs and got everything ready for retreat. I found we were surrounded by lanes of water, but, as we were two or three miles from the ridge, I thought we wouldn’t do

52 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

anything until daylight unless we had to because it was so dark you could cut it and it was impossible to see where you were going. So we walked around to keep ourselves warm until daylight and being mighty careful not to step off the little ice island we were on into the rather chilly salt water. When it was light enough we started to climb back. Then the ice began to get its work in, splitting and opening up in all directions. But there was no crushing where we were. About 4 P. M. we managed to get back to the solid pack and picked a place to camp.

Next morning I heard more crushing. We again packed up. We moved southeast a few miles and then south and camped about two miles from the ridge. The Chief and I walked down to have a look at it and found it still crushing a bit, so we concluded to wait another day. We knew the Captain’s gang would be along shortly. All hands could then pitch in and cut our way through, for we knew the ridge was solidly grounded on the sea bottom and once inside it we would be safe. It certainly was there to stay till summer. On our way back from this inspection we saw the Captain coming from the north. I walked ahead to meet him and tell him how things were going.

Next morning all hands pitched in with everything they could work with. After a discussion with me the Captain decided to send me with two sleds back to Shipwreck Camp to rush some grub over the ridge onto the landfast ice and we could return from the beach and get it at any time.

We started next morning and arrived at Shipwreck Camp at 6 P. M. I should judge it was about forty miles. Next day we loaded the sleds. It took us three

SINKING OF THE SHIP AND JOURNEY ASHORE 53

days to cover on the return journey what we had made in one day coming out.

On the second day about 3 P. M., I was behind the team when my dogs stopped, turned in their tracks, and commenced growling, their hair standing up stiff. I looked behind me and there was a bear about six feet from the sled. If the dogs hadn’t smelt him I should never have known what hit me. They made a break for him and he backed off a few feet, giving me a chance to get my gun and give it to him in the head. We found him about as large as most bears ever get, ten feet from tip of nose to tip of tail, with three inches of fat under his skin. We made camp, for it was getting dusk.

While I was tinkering at the camp and the other boys were cooking, the dogs commenced a racket. I looked up and there was a big bear alongside the sled between me and it, sitting on his haunches and making passes at the dogs. I ran around the sled and got my rifle, which was about four feet from the bear. We were not needing any bear meat, so I tried to frighten him off, but he was too scared of the dogs to pay any attention to me. I did not want him to kill any of the dogs, and finally had to shoot him. As I shot I heard another growling match and another bear piled over a small ridge that was about ten feet from the sled. He had blood in his eye and went for the dogs as if bent on murder. I had to kill him, which closed a pretty good day.

About noon the next day as we were drawing near the ridge, two men came running to meet us. They were the Chief and one of the sailors, who helped us over the ridge to camp.

The next morning Kurraluk, McKinlay, Mamen and I went back for bear meat while the rest were double-

54 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

tripping stuff towards the beach. We got ashore on Wrangel, March 12th, having had a fairly good road the forty miles from the ridge. There was plenty of driftwood on the beach [for fuel and house building], which was a godsend to us.

The next morning the Captain sent one of the Eskimos and me out to look for the Mate’s and the Doctor’s parties, but no sled tracks or other signs were to be found anywhere on Wrangel Island. Big fires were made with wet driftwood to cause smoke which they could see a long way if they were there to see it.

The Captain and one of the natives started for Siberia, March 18th, with fifty days’ rations for the men and thirty days’ for the dogs. We learned later they had a fairly easy trip, reaching natives and traders seventeen days after they left us and thirteen days after they left Wrangel Island.

CHAPTR V

The Summer of 1914 on Wrangel Island (Continuation of Hadley’s narrative)

Shortly after the Captain left, Mamen, Malloch and the steward left our camp near Waring Point and went to Rodgers Harbor about thirty-five miles southwest, to live through the summer. The native went along to help them. About the end of March, the native returned. On the way back he killed a female bear and two cubs. The next week he and I got two more bears and a small cub.

As there did not seem to be much game near the shore, the Eskimo and I went out to the edge of the landfast ice, forty miles from the coast, and made camp. Next morning, bright and early, we went out to the open water about three miles beyond the ridge and got five seals. For two or three days after that the sealing conditions were bad (the wind blowing on shore, closing up the leads), so the native decided to go ashore with two seals and bring back a load of driftwood to burn, so we should not have to waste good food as we were doing by using seal fat as fuel for heat and cooking. He took the sled we had come with and two dogs, leaving one with me to give me warning in case of the arrival of a bear. He intended to be back in four days.

That night I slept in my sleeping-bag and the dog was fastened to the sled just outside the door. About 4 a. m., I was awakened by his barking, and that meant a

55

56 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

bear. I tried to get out of my white drilling bag, but the more I struggled the harder I stuck. Finally, when I got out to my gun I saw the bear and two small cubs disappearing over a ridge. I swore, “No more sleepingbags for me,” and for about ten days I slept on top of the bag, but no bears. Then one night it felt pretty cold and there being no bears, I got into the sleeping-bag. Of course, the same thing happened, even to the hour of 4 a. m. I finally freed myself from the bag in time to get one shot as the bear was disappearing over a ridge. I then cut the dog loose to see if we could stop the bear. It had been snowing and was pretty dark and both the dog and I had several hard falls in the pursuit. The rough going did not seem to bother the bear and he got away.

The native had now been away twice as long as he said, but I decided to give him four or five more days. It was blowing hard from the south, and I knew that when the wind dropped there would be open water beside the ridge, with plenty of seals. But I was beginning to worry about the native, so I set out on the fourteenth day. I got to the beach at 7 a. m. and found everybody asleep. It seemed the native had loaded up with wood as he had said he would and had started for my camp when he got severely snowblind five or six miles from land and was unable to proceed. After being sick there for some days he had returned ashore.

Shortly after this McKinlay left for his camp at Rodgers Harbor, where he was to stay according to the Captain’s orders. He was gone several days and came back with the news that Malloch had died and that Mamen was sick and swelling up, which most of them were doing at our camp, too. He said Mamen could not

THE SUMMER OF 1914 ON WRANGEL ISLAND 57

eat their pemmican and had asked him to go to Skeleton Island, some twenty or thirty miles from our camp, to get him a tin of another kind of pemmican which we had cached there. McKinlay had tried to do this and had got lost to the extent of not finding Skeleton Island, whereupon he had continued along the land until he came to our camp. He was snowblind and played out, so he got the Chief and Fred Maurer to return to Rodgers Harbor to look after Mamen, as Templeman was unable to do it.

From now on the seals began to come out of their holes to sun themselves on the ice and the native and I occasionally got one, which was a change from the pemmican. Birds would fly over us in flocks, but we rarely got one of them on the wing with our rifles. It was then we felt not having a shotgun.

The second of June, McKinlay, the Eskimo family and I left for Cape Waring, where I knew of a crowbill rookery. McKinlay was to take back the sleds and team of three dogs to fetch the rest, who were all sick. Before we arrived at Cape Waring, we were met by the Chief and Maurer from Rodgers Harbor with the news that when they arrived Mamen had died and the steward was nearly out of his head with the two dead men beside him in the tent. They had come back to get their effects and return to the Harbor.

[Hadley noted in Wrangel Island that the swelling and other symptoms of illness developed most rapidly with those men who ate the most pemmican and, in consequence, the least seal or bear meat. The situation was not thoroughly understood at the time even by Hadley, and his own escape and that of the Eskimos

58 THE ADVENTURE OE WRANGEL ISLAND

was due merely to the general notion that fresh food was better than “canned stuff.” Also it was a matter of taste. The Eskimos and Hadley preferred the fresh meat, and some of the rest fell into their tastes early, which kept them freer than the others from the symptoms of the disease—wholly free, I believe in the case of those who lived mainly on fresh meat, as, for instance, John Munro.]

[On the reasons for the illness the opinion of Munro differs somewhat from that of Hadley. Munro considers that the most active were the freest from the disease, exercise and fresh air being the preventives. He also says there was a peculiar taste to some of the water, presumably from chemicals in the dust of the island that had blown on the snow, which they used for drinking purposes.]

We found (Hadley continues) millions of ducks and gulls at Cape Waring. We immediately went to the rookery three miles from camp, but there was not a crowbill in sight, though there were plenty of gulls. I shot twelve gulls, one for each of the party, and then returned to camp, where McKinlay was waiting for me to return with the team and fetch the sick. I put one gull for each of them on the sled and he started back. The native caught a seal during the day, which put us on Easy Street for the time. Next day McKinlay returned from our old camp with the rest and I thought a few days’ feeding on ducks and duck soup would bring them around all right. They were swelling up more and more all the time. I put this down partly to the fact that they lay too much in their houses, never going out. When they made tea they would dig snow from the side of the house for the water.

THE SUMMER OF 1914 ON WRANGEL ISLAND 59

[Hadley tells elsewhere that they did not think it worth the bother to build log cabins, where they could have burned wood in open fireplaces, but lived in houses with snow walls and canvas roofs, burning in primus stoves kerosene they had brought ashore from the Karluk, or else seal fat that might otherwise have been used as food.]

We got ducks and seals most every day and later three ugrugs (bearded seals) and one small walrus. Eventually I told the native to build a small umiak so that when the ice left the beach we could go after walrus, he and I. But he thought a kayak [one-man skin hunting boat] would be better, so he built one, covering it with sealskins. Later we wished we had an umiak instead, for when we had nothing to do and could get no more ducks we could see walrus drifting by offshore by the hundreds sleeping on the ice cakes. The Eskimo was too scared to go after them in the kayak, for he was always used to hunting them from an umiak. With an umiak there is no trouble about getting meat in Wrangel Island. We had not tried to save or bring ashore the big umiak on the Karluk. It had been the intention to let her sink with the ship, but after the Karluk sank she was floating around in the water, and I had got permission from the Captain to cut out of her a few pieces of leather for boot soles. These proved very useful later in Wrangel Island, but if we had brought with us the boat itself, we would have had no trouble in killing walrus enough to support us for years.

About this time I made a ladder from driftwood to get eggs from the cliff, but after I packed it over to the rookery I found it about twenty feet too short and could get only twenty-five eggs. Later I made another which

60 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

was about the right length, and McKinlay, the Eskimo and I took it over and tried to raise it, but it was too heavy for us and we had to abandon the idea. Tens of thousands of eggs, and we could not get one of them! I used the short ladder in every place that I could and got small lots of fifteen and twenty and twenty-five eggs.

[For the events of Dominion Day, July 1st, 1914, we shall take for our authority Chief Engineer John Munro, for he, and not Hadley, was in official command at Wrangel Island, and it was, therefore, by his direction that a British flag was raised and possession of the island reaffirmed. I take the following extract from a letter written me by Mr. Munro, dated Oakland, California, April 17, 1924:

“At this time Maurer, Templeman and I were located at Rodgers Harbor. ... On Dominion Day, July 1st, 1914, we raised a Canadian red ensign about twenty feet from the tent, claiming the island as British.”

Munro has told me, and you can also see it from the photograph, that it was Frederick Maurer who actually hauled up the flag. The man seen assisting him is Robert Templeman, the steward of the Karluk. It was Munro himself who took the photograph.]

For July 3rd we go back to Hadley again: On that day the wind turned to the southwest blowing strong. The ice went off from the beach and disappeared, ending our sealing and duck shooting. The ammunition was getting low and we could not afford to shoot small game, so we got a net that we had been using for fish, though we never caught any, and brought it out to use as a bird seine. The first cast we got about fifty moulting birds,

RAISING THE FLAG TO REAFFIRM THE BRITISH RIGHT TO WRANGEL BASED ON ITS DISCOVERY BY CAPTAIN HENRY KELLETT, OF THE ROYAL NAVY, IN 1849. FLAG BEING HAULED UP BY FREDERICK MAURER

ASSISTED BY ROBERT TEMPLEMAN, JULY 1, 1914.

The Karluk JUST BEFORE SHE SANK, SHOWING SUSPENDED BELOW THE BOWSPRIT THE UMIAK OR WALRUS HUNTING BOAT MENTIONED BY HADLEY.

THE FLAG AT HALF MAST BY THE GRAVE OF GEORGE MALLOCH ON WRANGEL ISLAND, SUMMER 1914.

THE SUMMER OF 1914 ON WRANGEL ISLAND 61

and in all we got about five hundred, so our hungry days were temporarily over.

The first part of September the new ice was strong enough for us to go three miles from shore, where we saw several bear tracks and several seals, but no walrus close enough to shoot. As the season was getting late and no ship had appeared, we thought we were in for another winter and would have to be careful of our cartridges. I had about forty-five and the native around fifty, so we decided we ought not to shoot anything but bears and walrus unless we were pinched.

The 6th of September the weather was fine and the Eskimo and I went out on the floe, as our ducks were getting low, and I was lucky enough to get two seals. When we came ashore in the evening we got the welcome news that the Eskimo woman had caught about fifty pounds of tomcod, the first we had seen, so we went to sleep quite happy, with great expectations for the morrow.

Next morning we fished for a while with poor luck and then all hands went back to the tent. About ten o’clock the Eskimo went outdoors. A few minutes afterwards he sang out, “I think I see a ship!” I jumped up, and there, sure enough, was a schooner coming along the island about twelve miles off. I told the native to run out to the edge of the ice and attract their attention, and he was off like the wind. Shortly afterwards she headed in for the floe, where she finally tied up, and our troubles were over. A gang of men climbed over the bow and headed for the beach.

It proved to be the King and Winge, of Seattle, owned by Mr. Swenson, who was on board. They had along a moving picture man with his machine, and he marshaled us up and down for about ten minutes, taking films of us.

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When that was finished we went on board and started or Nome, where we arrived September 13, 1914. (Signed) JOHN HADLEY.

We have been following Hadley’s manuscript, but nearly every impression I have of Wrangel Island and the adventures and trials of Hadley and his companions comes not from his written account, though the manuscript is about five times as long as the part here printed, but from the stories he told me during the long winter evenings, sometimes with excessive elaboration, but more often in brief, disjointed sentences that would have been incomprehensible to a listener not thoroughly familiar with the whole background of polar environment, sailor ethics, and human nature as it manifests itself in remote isolation under circumstances different from the ordinary routine of sailor life.

Without a trace of callousness, but with a recognition of the inevitable, Hadley believed that a second winter on Wrangel Island would have meant the death of all those not active and self-supporting. This was not so much because the productive hunters would have refused to share what they got with the others, but rather because he believed in common with Munro, as quoted above, that exercise as well as food, was necessary for health. It seemed to me that the lives of the whole party were saved by the King and Winge, but Hadley always maintained stoutly that himself, the Eskimos, and probably two or three of the white men could have lived through the winter and through any number of successive winters. He believed also that these same people could have crossed to the mainland of Siberia, a hundred miles away, after the middle of the winter, and he said they would

THE SUMMER OF 1914 ON WRANGEL ISLAND 63

have done so except for the possibility that some sick people might have been still living at that time to hold them back.

Hadley considered that the entire party from the Karluk could have “had a picnic” on Wrangel Island for one or several years if the following things had been done: The big Eskimo walrus hunting boat (umiak), which had been placed on board the Karluk for such an emergency, should have been brought ashore after the shipwreck. Doing this would have necessitated throwing away perhaps a thousand pounds of provisions and petroleum. This Hadley considered would have been of no consequence, for the petroleum was unnecessary in any case, as there was abundant driftwood for fuel on Wrangel Island, and the food thrown away would have been negligible because unlimited quantities of walrus meat and fat could have been secured with the skin-boat. The hunting, or, at least, the use of ammunition, should have been confined, he considered, to only a few of the party who either knew already how to use rifles or showed themselves capable of learning quickly. But, as a matter of fact, large quantities of ammunition were fired off by anyone who wanted to, the targets in many cases being distant birds on the wing.

It has been the rule on all exploratory journeys of our various expeditions when we have been living entirely by hunting that no shot was ever fired at an animal smaller than a wolf. Thus have we been able to maintain for more than ten years an average of over a hundred pounds of meat (live weight) for every bullet fired. Hadley thought this average could have been excelled at Wrangel Island if a skin-boat had been available and if

64 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

the shooting had been restricted to a few of the most capable men.

To the reader unfamiliar with polar conditions, and even to those polar explorers who are used to living on provisions brought from home, the story of the Karluk party on Wrangel Island seems one of unrelieved and inevitable tragedy. Of twenty-five persons involved, eight had been lost during the sixty-mile journey from the shipwreck to the island, and three on the island itself. Nearly every venture in hunting and travel had turned out badly.

But Hadley had lived in the Arctic for a quarter of a century, taking part sometimes in the various activities necessary for self-support and always associated more or less directly with the natives or white people who were making their living by hunting, sealing or fishing. On the basis of what he knew about the north coast of Canada and Alaska, and about Victoria, Banks and other islands where we had been living by hunting for years, Hadley insisted that Wrangel Island was by nature one of the most favorable locations in the polar regions for self-support by people who knew how to avoid becoming victims of their environment, capitalizing the very conditions that to the inexperienced are handicaps and hardships. Adequate supplies of drift timber Drift logs for the building of comfortable cabins and for indefinite fuel supply are found in Wrangel Island, but in none of the other islands to the north of North America; in that important respect Wrangel, therefore, excels all other islands. Hadley had never seen walrus so abundant and so easy to get (with a skin-boat); polar bears seemed more numerous than in any locality where he had been. After Walrus and polar bears are the largest biggest game animals in the Arctic (except the whale), and the easiest for the

THE SUMMER OF 1914 ON WRANGEL ISLAND 65

skilled hunter to secure. Seals, more elusive to even the best hunters, were abundant around Wrangel Island and obtainable, of course, on the same basis there as in any other arctic country. In winter the island was separated from Siberia by only a hundred miles of average sea ice such as we are accustomed to travel over at about twelve miles a day. On our various expeditions we have sledged accross traversed perhaps two thousand miles of similar ice, generally more mobile and dangerous. The numerous hospitable traders and reindeer-owning natives of Siberia, therefore, were near neighbors, as things look to an arctic explorer. Hadley was constantly saying that his next ambition was to go back to Wrangel Island to establish himself there permanently.

We talked much of Hadley’s colonizing Wrangel Island with my co-operation. I was as much in love with the Arctic after eleven years as he was after twenty-five. In our mind’s eye we could see the northward march of civilization down the great rivers of Canada and Siberia constantly coming nearer that island-dotted Mediterranean between the Old World and the New which we call the Arctic Ocean. We foresaw that air navigation by dirigibles and planes would have a special role field in this new development and that the arctic islands would, therefore, acquire a positional value in addition to whatever intrinsic value they might have by reason of their mineral riches or their vegetation and animal life. I took it for certain that the first permanent transarctic air route for fast mail and for passengers in a hurry would be north from London and then south to Tokyo. This route would mean a saving of several thousand miles in distance and, in our opinion, would be preferable in some ways to any other flying route between these two great cities. It

66 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

would, however, lie far from Wrangel Island and would at first sight appear to have no bearing upon its value.

But we knew that for a hundred years the treeless prairies of North America had been considered worthless because they had no trees, and then the point of view had suddenly changed so that the farmers actually began to prefer the prairie to the forest. When that change in mental attitude appeared in one part of the American continent (about 1820) it spread rapidly to every other part. Similarly, the success of a Londpn-to-Tokyo airmail flight would within the decade in a decade almost instantaneously change jthe world’s point of view with regard to the polar regions, making those lands coveted that had previously been despised, no matter how far they lay from the routes immediately practicable commercially.

It was these conversations with Captain Hadley that led to the first tentative formulation of the plans of the Wrangel Island Expedition which eventually sailed north. Unfortunately, Hadley could not be in command of it, for he died in San Francisco of influenza during the great epidemic of 1918-1919.

CHAPTER VI

The Planning of the New Expedition

Our Exp expedition sailedThe sailing of our expedition for Wrangel Island in September, 1921, because our was due to the strong conviction that the world is at the dawn of a revolution in transportation ideas similar to that heralded by Copernicus and Columbus. When the nations of Europe discovered four hundred years ago that the earth was round could be sailed around by going east or west, they found it necessary to modify not only their intellectual concepts, but also their diplomacy, their foreign policy and their commercial endeavors. It appeared to us that a similar, if less conspicuous, change would come when the nations realized that the earth can be flown around by north and south is round from north to south from the point of view of the transportation engineer as well as from that of the astronomer and geodesists. Countries that had been far from each other as measured apart from east to west were about to become neighbors across the northern sea.

On a Mercator’s map the Arctic looks vast and seems to be located between continents on the south and nothingness on the north. But on a map which has the equator for circumference and the North Pole for center, Such as we print at the back of this book, the Arctic looks like a small hub from which the land masses radiate like the spokes of a great wheel. It may be said that on a spherical world any point is central if we choose to consider it so. Mathematically that is right, but from the human point of view it is specious reasoning, for we inhabit the land and not the sea. It is

67

68 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

possible to determine the center of distribution of the land masses. While this does not coincide with the Arctic, it does fall so near the Arctic that the validity of our figure remains undisturbed. The polar sea does hold a position analogous to that of the hub as related to the rest of a wheel?¹

There must have been a time, before navigation began, when the Mediterranean was a barrier between the peoples of Africa and Europe. But navigation developed through slow centuries. We cannot say in which century it first became easier to carry a hundred-weight across a hundred miles of sea than to transport it over an equivalent stretch of land. That time did come earlier than the Phoenicians, earlier even than the Minoans; and since then we have thought of the Mediterranean as connecting rather than dividing the continents.

The difficulties of crossing the Arctic may seem formidable, today, but the crossing of the Mediterranean must have appeared more formidable to the earliest experimental navigators who paddled fearfully along itT shores,² dreading the very breezes

which centuries later were destined to become the best friends of more skillful navigators. It took the Europeans and Africans a long time to conquer the Mediterranean, but those who say that the Arctic will “forever” remain unconquered should remember that forever is a longer time than all of recorded history. Some practical and well-informed people are already beginning to say that the crossing of the Arctic by airplane and airship

¹ See map accompanying this book.

²Illi robur et aes triplex Circa pectus erat, qui fragilem truci Commisit pelago ratem Primus . . . says Horace, undoubtedly with the Mediterranean in mind. In English this would be, roughly: “That man had a heart of oak and threefold brass, who first entrusted his frail bark to the stormy deep.”

THE PLANNING OF THE NEW EXPEDITION 69

is a certainty in the next few years. Those who know the polar ocean in the sense in which a sailor knows the Atlantic think equally well of the submarine, and it may not be many years between the first crossing of the Arctic through the air above the ice and the first crossing through the water below the ice. Whenever the Arctic shall become as crossable to us as the Mediterranean was to the Phoenicians, it will become more of a connecting link between the continents than a barrier. The fact of its central location with regard to the lands will then be of paramount importance. The roads between various suburbs tend to run through the center of a city, and so will the airways between the lands have a tendency to meet and cross in or near the Arctic, because it is near the center of the land masses. This tendency will become constantly more marked with our growing mastery of the air and with the northward crowding of civilization into Alaska, Canada and Siberia.

While the Wrangel Island expedition was based upon the north and south roundness of the earth from the transportation point of view, upon the smallness of the Arctic, its crossability by airship and airplane, and its central location with regard to the land masses, there were also subsidiary considerations based upon my historical study of the northward trend of civilization through recorded time 2. See "The Northward Coarse of Empire". New York, 1922, Jordon 1923. and upon my personal observation as to the mildness of arctic climate when compared with ancient beliefs, the abundance of arctic vegetation as compared with its general postulated absence, and the richness of the land and sea in lifeless and living wealth.

The polar ocean, so far as we know it, is studded with islands. There is also an area of about a million square miles not as yet explored, and this may or may not con-

70 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

tain other islands. These islands, both discovered and undiscovered, have an intrinsic value dependent on their vegetable and animal life and on their resources in minerals. The seas between will also confer value on the lands, for they will have productive fisheries. But beyond their intrinsic value the islands have positional value to the transportation engineer. Some of them are small, but others are far larger than Great Britain. On the headlands of the smaller and on the wide, grassy plains of the larger islands will stand supply stations for airships, providing not only what routine equipment the air navigator may need if he gets there, but also the airships and airplanes that will respond like our present coast-guard vessels to SOS signals from distant aircraft in distress.

On the basis of these considerations I began in 1919 to urge upon the Canadian Government the importance of continuous and extensive exploratory work in the Arctic. Hitherto the northern islands have been considered worthless and have, therefore, remained the undisputed property of whatever nation cared to claim them either through discovery or contiguity. Now these islands were about to receive a value that would gradually develop until some decades hence a few of them, at least (and we could not tell in advance which), would be coveted much as certain tropical islands now are by great nations that quarrel about them.

During the last three hundred years the British have done as much northern exploration as all other European nations combined. Accordingly, they had already the moral claim of discovery and exploration to most of the islands north of America and to some islands north of Asia. I argued it was important for Canada, as that a section with Empire having its already a longest arctic frontier, to continue

THE PLANNING OF THE New EXPEDITION 71

the exploration of these islands and to do whatever was necessary to make it clear to the world that they valued them and intended to keep them permanently. It was also important to explore the areas thus far never traversed, both to accumulate information and to acquire discovery rights to any islands that might be found. I thought that five years probably, and ten years inevitably, would see the clear dawn of a normal popular understanding of the Arctic. Then would begin a possibly jealous competition among nations as to which could discover and claim the new islands and as to which had the right to hold permanently territories that had been so long neglected by their discoverers that they had become no-man’s land, open for occupation by whatever country might prove sufficiently enterprising.

There were many in Canada who had views similar to mine, and a few who were sufficiently interested to urge them upon the Government. Between us we spent an aggregate of weeks talking to Cabinet ministers and politicians, we wrote reams of semi-confidential letters of argument, we begged and implored. Then came the minor good fortune that one of the European nations, through diplomatic channels, cast some doubt upon the validity of Canadian claims to certain “Canadian” arcticislands. This kindled interest, for it is human nature to want whatever someone else wants. The Government actually began to spend money, and the plans of an expedition on a great scale took shape.

Then arose a most unfortunate controversy as to who should be the controlling personality in these expeditions. Had there been a clear victory for one or the other of the two chief candidates, all might have been well. But the worst possible happened. An approximately equal sup-

72 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

port for each developed in the Canadian Government 5 a virtual deadlock was produced. Eventually the supporters of one candidate seem to have proposed to the supporters of the other that, since they could not agree on what to do, they had better agree to do nothing. A telegram announcing this decision reached me in Nevada the summer of 1921 and broke my heart for the time being.

We have dwelt in previous chapters upon the theoretical considerations behind our belief in a coming new era and our plans for extensive and continuous northern exploration. But I had also been under constant pressure of another sort. The tropical explorer becomes infatuated with the tropics and either returns to them or eats out his heart deploring the circumstances that keep him away. The like is true of the arctic traveler. There are few who once go North without desiring to return there a second and a third time. On my expedition of 1913-18 I had had with me a number of men who had fallen in love with the North and who were pining to get back there. I had told them about the indefinite plans of the Canadian Government, promising that if these materialized I would try to get them an opportunity to go along. My files are filled with correspondence begging for such chances. Two of my men, Knight and Maurer, had been specially urgent and I had promised them the first opportunities.

E. Lorne Knight had just finished his studies in Seattle when he began in 1915 his capable four-year service on my last expedition. He was fitted for pioneer work both by physique and temperament and was popular with his companions. I liked him especially. In 1917 he accompanied me on the longest sledge trip I ever made, and

THE PLANNING OF THE EXPEDITION

in 1918, when I was ill with typhoid, he acompanied my second-in-command, Storker Storkerson, on one of the most remarkable of polar adventures.³

It had been my plan to take a small sledging party by sledge about two hundred miles northward from the north coast of Alaska in March (1918), camp on a substantial floe and drift with it for a year, tenting in summer, building a snowhouse in winter and living by hunting. According to our views, the floe should have drifted in twelve or thirteen months to a place somewhere north of Wrangel Island, or perhaps north of the New Siberian Islands. It had been the tentative plan that our party would abandon this floe either at the end of one year or two and travel south, landing either on Wrangel Island or on the coast of Siberia. We had relied so often on the game supply of the open ocean that it did not seem to us particularly dangerous to undertake this previously untried adventure. I have never been so eager to do anything. But the typhoid made it impossible, for I was flat on my back for more than four months. In this emergency, the journey was undertaken by my second-in-command, Storker T. Storkerson. Knight was one of three volunteers to go with him. The others were A. G. Gumaer and Martin Kilian.

The plan was carried out. The party went north from Cross Island, Alaska, to a point about two hundred miles farther north than any traveler had penetrated in that region. They made their camp on a floe about eight miles wide and fifteen or more miles long, and drifted with it some four hundred and fifty miles during six months, living, as they had planned, by hunting seals and bears. Toward the end of this period Storkerson became ill of a disease (asthma) which had no relation to the

³ See the appendix of “The Friendly Arctic” for Storkerson’s own story of this remarkable adventurejourney.

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hardships or other experiences of the journey, and because of the illness the party started south in the worst traveling month of the year, October, when they were nearly five hundred miles north of the arctic circle, more than two hundred miles away from land, and when the daylight had become very short.

March and April, with intense cold and perpetual light, are the best months on the mobile sea ice. In summer there is real water between the broken floes which can be easily negotiated in our sled-boats, and there is still continuous light. But in October daylight grows scarce rapidly and there are nearly continuous snowstorms and fogs. The thin ice lies treacherous under a blanket of snow that gives it the same appearance as the firm stretches. The only safety lies in jabbing your ice spear through the snow ahead continually to discover if the ice is firm or mushy. Storkerson’s adventure would have been (but for the skill and judgment of the men who made it) the most difficult and dangerous ever attempted in the Arctic. In his report he sums up thus a journey over shifting and treacherous ice in darkness, fog and storm: “We started from a point a little over two hun-

dred miles from shore on October 9th and reached land November 8th without accident or hardship.” It is a little hard to realize that, apart from Storkerson’s mental attitude toward them and his skill in meeting them, this journey possessed every terror of darkness and ice and gale that has taxed alike the strength, courage and descriptive powers of the explorers of the past. He annotated his statement later by saying: “We took every

ordinary precaution, and no extraordinary circumstance came up.”

THE PLANNING OF THE EXPEDITION 75

With the exception of Storkerson and myself, there was no man living in 1921, not even Nansen, who had traveled as many miles over moving sea ice or who had spent as many days upon it away from a ship as had Knight. Of the great explorers of the past, Peary was the only one who had excelled Knight’s record. At twenty-eight he was in age, experience, physical strength and temperamental adaptability an ideal man for the work he so passionately desired to continue undertake.

Frederick Maurer I saw first in 1912 when he was on a whaling ship wintering in the Arctic north of Canada; in 1913 he became a member of the crew of our Karluk. He was with the ship when it sank and was one men who spent more than six months on Wrangel Island in 1914 after the shipwrecked party men landed there. It was he (as we have told in a previous chapter) who raised the flag at the time the British rights to the island were reaffirmed on July 1, 1914. Maurer was eager to get back to any part of the Arctic, but particularly eager to get back to Wrangel Island, for his knowledge of various other parts of the North led him to consider that as one of the richest and most desirable islands. One year older than Like Knight, he was twenty nineat the ideal age of twenty eight, and qualified by experience, temperament and physical strength.

Shortly before I received the telegram from Ottawa saying that the projected expedition had been postponed for at least a year, I had received another letter from Knight in which he said wistfully: “I have been away from the Arctic nearly two years now, and it has been quite a long two years.”

In 1921 it was reported in the press that the Japanese

76 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

were believed to be penetrating eastern Siberia with a view to wresting it permanently from the Soviet Government of Russia. Some friends of mine who had returned from northeastern Siberia confirmed the actual Japanese penetration at the time and believed in its permanence. With my great admiration for the Japanese I felt certain that within a year or two they would realize the coming importance of Wrangel Island and would occupy it. Since they were at that time the allies of Great Britain, it would have been all the more awkward to ask them to leave the island. The most Britain could have done would have been to suggest international arbitration, whereupon it might have been decided that, in spite of original British discovery, a present Japanese occupation had more force in 1921 or 1922 than a halfyear of British tenancy as long ago as 1914.

By a curious accident an old friend, Mr. Alfred J. T. Taylor, of Vancouver, turned up in Nevada the day I received the heart-breaking telegram from Ottawa. I was worrying over what appeared to me the short-sightedness of statesmen and troubled also because it seemed I was going to be unable after all to provide Knight and Maurer with a chance to go north. The appearance of Taylor cheered me, and in an hour my wrecked hopes had been replaced by a plan he and I thought we could carry through.

Since Wrangel Island was already British, we could keep it British by merely occupying it. As we understood international law, it would make no difference whether such an occupation had been specially ordered by any government so long as the government in question eventually confirmed it. I wired Knight and Maurer

THE PLANNING OF THE EXPEDITION 77

to ask whether they would go to Wrangel Island secretly and whether they would exchange their American for Canadian citizenship in order to make the occupation legally effective. Both replied eagerly in the affirmative. Since I was just then engaged under contract on a piece of work that did not allow me a day’s vacation until September, I got Taylor to undertake the actual organization of the expedition. Because the Canadian Government had decided to do nothing for a year, we could not take even them into our confidence. We confided in no one except that Taylor had to place the facts before his private attorney to get an opinion of the legal aspects of the case. The attorney told us that an application for Canadian citizenship by Knight and Maurer would not turn them forthwith British in the sense needed to make an expedition British which was led by one of them. To get around that difficulty he advised the organization of a limited liability company under the laws of Canada. This company would employ all the men who were on the expedition, and that would make the enterprise indubitably British. Later he revised this opinion, coming to the conclusion that we could not feel the undertaking safely British unless a British subject were at the head of it. This led to the employment of Allan R. Crawford, the son of Professor J. T. Crawford, of Toronto, Canada, to be in formal command. We had previously corresponded about his possibly going north and I now telegraphed him to join us on the Pacific Coast.

Because of later tragic developments, it is important to explain here how Allan Crawford came to be selected for the Wrangel Island expedition. During the winter of 1920-21 several of us had been carrying on an energetic

78 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

campaign in Ottawa to interest the Government in the before-mentioned large plans of polar exploration. One of the most enthusiastic was Mr. J. B. Harkin, Commissioner of Dominion Parks, and at that time officially interested in the welfare of northern Canada, since the game laws, which now have been transferred to the Northwest Territories Branch, were then under his administration. Spring drew on apace, and we were eager that the expedition should sail that summer. We were, therefore, trying to get everything ready so that the moment we received approval and money from the Government we could push ahead along various lines. We were temporarily optimistic through having succeeded in getting money set aside for the refitting of the Canadian Government’s old exploratory ship, the Arctic, and this work was actually going on, in secret to the extent that the purpose of the refitting and the destination of the proposed voyage were kept hidden. So far so good; but it was almost equally important that we should have a staff of men ready. Mr. Harkin and I, therefore, agreed on writing a tentative stereotyped letter to the presidents of most of the Canadian universities, asking them to nominate young men trained in the sciences and recently graduated from college with whom we might confer to make up our minds whether they might be eligible for polar service.

Eventually we received replies from most of the presidents; but the only correspondence that concerns us here is that with the University of Toronto. We need not copy the whole correspondence, for its essential points are summarized in the first letter written to me by Allan Crawford. [But see Appendix X.]

THE PLANNING OF THE EXPEDITION 79

“168 Walmer Road, Toronto, April 11th, 1921.

Mr. Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Harvard Club, New York City.

Dear Sir:

Your letter to Sir Robert Falconer, President of Toronto University, asking him to nominate an assistant on your next expedition, has been referred to me by Dr. W. A. Parks, Prof, of Palaeontology. I understand that my name is being sent to you so I thought it might be wise to furnish some further particulars.

I am twenty years old (1/2/01), weigh 151 lbs., and am 5' 10" high. I have never had any eye-trouble and I believe my vision is above average. My circulation and heart action is OK and I have a good stomach. I have never had any serious contagious disease.

I was under age to go overseas but I was in the Officers7 Training Corps in Canada. I was employed by the Geological Survey of Canada last summer in Algoma and so have had some practical experience in Pre-Cambrian geology. In this matter I might refer you to Mr. Ellis Thomson, Dept, of Mineralogy at Toronto University, or Dr. W. A. Collins, Director of the Survey.

I am writing my third year exams, at Toronto. My college work for the last two years has been chiefly geology, palaeontology, chemistry and mineralogy. I have had a good grounding in science and mathematics, having taken the First Edward Blake Scholarship in Science at the Honour Matriculation examination at Toronto University in 1918.

Although I have not written for my degree I find in my course I am up against men much older and more experienced than myself. I feel I could acquit myself much more creditably if I had the opportunity such as you offer. My father, Prof. J. T. Crawford, is quite in accord with my ideas. If you are disposed to consider me we might arrange an interview either in New York or wherever would be convenient to you.

Yours very sincerely,

(Signed) Allan R. Crawford.

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My correspondence with the various applicants from the different Universities gradually led me to the opinion that Allan Crawford was the most promising. He was eager for a decision and so was I, but we could not get definite action from the Government. Once we had thought we had it, for we received the following letter from the Prime Minister:

PRIME MINISTER’S OFFICE CANADA

Ottawa, Ontario, February the 19th, 1921.

Dear Mr. Stefansson:

I have discussed the matters which you laid before me to-day and desire to advise you that this Government purposes to assert the right of Canada to Wrangel Island, based upon the discoveries and explorations of your expedition.

I believe this is all that is necessary for your purposes now. Faithfully yours,

(Signed) Arthur Meighen.

This letter made Mr. Harkin and the rest of us happy for a day. But a day was all, for we received notice that, while the Government had not exactly reversed their decision to hold Wrangel Island, they had placed the matter again under discussion, asking us to do nothing further until we heard from them a second time. At the time Crawford opened his correspondence with us we were daily expecting to hear a favorable word again decision. []the [Govenor f]But we never did hear again except as already indicated, when the Government informed us in general terms that, while the proposed expeditions would not be authorized in 1921, they were likely to be authorized in 1922.

But the future was dark with uncertainties of a new sort. The Prime Minister Mr. Meighen, seemed converted to our point of view, and the like was true of several members of his Cabinet; but an election was looming, and it was by no

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means certain that Mr. Meighen’s government would be in the saddle when the promised “next year” arrived.

I had been anxious for a personal conference with Allan Crawford, but I was lecturing in the western United States seven days in the week on a five-month contract, and the expense of fetching him so far west was considerable. But an opportunity came when circumstances of another sort took me east to Ann Arbor, Michigan. the University of Michigan offered me an honorary doctorate and refused to confer it without my actually appearing in Ann Arbor on Commencement Day. It was my first doctor’s degree and I was eager to get it. I put all the pressure I could upon my employer, who eventually permitted me an eight-day leave. Other reasons for my keen desire to go to Ann Arbor were that I could then, without much expense, arrange a conference with Allan Crawford and that I could at the same time get a good opportunity to talk with the British Ambassador to the United States, Sir Auckland Geddes, who was also coming to Michigan to receive a doctorate.

As soon as the leave had been definitely arranged, I then wrote Crawford as follows:

“Elko, Nevada, June 11, 1921.

Deak Me. Crawford:

I am not sure I can offer you this year anything attractive in the way of northern exploration, but can you meet me at Ann Arbor, Michigan, June 30—arriving there June 29 to be ready. I am unfortunately tied on a western lecture tour by a contract but am getting leave to come east for that one day to get an LL.D. degree from Michigan.

It will be but a brief conversation. But on the chance of its coming to something I shall pay your expenses if you will risk the time. Please reply by night letter collect.

(Signed) V. Stefansson.”

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I had still another reason for going to Ann Arbor: I could have a conference there with Sir Auckland [Siddes,] The British Ambassadore to the United States, for he also was coming to Ann Arbor to receive an honorary degree.

In a few days I received the following telegram: telegraphic reply:

“Windemere, Ont. June 18, 1921.

“Will be Ann Arbor June 29 and 30.

Allan Crawford.”

At Ann Arbor my conversation with Sir Auckland Geddes was satisfactory. As an official he was diplomatically careful. But I inferred a good deal of personal enthusiasm from his insisting that we should discuss Wrangel Island under its original and rightful name of Kellett’s Land. He assured me also that the temper of the British people is such that they would be in general in hearty sympathy with us if they understood our views and proposed actions. I then asked him whether he thought the British Government might back us in case the Canadian did not. On this he did not commit himself at all. I also discussed the possibility, then only vaguely not as yet quite definite in my mind, that I might organize a private expedition in case both governments failed to act the summer of 1921. In that relation Sir Auckland promised only friendly co-operation in getting me introduced to the Premier and Cabinet of Great Britain in case I sent out an expedition the summer of 1921 and wanted to go to England that autumn to present my case and get support for continued work in 1922.

My talk with Allan Crawford was even more satisfactory. During a day of intermittent contact I spent with him in the aggregate several hours and formed the high opinion which was intensified later when he joined me on the Pacific Coast and which has been constantly increased as I have learned the details of his work on Wrangel Island. He had an avid curiosity and an eager interest in every sort of thing, including politics. He

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was strongly of the opiniomthat Mr. Meighen’s chances for re-election were not very good uncertain and that, much as we might regret it, we would have to think along the lines of what might happen if another government came to power. When towards evening I finally decided to tell him fully in confidence all the Wrangel Island plans, it was after he had promised that he would keep them secret even from his parents, a promise I have since learned he scrupulously kept. The conclusion was that he was eager for the work and would take all chances, including that of my possible inability to pay him wages in case the Government failed to back us up. I would make promises of wages and keep them if and when I could. The only thing essential was that I would find, without his help, the money for this year’s outfitting, although he would have liked to contribute had he had any money. As related hereafter, he was actually better than his word on this point and really did contribute a little money towards the expedition.

But the conclusion of the Ann Arbor conference could only be that Crawford must return to Ontario and await developments. I would let him know by telegram if the expedition was decided on Government authority came through and he would be ready at a few hours’ notice. Whatever the scale of the expedition, two of his comrades would be Lome Knight and Fred Maurer, who were both on the Pacific Coast, and the first thing would be for him to get together with them so as to have a few days or weeks of preliminary association to decide whether they were personally congenial.

It was an especial good fortune that there came to meet me at Ann Arbor not only Crawford, but also Captain George H. Wilkins, D. S. 0., of the Australian Army,

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who had been second in command of the northern section of my expedition of 1913-1918.⁴ This gave Crawford some opportunity to converse with a man who had served three years in the Arctic under my command, who knew my ideas and methods of exploration, and who might give a novice sidelights that could not be got from me.

July 1st Crawford went east and I west with nothing settled, but the final decision of the Government came within the time limit I had given him. As said above, the Government had decided to postpone action for a year. It was then Taylor and I resolved we would act on our own, trusting to convert the Government to our support (even if it were a new Government) before the year was over. The next step was a telegram to Crawford, and he was soon on his way to join me on the Chautauqua circuit. Up to that time Lome Knight had been assisting me with my lectures, managing the stereopticon and doing whatever else might be necessary. I had no real use for two assistants, but I wanted to give Knight and Crawford unlimited time together, so I got Knight transferred to another position on the same circuit the position of assistant gate keeper, while Crawford took his place as my immediate helper.

Of the many curious rumors that have gathered around the Wrangel Island expedition is the one that Crawford, Knight and Maurer had been converted to my views by the reading of my evangelistic northern books, “The Friendly Arctic” and “The Northward Course of Empire.” Neither of those books had then been published at the time they were with me together, and “Northward” had not even been conceived as an outline in my mind. I did have with me a few chapters of manuscript, for “The Friendly Arctic” was

⁴ See many references to George H. Wilkins in the index of “The Friendly Arctic."

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then being set up in type in the East, and I frequently talked with Knight and Maurer about the correctness of narratives and opinions in that book, which touched directly their association with the work described. I discussed with Knight, for instance, the section about his illness with scurvy and I talked over with Maurer Captain Hadley’s narrative of the seven months spent by him, Maurer and the fifteen others on Wrangel Island. Both Knight and Maurer had heard me lecture frequently, narrating experiences of which they had themselves been part. It is, of course, conceivable that they might have been convinced of some new thing by hearing my presentation, but it is far more likely that they would have discovered my errors of fact or argument had I been wrong, losing confidence rather than gaining it from hearing anything which I said that was not strictly in accordance with the facts as they knew them or with the views which they themselves had deduced from those facts. Knight was of an active temperament, but Maurer was more contemplative and his mind, at least, contained many theories, as well as the memory of the experiences from which they had been deduced. We all talked these over now and then and seldom found ourselves in disagreement.

While Knight and Crawford were constantly together as we traveled from town to town, it was only occasionally that they saw Maurer, who was lecturing about his work as an arctic explorer on a Chautauqua that “covered” smaller towns nearby. Crawford made many attempts to get me to talk to him at length about conditions as I found them and the methods in which I believed. But I avoided this in general, urging that it was more important he should know the views of the men

He is the same who later accompanied Shackleton to the Antarctic. After that he conducted a two-year Scientific expedition for the British Museum through tropical Australia. He is now (1925) planning a great scientific expedition to the Antarctic.

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with whom he was going to be associated in the field. If he was in doubt about these or thought they were in conflict with something he had heard me say, he and Knight were to discuss such discrepancies with me. They did so perhaps two or three times, and we soon arrived at an understanding. In fact, so far as I remember, the differences turned out to be apparent only.

It took us several weeks to get all details arranged. Most of that time Crawford spent with me, and part of the time Knight and Maurer were with us also. There never were happier boys than the two veterans. They were so exuberant that it was difficult to realize that they were twenty-eight and not eighteen. Knight told by the hour stories from his four adventurous arctic years. What Maurer contributed was equally enthusiastic and even more to the point, for he had actually been on Wrangel Island for six months and was in a position to tell the rest of us about the climate, the vegetation and the abundance of sea and land game. Crawford was soon infected with their enthusiasm. The contagion spread also to Milton Galle, a Texas boy of twenty, who had been for some time acting as my secretary. On the recommendation of the other three and at his own request, I decided to make him the fourth member of the party. The later story of the expedition shows that he turned out loyal and capable, as good a comrade as anyone ever had, whether in lean times or in days of plenty.

Crawford was to be in command because the central idea was that the enterprise must be British. But the relation of Crawford and Knight was to be somewhat that of the ship’s captain to a pilot when the ship is entering a harbor and when, on the theory that the pilot knows best, the captain for the time being suspends his

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authority. This was not as good an arrangement from the viewpoint of efficiency and safety as if we could have put either Knight or Maurer in command. Still, the personality of Crawford seemed to be such as to make the plan tenable. The events of the next two years showed that in this we made no mistake. Through his character and ability Crawford proved a real commander even while following out the ideas of his more experienced companions. In a diary kept by Knight for two years there does not appear a single criticism of Crawford or any comment to the effect that anything was done that did not thoroughly meet the approval of both Knight and Maurer. A search through the manuscript records of famous expeditions would show that such uniformly friendly co-operation through two years of isolation is almost unique in polar history.

How enthusiastically and quietly the preparations were made is well brought out by a letter which Knight wrote me on June 18, 1921, from his home in McMinnville, Oregon, where he says: “I never wanted to do anything in my life as bad as I want to get away from here. . . . There has been a great deal of speculation at our house on where I am going, but they are still in the dark. Dad is excited stiff.” This shows that Knight, as well as all the others, was keeping their particular destination secret even from his parents.

Another letter from Knight says: “Of course, you must realize that I am very anxious to go north under your direction and am waiting eagerly. . . . Last night Maurer lectured in Amity and I brought him home in a car. We were together all day and he continually talked about the North. I think (if possible) he wants to get back up there as bad as I do. No doubt he has

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told you all this. ... He continually talks Wrangel Island.”

A part of the preparations for the expedition was that Fred Maurer wanted to get married. The Chautauqua on which he had been a lecturer had closed and he had joined me for a few days on my circuit, the regular itinerary of which was approaching Missoula, Montana. If he wanted to be married, Missoula was the place, for I had there several old friends, among them two university classmates. I had just learned that Charles Clapp had been elected to the presidency of the University of Montana, and I knew that Mr. and Mrs. Clapp would be glad to have the wedding at their home. A telegram was accordingly sent, and Miss Delphine Jones, of Niles, Ohio, took the next train for Missoula, a two days’ journey. They were married on August 11th. Their bridal trip was another thousand miles west to Seattle, where Mrs. Maurer remained for a few days while the outfitting of the party was being completed. When they sailed for Nome she took the train alone back to Ohio.

In order to camouflage our real plans, we had been hinting commercial development when it was necessary to talk for publication at all. On July 2nd Knight wrote again from McMinnville: “All the papers on the Coast have printed articles concerning your commercial enterprise. The Portland Telegram perpetrated an awful poor pun when they said, ‘Stefansson’s northern enterprise should cut some ice.’ I hope I have a chance to show them what kind of ice we will cut.”

On August 16th the party was assembling in Seattle, and Knight wrote me: “Maurer arrived this A. M., all grins. He seems to be happy. We all are, for that matter, and aching to get started.”

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The party made the nine-day voyage from Seattle, Washington, to Nome, Alaska, by passenger steamer. On September 4th, Knight wrote from Nome: “We are having a nice, easy time at your expense; but I would rather be far out on the ‘bounding sea’ bound for the place that we are bound for.”

From the beginning of our plans about a northern expedition independent of the Canadian Government, the understanding had been that the men who went north would do the work and that I would not only find the money for the initial voyage, but also undertake to convert to our plans whatever government might be elected in Canada. But by the time the four men had been together for a week, their enthusiasm had mounted so that they wanted to be sharers in the financial side as well as in the work. Knight had no money and did not know where he could borrow, so he arranged to cooperate financially by having part of his wages due from the company paid monthly into an account for the purchase of $1,000 worth of shares. Fred Maurer borrowed $1,000 from his brother, John Maurer, of New Philadelphia, Ohio, purchasing ten shares.

Before sailing north Crawford arranged for the purchase of $500 worth of shares. After he reached Nome he mailed our company back a check for $100 to purchase a two-year option on shares for $1,000. I think all the men took pains to make it clear to their relatives that they were doing this at their own desire. An example of how thoughtful they were in this matter I take from a carbon which Crawford kept in the expedition records duplicating a letter he wrote to his mother on August 18th, 1921, three hours before he sailed for Alaska from Seattle. “On very careful consideration I have done something

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which may seem unwise to you, but as I am situated, it seems like a very fine thing. I am taking five shares of stock in this company. The payment is $50 a month for ten months. This I did without any suggestion on the part of Stefansson (he is the company) or anyone else.”

CHAPTER VII

The Outfitting and the Voyage to Wrangel

At Nome the party gave the finishing touches to their simple outfit. All decisions were based upon the extensive arctic experience jof Knight and Maurer. They never reported to me exactly what they were taking and I never worried about the missing report. I knew they must have taken what I would have taken in their place, for my arctic experiences had been the same as theirs, and our view would, therefore, necessarily be about the same. omission, for my views were the same as theirs. What these views were can best be made clear by repeating a story which Knight used to tell when trying to explain the Arctic to people who had never been north. I have told the story myself in print, but never so fully as I shall now, for the lesson of it has never been so pertinent.¹

In the late winter of 1917 Knight found himself one of a party of four who were traveling with two dog teams at about 80.5° North Latitude and 110° West Longitude. There were two other white men in the party, Harold Noice and myself, and an Eskimo boy of about twenty, Emiu,, or Split-the-Wind. For both Knight and Noice it was towards the end of the second year of their arctic experience. Although Emiu was an Eskimo, he had really no more experience than they, for he had been brought up in the city of Nome and had hunted only rabbits and ptarmigan somewhat as a farm boy might hunt rabbits and grouse farther south. It was my ninth winter of polar travel. Both officially and by experience I was in command, and our general course was planned by me. Apart from that general consideration, our prog-

91

¹For another version of the story we are about to tell here, see "With Stefansson in the Arctic" by Harold Noice, Jordan and New York, 1924.

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ress and success depended about equally fipon each one of us four.

According to the devious course one would have to travel by reason of the configuration of lands and seas, we were, when the trouble came upon us, about seven hundred miles from our own nearest ship and about the same distance from the nearest other huinan beings, the Eskimos of Victoria Island. We were on ice floating upon an the open ocean, a hundred and forty miles from the last land we had seen, BordeuMeighen Island, and more than a hundred miles northwest of the nearest land, Ellef Ringnes. The ice we were traveling over was in sluggish motion, the direction depending upon the winds which not only drove it before them, but also broke it into fragments, some the size of a piano, some as big as a farm and the largest perhaps fifteen or twenty miles across. Most of this ice had been formed the previous year and was heavy; but some was only a few days old, thin and treacherous. There were also long lanes of open water between the floes, yards or miles in width and vast, many-cornered areas here and there. Some of the floes were a hundred feet thick and they averaged a good deal heavier than the polar ice as a whole. The average thickness of winter j ice in the Beaufort Sea would be about four or five feet, and Beaufort ice is usually considered the heaviest in the Arctic.

Although the ice was exceptionally heavy, but we did not realize it that so much through its appearance as through the comparative scarcity of seals and the entire absence of polar bears. It was one of the poorest game districts I had ever traversed, and the poorest ever seen by my companions. But they were cheerful, for they relied upon our uniform experience that on the polar sea the areas devoid of game, while possible anywhere, are never of very large extent. One can always find game by merely

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traveling doggedly ahead in any constant direction. Vacillating and zigzagging might confine you within such an area, but a straight course would certainly take you out.

But in this case consistent progress became impossible, for two of our party of four were seriously ill. Both Knight and Noice had been complaining of lassitude, pain in their joints, discomfort and gloom. Their gradually developing pessimism was especially disturbing to me, for both were normally of smooth and optimistic temper. That the Eskimo boy was also becoming pessimistic did not worry me, for he was of the mental type which takes its color readily from others. Through two years I had found him contented when others were contented and depressed when they were depressed.

Gloom is an early symptom of scurvy, and so we began to suspect that disease. In any case, there was something so seriously wrong that it seemed wiser to turn back. The illness alone would not have led us to that decision, nor would the scarcity of game without the illness. But the combination of the two stopped us, although we had been pressing forward eagerly on one of the most important journeys of our five-year expedition. We had already penetrated far into the undiscovered ocean. To the pure scientist it is of equal importance to find land or to find the absence of land in an area being explored. One fact is as significant as the other for a larger knowledge of the earth. But there are few so purely scientific that popular acclaim is quite fame is meaningless. The The crowd considers point of view of the crowd is that the discovery of land is success, and that but the discovery of the absence of land is failure. They forget that the explorer cannot alter what he finds and should not be held responsible for anything but a

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true report of the nature of his discovery. It seemed to all of us that we had the approval of the crowd almost within our grasps, for the signs of land not far ahead were becoming more numerous every day. We saw ourselves as its discoverers, and my companions were reluctant to turn back give up. But the decision was mine, and I believed our lives were in danger. So we turned and began the struggle back towards Ringnes Island.

I have frequently heard Knight tell the story of the turning back and the vicissitudes of the journey. He always emphasized how sorry he was that I decided to retreat, arguing that we could have continued safely and that we might have made as successful a cure of his disease on the new land we would have discovered ahead as on the already known land to which we did return. That was the optimism of the real explorer. In that respect, among others, he was better fitted to command than I, whose orders turned us back.

The return to land across a hundred and twenty-five miles of chaotic ice was both difficult and in reality dangerous. Frequently we had to make long detours to get around open water and to find a place where the floe we were on touched the next floe to the southeast of us, so that we could step across. The illness of the two men was steadily developing, but we were afraid to pause, although we needed fresh meat for the cure. We might have secured it a hundred miles from land by camping and hunting, as we had often done before. But game signs were few, and I felt that under the particular conditions we had better not risk a delay at sea, but press on towards the shore lead for a better prospect of seals. If the shore lead were closed when we got to it, we would search for caribou on the land just beyond.

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It became clearer every day that the disease was scurvy. I had held for many years the theory that scurvy could be cured by fresh meat, and we had more or less proved it already on the expedition. According to that theory view Emiu and I were in no danger, for we had been eating fresh meat all winter. The other two had been living away from us on groceries, or else on fresh meat. the antiscorbutic value of whicli had been destroyed by overcooking. Had we found a large patch of level ice with indications of seals, or open water with seals swimming in it, we should have camped to hunt and attempt the cure. But we knew the area to be bad for sealing, since we had already crossed it that spring, outward bound. Our casual glances at the various patches of open water as we passed had given us glimpses of one, two or three seals in a week—enough perhaps to cause us to stop had we feared worse conditions elsewhere, but not enough to delay us when we felt reasonably sure of better chances ahead.

According to our general policy of living by hunting, we had started nortwest north from Meighen Bordeu Island some three weeks before with only a little food in our sledges, and this was now almost gone. For the second time on that five-year expedition we went on rations—about half as much as we needed. The dogs were also put on half rations, their food consisting in large part of wornout skin clothing. Even this eventually gave out, and before we reached land we had begun to feed them some new clothes that we had been saving for next summer— waterproof sealskin boots, etc.

As we struggled slowly towards shore the invalids became weaker day by day grew steadily weaker. The last two or three days before landing, Noice was unable to walk and had to be

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hauled on the sled. Knight could not walk by himself, but was able to stumble along holding on to the back end of the sled for support. With grit such as few possess, he even occasionally used the failing remnants of his great strength to help the sleds over bad places.

The journey was a hard enough experience for the Eskimo and me, but harder for the sick men, because of their physical suffering and because of the gloom, approaching melancholia, which is a symptom of their disease. But to hear Knight tell it afterwards he must have worried less than I, and that could mean only that he had a firmer confidence than I in the theory on which we were working—that game would be found and that fresh meat would cure the scurvy.¹

Handicapped as we were by the rough ice, the sick men and the weakening dogs, it took us sixteen days to get ashore. When we landed in north western Ellef Ringnes Island we had half rations for the men for six days and half rations for the dogs (consisting mainly of new skin clothing) for six days also. We were still five hundred and fifty miles from the nearest human beings, so that our lives could be saved only by success in hunting.

We did not stop when we finally got to the shore lead, for it was temporarily closed by a west wind. The threemile belt of ice between it and the beach was smooth, and the tired men and dogs made fairly easy progress along the coast to the southeast while I walked a long curve inland searching for game. I remember it as a discouraging experience, for in twelve or fifteen miles I did not see a sign of a living thing nor even a blade of grass. In my whole arctic experience I have never been so near discouragement as I was that night when I came into the camp where the sick men were lying. I have no rec-

¹ For an account of how these experiences struck the other sick man, see the books by Harold Noice: "With Stefansson in the Arctic", pp. - -

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ollection of just what I said and I made no diary entry, but Noice has recorded that my comment was, “Well, boys, we seem to have found at last one of those barren arctic islands that we have read so much about!”

After a night of gloom and a breakfast of forced cheerfulness the sick men and Emiu again proceeded along the coast while I hunted inland. About five miles from the camp I discovered some old caribou tracks, and a little later others not so old. Then I came upon the fresh trail of about twenty caribou.

It was now only a question of patience, for nine years of living in the Arctic by hunting had naturally put me in possession of the necessary technique for getting caribou. Hunting is much like any other skilled occupation; the things that seem difficult to the apprentice and impossible to the outsider are matters of routine to the adept. There are good hunters in every part of the world; but arctic hunters are few and the conditions peculiar, so that it may be worth while to tell just how you go about it when securing any particular animal is a matter of life and death. In a good game country we often proceed carelessly, thinking that if we don’t get this band; we shall soon find another. But the previous day had convinced me that Ellef Ringnes Island is by no means a paradise for game. Our plight and the fewness of caribou made it imperative that I should get the animals that had made this trail. Luckily it was the season of perpetual daylight, so that I had on my side the most important element of a successful hunt—unlimited time.

When there is wind, caribou ordinarily travel facing it. Had there been a wind, I could, therefore, have taken the trail with a certainty of catching up within a few hours, for they never travel fast unless scared by wolves.

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But this was a day of calm, with airs fluctuating from one direction to another. A change of wind would bring my scent to the caribou; the silence would enable them to hear me walking at half a mile, for the weather was still cold, and it is one of the characteristics of the arctic winter that on a still day you can hear any given sound from five to ten times as far as you can in the warm summer. After a glance at the trail which assured me that the band numbered between fifteen and twenty-five, I turned in the direction opposite to the one they had been traveling and walked rapidly a mile or more to the top of a high hill. From the hilltop I examined the ground carefully in every direction with my field glasses, hoping to see the band in question and thinking it possible that another might be somewhere else. But nothing was to be seen except the white lowlands and the gray hills where the grass was not completely covered by the snow—for we were now in a country very different from that of yesterday. Then it was barren gravel, and now it was grassy prairie.

Without actually remembering it, I would judge, from the general method of arctic hunting, that I spent perhaps an hour on the top of that hill waiting for the possible emergence from cover of animals that were grazing. I next walked a mile or two at right angles to the course the caribou had been taking, and from the top of another hill re-examined the country with my glasses. There was nothing to be seen. Since this viewpoint gave me a conspicuously different angle from the previous one, I considered it likely that I had seen all the near country to the south and that the caribou were not no game was hidden less than three or four miles away. I accordingly walked with confidence a mile or two in the direction of the caribou

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and then climbed a hill cautiously from the north, making sure that I should not expose myself suddenly against the skyline to watchful eyes beyond. But there was no beast to see or be seen, and so I proceeded to another hill that lay at right angles to the trail. After this sort of zigzagging for several hours, I eventually came in view of the caribou, which had then just moved to the top of a hill,. whereupon The next thing was to wait for an hour or so until, in their slow grazing, they had moved beyond the skyline.

A light but fairly steady wind had now sprung up, and I could begin to rely on the direction in which it would carry my scent. But it was not strong enough as yet to carry away the noise of my walking in the sometimes crusted snow. My estimate was that, with the slight breeze, the caribou could hear me something between a quarter and half a mile on level ground. When there was a hill between them and me, they could not hear me quite so far. I accordingly went directly but slowly and cautiously towards the ridge over which they had disappeared. When I got to the top they were half a mile away on some level ground. For the time being, a closer approach was impossible.

During this whole time there had been a slight haze, more trying to the eyes than the most brilliant sunshine on the whitest arctic snow. It was imperative that my eyes should be in perfect condition when I began shooting. For that reason, and also to pass the time away, I lay down flat, face downward, on my arms and went to sleep. The temperature was probably well below zero. Accordingly, the chill woke me in less than half an hour, even in spite of my excellent fur clothing. It is one of the common arctic superstitions that you must not go to

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sleep out of doors for fear of freezing to death before you wake up, the cold being supposed to have a soporific effect. The opposite is true, as anyone can discover for himself by trying to sleep in winter with insufficient bed covering.

On awakening from the first nap I found the caribou still unapproachable on flat land. Accordingly, I crawled back well into the concealment of my ridge, walked around there for a few minutes till I was got warm again, then crept back to the skyline, took a good look at my the caribou and went to sleep again. By alternating short naps with walks, to get my blood in circulation, I whiled away two or three hours. The caribou now commenced moving again and finally passed beyond another ridge. By that time the wind had freshened enough so that it deadened the sound of my walking. All I had to guard against was being seen.

When next I came in sight of the caribou they were still too far from cover for successful shooting. At five hundred yards I could easily have killed two or three of them, but we needed the whole band. I was preparing for another long wait when all of a sudden the clear outlines of the animals became hazy and I realized that a light fog was coming up. Only the future could tell whether this would be for good or evil. The fog gradually thickened until the caribou were swallowed up in it. Knowing that my eyesight was a little better than theirs, I now crawled ahead until I saw the outline of the nearest one through the mist. Evidently this was a straggler well behind the others, and a wait was again necessary. The caribou were slowly grazing away from me, as I could tell by the gradual disappearance into the fog of their single accidental rear guard. As this animal faded

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I crawled ahead, and when it became more distinct I stopped. After about half an hour of this intermittent slow pursuit the fog rolled away and the entire band were clear before me, some of them at the foot of the slope down which I was crawling and others on the level beyond. The nearest were perhaps a hundred yards away and the most remote about three hundred and fifty. I was in their clear sight now, but that only meant I must keep still, or else move only with such stealth as makes imperceptible the progress of the hands of a clock. No wild animal familiar to me is intelligent enough to be frightened by the sight of a thing which does not seem to move.

During all this time I had been worrying about the success of the hunt with relation to what my companions might do. I was afraid that from the seacoast, where they were traveling, they might have seen the caribou outlined against the sky on top of one of the hills. My general rule was well understood, that two men must never go after the same band of caribou, and I knew that under ordinary circumstances the boys would obey. But this was no ordinary case. They were worried and ill and their lives and mine were at stake. The problem They would ask themselves would present itself to them as to whether it might not be possible that I had failed to see these caribou, and that I might be had by now proceeded in my hunt perhaps ten or fifteen miles beyond them now. [paragraph symbol]Had that been so, the thing to do would have been to let Emiu try. He was not a very good hunter, having had little experience. I think up to this time he had killed only half a dozen or a dozen caribou in his life—all of them on our expedition. [paragraph symbol] I feared [it might [unintelligible]]that the decision might have been made that he should try the hunt. Even when working with a concerted plan, two hunters, in my opinion, are not so good

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as one; when working without plan, either may easily spoil the other’s chances. When the fog lifted my mind was at length freed from this worry, for the caribou were in a position where they could not be approached except from my direction, and a hunter coming up behind me would be bound to see me as soon as he saw the caribou. That would be his warning to keep hands off.

As I wanted the whole band, I now used a method of shooting designed to that end. When described it may seem cruel, but it is in reality the least cruel of all methods, for by it every animal fired at will be dead within a few minutes, while an indiscriminate blazing away, not uncommon among hunters, whether native or white, will allow wounded animals to escape to a torture that will end days later either by death from the wounds directly or from wolves that will get a crippled animal more easily than those that are unhurt.

A caribou shot through the brain will drop so instantaneously that it frightens the herd. One shot through the heart will usually sprint at top speed anything up to a hundred yards, and that frightens the band still moreworse Neither of these shots is, therefore, possible permissableif you want to secure an entire band. I accordingly waited until an animal near the middle of the herd, but not very close to the other caribou, presented its side to me. I then took careful aim so that the bullet should pass through the body just back of the last rib. An animal thus A beast wounded will stagger at the blow, but will not run. It evidently has no idea of what has happened, but feels a pain or discomfort which induces it in a few minutes to lie down in a manner identical with the quiet lying down of a well-fed ruminant that is going to rest and chew the cud. Caribou are like sheep about imitating

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each other. If one runs they all run, and if one lies down they are likely all to lie down. The noise of the rifle does not startle the arctic caribou, for it resembles the cracking of lake ice, which sound is frequently repeated any day the temperature is rapidly dropping. Such changes of temperature happen often enough so that caribou in winter seem to be in constant and placid expectation of loud and sharp noises. When the wounded animal lay down, the others glanced at it and then went on feeding. As an additional precaution, I shot two others similarly, upon which not only they lay down, but several unwounded animals as well.

Being gregarious, caribou at a distance from the main band will run towards the center of the band if frightened. I made use of this principle in killing the next animal, which was the one farthest from me. I waited till it faced slightly towards the herd and then I put a bullet near the heart. It ran at top speed for forty or fifty yards and then fell so suddenly that it turned a somersault. This startled the herd, and the animals that had lain down of their own accord jumped up; but they were reassured by seeing the wounded still lying apparently at ease. I now followed by shooting those at the outer edge of the band both towards the right and the left. When each fell, the ones nearest would run away from it towards the center of the herd. It was perhaps around the fifth or sixth shot that a stampede was threatened, for one animal started off determinedly at right angles. I don’t think they would have run far because of the quieting effect of the wounded that were lying down; but I was able to kill the leader, and that stampeded back those that were immediately following.

At this stage the herd did not give the impression so

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much of being frightened as of being dazed or puzzled. A thing that startled me had no effect on them—shots began to be fired behind me, and the bullets whistled over my head. I knew in a moment, of course, that it was Emiu, and was thankful that he had not interfered sooner. He must have been two or three hundred yards behind me, and it is not likely that more than half of his bullets took effect. Whether they did or not was of no consequence, for the animals were all within easy reach of my rifle and the stage of their wanting to run away had long passed. When I had shot all the others, I killed also the three originally shot through the abdomen, which were still lying quietly with their heads up, much like cows resting in a pasture.

I have told this story from my own point of view and have given the details to show the reader what sort of hunting methods it was we had used year after year of self-support on the expedition of which Knight had been a member. Uniform success under what often seemed the greatest handicaps had developed quite naturally the firm confidence which Knight so often expressed. I have even heard him say, and Noice has said the same thing, that, sick and five hundred and fifty miles from the nearest neighbor, they never worried about a possible failure of the hunt. The disease of scurvy does not impair the appetite, and Knight used to say that, while he kept wondering how long it would be till he got the next square meal and that while he was also getting pretty tired of being sick, the idea of death from starvation never bothered him. When the story has been told either by Knight or Noice, I have frequently heard the criticism made by their audience that they did not tell it in such a way as to bring out the element of suspense—our distance from the

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nearest human beings, the illness which crippled our party and the uncertainty of getting game in time. I have always sympathized with these critics, for both my memory and diary tell that I was a bit frightened. I have had the feeling that in the subsequent rapid and exhilarating recovery when they got plenty of underdone meat to eat both sick men must have lost the memory of their previous gloom and worry.

It took only three days until the acute symptoms of scurvy had disappeared. There had been the blackest gloom in their minds and pain in their every joint, but both vanished after three days of underdone and raw meat. Their traveling strength came back more slowly, and it was several weeks until we were on the road again. Only after we got back to “civilization” did I realize that this experience had planted in the mind of Lorne Knight a faith in the safety of northern travel even greater than my own.

The preceding digressions are intended to show the manner in which had been formed Knight’s ideas of a proper outfit for living one or several years on an uninhabited arctic island. They were based in general upon four years of polar service and in particular upon the two sledge journeys in which we had shared. The first of these journeys was the longest I ever made, and in some respects the most difficult and dangerous. It had led us over unexplored seas covered with shifting ice and over lands practically unknown, although they had been discovered either by ourselves on previous journeys or by others. The second of Knight’s journeys, that with Storkerson, described in the previous chapter, can be fairly considered one of the most remarkable in the entire history of polar exploration, for it was then for the first

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time that men voluntarily camped on a drifting ice floe with supplies intended only to take them through the early stages of an adventure where tragedy was inevitable if the hunting failed. From the point of view of the difficulty of the undertaking, a man of such experience was bound to look forward to a winter or two on Wrangel Island with more or less contempt. After what Maurer had told him about Wrangel, Knight must have considered it a paradise compared with other arctic lands. Some of his previous journeys had been in islands two to five hundred miles farther north and, if northerliness be a handicap, then he had certainly seen a good deal worse. These Canadian islands of his past experience had been devoid of driftwood for fuel. On some we had used twigs and resinous grasses, and on one (Lougheed Island) we had failed to find anything with which to make a fire. But the beaches of Wrangel, by Maurer’s account, were piled with firewood and with long, straight logs suitable for the building of cabins to be heated with open fires or stoves.

Moreover, Knight had already traveled through a region where for two successive years we had never seen the track of a polar bear, but Maurer told of the bears on Wrangel going by twos and threes and half-dozens, the beach trampled down with their tracks. Against the scarcity of birds and nests where Knight had been on Meighen and the Ringnes Islands, there were seabird rookeries at Wrangel and tens of thousands of geese and other birds flying in clouds. He had been ill more than five hundred miles from the nearest human beings with less than half rations for a week on hand, and it seemed to him, in looking back, that he had not worried even then. Now, when he looked forward to probable good

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health on Wrangel Island, less thanonly a hundred miles away from the hospitable American and Russian traders and the wealthy and equally hospitable natives of northern Siberia, it seemed to him that a shipload of goods would be almost a superfluity and that with a sledge and a team of dogs, he could land on Wrangel an outfit that would keep him safer and more comfortable than he had been used to being on his former expedition. Indeed, it had been his plan and Storkerson’s on their trip in 1918 to land on Wrangel if they had drifted that far west. Their outfit then would have been two sledges empty except for cooking gear, ammunition, old clothes and a few scientific instruments. With such an outfit they had planned to land on Wrangel in May, spend the summer there and proceed to Siberia the following January. To men of the experience of Storkerson and Knight, this would seem easier and safer than several journeys in which they had already taken part.

With Maurer’s experience of Wrangel Island and the theories he and Knight held in common, it was logical for Crawford to do what we had agreed he should do and to buy an outfit both in Seattle and Nome based on the idea that there were a few necessities in the way of hunting equipment and beyond that everything was in a sense a luxury. Whether they bought chewing gum, a phonograph or a bag of sugar, they were, in their own minds, deciding only for one luxury as against another. Each luxury they took depended on their taste, on their slender finances, and on the transportation problem, for they were going to engage a schooner rated only as carrying ten tons ¹

The outfit taken by the Wrangel party seemed ade-

_{They originally planned to charter the schooner Orion, but they eventually took the much larger Silver Wave.}

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quate to them, but grotesquely inadequate to the “sourdoughs” and tradesmen of Nome. Before determining the final form of the party, and indeed, while as yet I expected the Canadian Government to finance the undertaking, I had taken up with my old friend, Jafet Lindeberg, of Nome, the question of getting Alaskan trappers and prospectors to establish a colony on Wrangel Island. Lindeberg made out some rough specifications as to what the outfit must necessarily be. It began with several thousand feet of lumber and included sheet iron, tar paper, and the like. There would have to be canned fruits and vegetables of all sorts, and beans, and syrup, etc. When I showed the list to Knight and Maurer they laughed over it and said that the only way they could understand purchasing such an outfit in Nome and freighting it to Wrangel Island would be if they were spending other people’s money and wanted to do a little grafting either for themselves or for their friends who were merchants and the owners of freighting ships. Knight said that if he embarked on such an undertaking his idea would be to buy the goods with my money in Nome and stop in Siberia to sell them again, so as not to have the bother of carrying them to Wrangel.

When Lindeberg was making out the specifications for the possible Wrangel Island colony he was not thinking of what he himself would have liked to take with him, for he had tried the simple life in the early Alaska days and preferred it to the more expensive and tedious outfitting of later years. But he was setting down what he knew the present-day Alaskans would consider necessary for safety and comfort. Accordingly, when the Silver Wave was being loaded by our men at Nome it Itwas lumber and tar paper, canned fruit and bacon that

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the Alaskans expected to see going aboard the Silver Wave. When they saw that the outfit was wholly different and the quantity very small, there was began at once a beginning of a criticism as to supplies and method which kept growing constantly after the ship sailed.

Alaska is only just beginning to develop soberly out of her original state as a gold country where one man in a hundred made his fortune by some spectacular accident and the other ninety-nine spent year after year in dreaming that their turn was about to come. One who does not know the typical gold miner might think that gold and its probable discovery would be the one subject for reliable judgment; but the reverse is the case. The prospector who is hard-headed and practical on every other subject will swallow the fishiest yarn where gold is concerned. There is only one way in which you can make it difficult for yourself to spread a rumor about the discovery of gold, and that is by talking loudly and freely. Assume secrecy, or even the slightest reticence as to where you have been or where you are about to go, and rumors of gold “strikes” will grow day by day and spread until some night half a dozen parties set out, each trying to do so without the knowledge of the others and each following some clue to which no rational person would pay any attention.

The Wrangel Island party had been markedly reticent on the passenger steamer from Seattle, and in consequence the rumor of some sort of gold discovery had already germinated among their fellow passengers before they got to Nome. The outfit they were buying seemed curious and, from the Alaska point of view, certainly inadequate for a party going to any uninhabited region. This gave the theorisers two “facts” to work on: Gold had

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been discovered, and it must be in the vicinity of some trading post where the party could buy the supplies which they were not taking with them. Few gold miners have been on the north coast of Alaska, but there is current the general knowledge that the arctic coast has a string of fur trading posts. Obviously these were being relied upon by Crawford’s party. Possibly some of these remote fur traders might even be in secret league with us. Accordingly, it became pretty definitely known that their destination was “somewhere east of Point Barrow.” The owner of the schooner Silver Wave was Captain Jack Hammer. When Crawford went to him with a proposal to charter his boat for a voyage to an unnamed destination the skipper quite properly refused to negotiate unless he were let into the secret. Had our party understood better the gold miner’s psychology, they might perhaps have said that they were going “somewhere east of Point Barrow.” But, beyond reticence, they knew no guile, and so they told the truth. Hammer was to know privately that they were going to Wrangel Island, but he must not tell anyone. But that is exactly the formula which, according to miner logic, is to be interpreted as meaning the opposite of what it says, and when the story spread from Captain Hammer it seems to have been agreed that one destination might now be eliminated. Wherever our party were going, they were not going to Wrangel Island. Still, the wording of the agreement was that the ship was chartered for that voyage. I do not think the boys guessed Captain Hammer’s skepticism about Wrangel or the theories he held about their plans until on the actual voyage, when he began to show more and more surprise that he was not asked to change his course, his instructions remaining that Wrangel was the

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destination. The party got the distinct impression that it had been the Captain's shrewd design to demand a higher fee for the voyage whenever Crawford should go to him and own up that the destination was really “somewhere east of Point Barrow.”

In our discussions before the party left Seattle it had been agreed that, while most of what they spent money for at Nome was optional, there were two things imperative—hunting gear and Eskimo families. Under the hunting head would come arms and ammunition, fish nets, fish hooks, harpoons and the like. But perhaps most important of all would be an Eskimo skin boat of the type called an umiak. As made in western Alaska, an umiak consists of a framework of driftwood or possibly imported lumber, and over it stretched a covering made either of the skins of bearded seals ,or walrus, or beluga whales. Such a boat is very small at twenty-five feet in length, and they run up to thirty-five feet or more. A typical boat was one we used on our expedition of 1908-1912. It was thirty-one feet in length. The cover was made of the skins of seven bearded seals. It would carry in smooth water a cargo of between two and three tons, and it was so light that two of us could carry it overland at a steady walk.

In the early days of Alaska whaling the whalemen used exclusively cedar whaleboats made on the Massachusetts coast, and these continued to be employed in midsummer whaling, where there was little danger of striking ice. But at such icy stations as Point Barrow and Point Hope the cedar white man's boat competed only two or three years with the indigenous Eskimo craft and was then discarded forever. The cedar boat is so fragile that if it strikes a piece of ice the size of a bushel basket at six miles an hour it is

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likely to be stove. At the same speed, the umiak can be jammed into an ice cake of any size and will remain uninjured, unless there be a rib broken—damage that need not be repaired until the next day. In whaling and walrusing it is frequently necessary to drag a boat over a piece of intervening ice to launch it on the other side. It will take six or eight men to do this for a whaleboat, and with the slightest accident it will be stove. Two or three men can drag a whaling umiak any old way across rough ice and dump it again into the water without fear of injury. All these things our men knew quite as well as anyone. But the prices asked for skin boats by the natives at Nome seem to have been higher than they considered equitable, and so they decided to stop in call at East Cape , Siberia, on their way to Wrangel and pick up a skin boat cheaper there.

In an undertaking such as that of Wrangel Island, Eskimos are almost as necessary as boats or weapons. Not that they are wanted for hunting, for almost any white man can soon become as good a hunter as the average Eskimo; neither is their help essential in the building of camps. But their women are needed to sew clothes and keep them in repair. It is the testimony of many experts who have examined Eskimo sewing that it is unequalled in the world. The manufacturers of boots for hunters that are sold at our sportsmen’s outfitting stores will make the seam almost any way and then waterproof it by rubbing in grease or some other “preparation.” The Eskimo woman alone sews a seam that is in itself waterproof. A seamstress not used to white men’s ways will become angry if she sees the purchaser greasing the seam of a boot that she has made, for she takes it as a charge of incompetence. ¶This super-

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sewing is needed only for skin boats and waterproof sealskin boots. But there is another sewing almost as difficult to acquire and quite as necessary—that of the warm, soft and pliable skin clothes that keep out the winter cold. It is possible to dress in silk, cotton or woolen clothing, if one wants to follow such methods as have been used in the Antarctic by Scott and Shackleton. But no one will do that if he has the chance of Eskimo clothing, for it is apparently not possible to be thoroughly comfortable at all in the antarctic clothing, and the suits actually used have weighed about double. ³ The best sort of Eskimo suit, complete with outer and inner garments from top to toe, will weigh about ten pounds, where a corresponding antarctic outfit of wool, silk and Burberry goes to twenty or more pounds.

It is impractical under ordinary circumstances to take Eskimos on expeditions otherwise than in entire families. Almost any Eskimo man might be willing to engage himself for a year’s job in a mining camp or on a whaling ship, relying, perhaps somewhat reluctantly, upon European or American clothes. But for a residence in an island like Wrangel it would be almost impossible to hire engage an Eskimo man unless he knew that there would be women along to do suitable sewing.

With these ideas clearly in mind, the Wrangel party tried to engage at Nome some Eskimo families, and did so actually. But when the time came to sail there arrived at the boat landing only the Eskimo woman, Ada Blackjack, who had been expecting to go along as a member of

³For a description of the troubles of polar explorers who did not use Eskimo clothes, or who did not understand how clothes can be kept dry in winter, see Nansen, “Farthest North,” Vol. II, pp. 142, 145-6, and Shackleton, “Heart of the Antarctic,” Vol. I, p. 340. A summary of the difficulties of explorers with their winter clothing and of the modern methods for avoiding them is also found in “The Friendly Arctic.” See index of that book.

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one of the families engaged. When she found that the others had broken their bargain she also wanted to withdraw, but was prevailed upon to go by the assurance that the Silver Wave would call in at some Eskimo settlement between Nome and Wrangel to hire families in which Asia could then take her place. The party made a last effort to get the people previously hired to stick to their bargain or to engage others, but no one could be found who was willing to go. The season was already later than the best sailing time and they were afraid to delay. They appear also to have felt certain that they would be able to engage some families of Siberian Eskimos at East Cape when they went in there to buy the skin boat. With that program they sailed September 9th, 1921.

The voyage from Nome to East Cape resembled a voyage in a similar boat from Scotland to Norway. There was no ice in sight. The weather also proved favorable.

At East Cape the party met their first misfortune and made the most serious error of the whole expedition. The misfortune was that no Eskimos could be engaged. The error of judgment was that when the natives demanded about double the usual price for an umiak the party decided that they ought to refuse to be robbed and that they could get along all right if Captain Hammer would sell them instead the ship’s dory.

Much has been made of this incident since by nearly every critic of the expedition, and far too much, it seems to me. It is true that a departure was being made from the plan which the members and I had formulated together and in which they believed as thoroughly as I. But, if properly understood, the interpretation is not straight out one of bad judgment, but rather of excessive

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confidence in the resources of the Arctic. Knight knew how to hunt walrus; everyone does, for they are among the easiest animals in the world to hunt. But Knight had lived by hunting for several years in a region where walrus are entirely absent and where having a boat makes no difference on the that score. of walrus. He had often depended on hunting when no boat was available, or at least, when for months at a time a boat, even if it could have been constructed in case of necessity, was never constructed because the necessity did not arise. To a man of such experience the skin boat would seem an almost superfluous precaution. He knew its value, but he thought that it could be safely dispensed with. They could get seals without it, they could get polar bears without it, and they might even get walrus without it, since they could have a wooden boat dory. So they told the natives they did not care to be overcharged, purchased the ship’s dory from Captain Hammer and sailed on towards Wrangel Island.

Had I known that there was no skin boat on Wrangel Island I should have worried more than I did over the safety of the party there during the next two years. But my only information was a sentence which I here quote from Crawford’s letter to me dated at Wrangel Island, September 15th, 1921: “Left Nome September 9th. Called East Cape, Siberia, to purchase skin boat. Sighted (Wrangel) island noon yesterday.” This I took to indicate that our plans in respect to the umiak had been carried out.

We know now that the "skin boat" here refered to by Crawford was a small one, and that it was swept overboard in a storm and lost on the way to Wrangel Island.

Captain Hammer and his crew knew, of course, that a dory had been substituted for the umiak, but they seem to have considered that there was no particular reason

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for transmitting that information to me, and they never did.

A careful reading of all the Wrangel documents shows that the absence of the skin boat, while serious, had no immediate bearing on the final tragedy, for it was only an error in the early newspaper reports which gave the impression that the last fatal journey had been undertaken because of scarcity of food, and, therefore, indirectly because of the lack of a skin boat.

At the date when the Silver Wave sailed, it would not have been surprising to meet ice between Siberia and Wrangel Island. Some yearsOne year in every eight or ten it is even difficult to get to the Island at all. But in this case no ice was sighted. On the 14th of September the heights of Wrangel could be seen at an estimated distance of thirty or forty miles. That night they were hidden by fog, but next morning they came to view again, and by afternoon a landing had been made at a point which was not then recognized for certain, but which proved to be near the middle of the south coast, a little east of Doubtful Harbor.

For September 14th 14th, 15th and 16th Knight wrote that the team of seven fine Nome dogs were “in rather poor shape, but will do my best to get them in good condition when we reach the island. The season is getting late and a good many things must be done before the freezeup, so we are anxious to get started with our work.”

On September 15th Knight wrote: “We sighted (today) a high sandspit with a great deal of wood on it and landed our outfit in a heavy surf. Everything was landed by 10:30 p. m. Started unloading at 7:00 p. m.” September 16th: “After unloading we slept on the ship, but the wind arose from the south and we were called

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at 3 a. m. We had time to get our personal stuff ashore, and the Silver Wave departed with three whistles and a great deal of flag dipping, and left us to our own resources. We have a good outfit and the fox tracks look promising, so we should have a successful winter. The surprising thing to me is the weather, nice gentle winds, with an uncommon amount of sunshine for this time of year, and not an ice cake in sight.”

Chapter VIII

The Difficulties of 1922

When the Silver Wave sailed away “with much flag dipping,” a silence fell upon Wrangel Island that remained unbroken for two years. Captain Hammer brought out with him only the briefest letters either to me or to friends and families. It had been to each of the four an exciting adventure since they left Seattle, and especially so between Nome and Wrangel. Apart from personal greetings, my only report was a letter from Crawford, which I quote in full:

“Sept, 15th, 1921, 5:30 P. M.

Off Wrangel Island.

“Dear Mr. Stefansson:

“Commencing this letter ¹/₂ mi. offshore. Left Nome Sept. 9th. Called East Cape, Siberia, to purchase skin boat. Sighted island noon yesterday. Resembles in outline and color country round Lewiston, Idaho. Large flat spaces near coast but seems to be mostly hilly. Snow on highest of hills looks like this year’s. Have as yet seen not a single ice cake.

6:00 P. M.

“Stopped—don’t think this is Rodger’s Harbour. Maurer is uncertain. Started unloading. Have been very quiet about our business here, since it appears the Russians think they own the island and their Siberian Patrol is liable to pay us an unwelcome visit. Finished unloading 11 P. M., came aboard for meal and wrote till midnight. Up again 2:45 breakfast, then ashore and raised flag and issued proclamation of which I enclose two copies. Next year bring a phonograph and records as we had no time to get one. Mr. Anderson has copies of grocery and hardware bill, so you can

118

FROM LEFT TO RIGHT, CRAWFORD, MAURER AND KNIGHT. PICTURE TAKEN IN SEATTLE JUST BEFORE PARTY SAILED FOR NOME.

A PROCLAMATION

KNOW ALL BY THESE PRESENTS;

That I, Allan Rudyard Crawford,a native of CANADA and a British subject and those men whose names appear below,members of the Wrangel Island Detachment of the Stefansson Arctic Expedition of 1921-,on the advice and council of Vilhjalmur Stefansson,a British subject,have this day,in consideration of lapses of foreign claims and the occupancy from March 12th 1914 to September 7th 1914 of this island by the survivors of the brigantine Karluk,Captain R.A.Bartlett commanding,the property of the Government of CANADA chartered to operate in the Canadian Arctic Expedition of 1913-1918 of which survivors Chief Engineer Munro,a native of SCOTLAND and a British subject,raised the Canadian flag,raised the British flag and declared this land known as WRANGEL Island to be the just possession of His Majesty GEORGE, King of GREAT BRITAIN and IRELAND and the Dominions beyond the Seas,Emperor of INDIA,etc.,and a part of the BRITISH EMPIRE.

Signed and deposited in this monument this sixteenth day of September in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and twenty one.

[Signature:]Allan R Crawford Commander [Signature:][?[E. ? Knight]] Second in command [Signature:][?[J W Maurer]] [Signature:][?[Miles ?]]

WRANGEL ISLAND,3ept.16th,1921.

GOD SAVE THE KING

WRANGEL ISLAND PROCLAMATION.

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see what we lack. At present we are one mi. west Rodger’s Harbour. Fox and bear tracks abundant. Also bring Literary Digest, assay outfit and explanatory books—may be placer gold. We have Eskimo woman, Ada Blackjack, with us to sew. Lots of grazing for reindeer. Everyone seems contented. Best of luck on European trip. Call on my people if in Toronto.

(Signed) Allan R. Crawford.”

Although this letter was brief, it was satisfactory. In a wray its brevity was one of the most satisfactory things about it, for if there had been any feeling of inadequacy of outfit or bad prospects in any respect, the letter would have been lengthened to include them.

But, although nothing had occurred so far to worry the Wrangel party or me, something had occurred which appears to have greatly worried Captain Hammer and his men. The main purpose of our expedition was to continue the occupation of Wrangel Island, begun in 1914 on behalf of the British Empire, against the time when commercial developments (transarctic flying, northern reindeer ranching, etc.) should make it valuable. It is possible that the party did not fully realize that the legal effectiveness of the occupation would depend on the duration and character of the occupation itself rather than upon any assertions or proclamations. But they were exuberant over an accomplished success, for there they were, obviously ahead of any Japanese or other occupation, and clearly the onlyobviously the first landing party since our own men had left there in 1914. Apparently the first thing they did after landing was to scramble up a hillside, erect a flagpole, hoist the Union Jack and read ceremonially the a proclamation, of which a photograph is reproduced herewith.

When the proclamation got to me through the mails several weeks later I took it as a rather inconsequential

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detail of a successful enterprise. But it had started a ferment in Alaska which was to bring signicant far-reaching developments. Until the flag-raising, it does not seem to have occurred to the crew of the Silver Wave that there were any motives other than fur trapping or gold prospecting. Apparently also they felt that the hoisting of a flag had a magic effect, suddenly changing or establishing sovereignty—the much more important landing of an outfit a few hours earlier appears to have had no such meaning in their eyes. On the voyage back to Alaska they worried a good deal, probably not so much for the fate of Wrangel Island in itself as for their own share in the enterprise, wondering whether their fellow Alaskans might not consider them renegades, since they had indubitably, if unwittingly, taken part in such momentous doings.

I should judge that when the party landed in Nome the more important citizens of that city took the flag story rather calmly, realizing that the hoisting of the Union Jack did not do much to add to or detract from the general effect of all the other things that had been done by ourmy expeditions between 1914 and 1921. But the incident was enough for a journalist with a keen news sense, and the Nome Nugget printed a long “story” under a “scare head.” The gist of it was that here had been this valuable island lying right under the nose of Alaskans these many years, and now some Britishers had come and run off with it. Apparently no one in Nome had, up to that time, thought much about the ownership of the island, but now it seemed clear to a good many that it was an obvious and logical part of the territory of Alaska. The legend even grew up that it had been included in the Alaska purchase. Alaskans and other Americans had

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frequently seen it (this was true, for especially in the whaling days several ships used to sight Wrangel Island practically every year). After the subject had been discussed long enough around Nome, the theory developed that it had been deceitful of us, and even an international “unfriendly act,” to outfit in an American port with the support of Americans when the design was to get hold of an island which either was or ought to have been American property.

As said, the substantial leading people of Alaska probably took little more than casual notice of these discussions. However, it appears that the talk crystallized into some sort of protest which was eventually sent by Alaskans to Washington.

One of Captain Hammer’s assistants on the Silver Wave was August Soderholm, now master of the schooner Nokatak, plying in Alaskan waters for the Lomen Reindeer and Trading Corporation. He had been so much taken with Wrangel Island that he tried hard on his return to Nome to organize a party to charter a ship and go there to establish a chain of fur trappers around the island. Patriotism may have played a part (to make the occupation of the island jointly American and British), but adventure and commercial motives were doubtless uppermost. He was unable to muster a party, because the season was so late (the last week of September) that the consensus of sailor opinion at Nome was against the voyage as unsafe because of the nearness of winter. This in spite of Soderholm’s strong urging that they had just returned from Wrangel without seeing snow except on the distant interior mountains, and without seeing a cake of ice at sea.

After the landing of the party in Wrangel Island and

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the safe return of the Silver Wave to Nome I saw no cause for doing anything special for some months. There was an election on in Canada, and there was no point in trying to urge the Government to action until we knew who would be the Government next summer when the supply ship for Wrangel Island would have to sail. I felt sure of the safety and comfort of the party. My stock reply to constant inquiries was that they were as safe and comfortable as a party equally isolated on a tropical island such as Robinson Crusoe’s. They were doing the sort of thing that I had dreamed about doing from childhood, which they had always wanted to do, and which at least one healthy young man in every five in Europe or America would dearly love to have the chance to do.

And if I was not worrying about the situation up there, neither was I worrying about any more southerly aspect of it, when one day a newspaper friend told me that a “big story” about Wrangel Island was about to “break,” and gave me the chance of publishing my version before another, probably more inaccurate, should come from Washington. The New York Times had found out about the protest from Alaska to Washington and had realized the news value of it, but was anxious to have not merely some story, but the accurate facts.

Up to this time I had been much pleased with the absence of interest in the Wrangel Island undertaking. It was supposed that I had an ordinary trading venture “somewhere up North.” The news aspect was changed when it became known that I was doing something that, for the time being at least, I was very reluctant to advertise. It was great luck for me that I had a friend on the New York Times and that, in consequence, the first big

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“story” about Wrangel Island that appeared was printed in its issue for March 20th, 1922, substantially as I gave it out.

With the exception of two or three slips, the Times story about Wrangel Island account was such as anyone might condense from a frank and full book telling our ideas, doings and hopes. Although I had been avoiding publicity, I felt, after seeing the Times article, that no harm had been done, and possibly some good. But I felt entirely different after I had seen the “re-writes” of the story by the more sensational papers, and especially by the Anglophobe section of the press. These papers used such real facts as suited them from the original story, added such alleged facts as brought out the meaning they wanted, and worded both the news and the editorial comment so as to raise the question as to whether Americans should tolerate having a British subject resident in the United States organizing expeditions to deprive the United States of an island which belonged to them by the combined logic of history and geographical position. Of course, they begged three questions; first, whether the United States had adequate legal claim to the island; second, whether the United States wished to press such claims if they had them; and third, whether it might not possibly suit the United States better to have the island in British possession rather than in the possession of Russia or Japan.

But more disturbing than the doings of the Anglophobe American press was the response in the press of Great Britain and Canada. [With conspicuous exceptions] The general trend of the Canadian editorials was to the effect that no one, unless he were crazy, would imagine that so remote an island had any value. This was usually followed by saying that

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Canada had any amount of undeveloped territory, and that all her energies must be concentrated on developing the lands nearer home before attention could be paid to remote arctic islands. To a connoisseur in history-repeating-itself it is delectable to find that these editorials read as if they had come out of the same editorial storm that burst upon Secretary Seward fifty-four years earlier, when he purchased Alaska on behalf of the United States—in the days when Alaska went popularly under the names of “Seward’s Ice Box” and “Seward’s Folly.”

In the United Kingdom the editorials were equally condemnatory of our action, but on a different basis. In substance they said that, while the value of Wrangel Island was problematic, and in the distant future, the value of the friendship of the United States was unquestioned and imperatively needed by the British Empire at this very moment. They pointed out the consequent folly of doing anything that might possibly irritate the United States. By avoiding carefully the question of whether the United States or Great Britain had the greater legal right, these editorials produced an unpleasant impression new for any large section of the Imperial press. The Empire has occasionally been accused of swaggering and taking things without even a show of right. There are many recorded occasions when the British Government has insisted with dignity that international questions of importance should be sifted to their bottom and decided on their merits. You would certainly have to go farther back than Elizabeth for historical instances of the surrender by England of valuable territory, to which the right was clear, on the ground that asserting one’s rights might hurt the feelings of some other country.

No one would deny the great importance of Anglo-

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American amity, and certainly the last to do so would have been the Wrangel Island party or myself. They were destined never to know what the papers were saying. But I have lived in the United States for thirty years and I have yet to learn any characteristic of the American people which would lead me to think that they would consider it a grievance if the British Empire said to them, “If there is a question between us as to the ownership of territory, let us discuss it quietly and, if necessary, submit it to impartial outside arbitration.”

A glance at one of the common multi-colored political maps of the world suggests a good many interesting reflections onof what would happen if there really were a principle on in international law to the effect that contiguity (or nearness) gives possession rights superior to those of discovery, exploration and occupation. The case of the Falkland Islands is typical. If nearness were the controlling element, they should belong to Argentina; but they do belong to the British Empire. They are British through colonization, and the very reason they are important to the Empire is that they are far away from England and that Argentina does not belong to Great Britain. Their significance is somewhat lessened now by the Suez and Panama Canals but, even so, they are important to the Empire as stepping stones on the way from one possession to another or in their mere relation to international sea-borne commerce. They are in time of peace a part of the commercial sea power of the Empire. We wanted Wrangel Island to remain British as a part of her developing air power for dirigibles and planes to use as schooners and cruisers have used the Falklands.

Certain editors and members of the Canadian Parliament had been arguing ever since my campaign for

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further arctic exploration had become known that Canada’s chief claim to the ownership of the islands north of Canada was their contiguity either to the Canadian mainland or to islands that were indisputably Canadian through occupation. The reasoning was that some of the these islands had been discovered or explored by Norwegians or Americans, and that these nations who might claim them as against Canada, if Canada or Britain were to claim, on grounds of discovery, exploration or occupation, an island (Wrangel) which was nearer to Russian than to British lands. These arguments, especially when made as speeches in Parliament, were widely circulated. I did not try to meet them in the press, but contented myself with emphasizing to the Government their double fallacy.

The first answer to the contiguity argument was that in most of the territorial disputes between nations that have been arbitrated in modepr times, contiguity has been urged as a claim an argument by one of the contending parties, but has never been given weight by the arbitrators. It was, therefore, no more than a pious hope on the part of Canadians that their surrender of discovery and occupation rights in Wrangel Island to Russia would induce other nations to surrender their discovery or exploration rights in certain other islands to Canada, thus establishing a wholly new principle in international law—the revolutionary doctrine that contiguity should rank above discovery, exploration and occupation.

The second answer to the contiguity fallacy is, to a Canadian, more striking than the first. One of the islands Canadians want to hold is Ellesmere. Like Wrangel, it was discovered by British naval officers; like Wrangel, it was explored by Americans (but also by Norwegians and British); Canada had made several announcements

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of her desire to own it, as compared with Russia’s one announcement (in 1916) that she wanted to own Wrangel. So far the situations were almost parallel. But the United States Government (the Army) had published a map which I was able to show to the Minister of the Interior which, by its color scheme, designated as the property of no country not only Ellesmere Island, but the next island south of it, North Devon. And the Danish Government had just notified the Canadian Government that the Danes did not consider that the Canadian law against the killing of ovibos (musk oxen) applied in Ellesmere Island since it was not a part of Canada. I pointed out that if Canada, through Wrangel Island or in any other way, committed herself to the doctrine that the claims of territorial contiguity are superior to those of discovery and occupation, they would lose Ellesmere to Denmark, if the Danes cared to claim it. For Ellesmere Island is only ten miles from that part of Greenland which was made indisputably Danish by the St. Thomas purchase agreement between the United States and Denmark wherein the United States renounced to the Danes discovery claims to Northwest Greenland based on the explorations of Kane, Hayes, Hall, [Sreelj],Peary and other Americans.

If we argue that Wrangel belongs to the Russians, who had never even seen it before 1911, just because it is only a hundred miles from Russian territory, then surely Ellesmere would belong to the Danes because it is only ten miles from Danish territory. The only way to hold Ellesmere Island was for the Canadian Government to ignore the arguments of their orators and editors about continuity giving ownership, and to plant settlements on Ellesmere Island quickly, standing thereafter squarely

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on upon the long-undisputed principle of international law that effective occupation (especially when strengthened by original discovery) gives ownership. I stated this frequently, both in conversations and in writing, to the Canadian Cabinet, and so did several others of whom I know. Doubtless the Government would have seen the point without our urging. What matters is that they did see the point and quietly outfitted a ship, the Arctic, to plant Royal Canadian Mounted Police posts on Ellesmere in 1921. That committed the Government of Canada to the principle that occupation and not contiguity should determine the ownership of Ellesmere Island, and, therefore, of all islands. From that moment it became certain that if they ever renounced Wrangel Island it would not be because of the legal force of its being nearcontiguity to Russian territory than to British.

The commotion was not confined to the Englishspeaking press. Editorials began to be published in Russia and news dispatches to circulate to the effect that Russia had “always” claimed Wrangel Island, that the claim had always been undisputed, and that the Russians were the original discoverers. Most extraordinary of all was the Russian assertion that the discoverer had been Lieutenant Ferdinand Wrangel, who had landed on the island “between the years 1821 and 1824.” It is interesting to speculate whether these Soviet documents were based on actual Russian ignorance or merely upon their cynical assumption of complete British and American ignorance not only of the history of British and American exploration, but also of the history of Russian exploraation and development. I incline to the latter view. Some of the statesmen of the Russian Revolution are

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qualified to come to a California mining town and teach the glamblers there the meaning of the word “bluff.” One must say this with adminstration for [] Russians. Their new politicians usually play [] hand for all the cards are really [], if and frequently for more. Besides the Wrangel Island venture which looked towards the development of transpolar air commerce, I had on hand in 1921 two major projects with regard to the North. I was anxious to get private individuals to realize as soon as possible the great potentialities of the Canadian Arctic as a pasture land for reindeer. In this I had been already measurably successful, for I had induced the Hudson’s Bay Company to transport several hundred reindeer from Norway for an experimental ranch in Baffin Island. Like many another pioneer enterprise, this one has suffered through accidents not directly connected with the climate, but due to the human factor. The herds had bad luck the first year, fair good the second, and third, and we are now (summer 19254) waiting with bated breath for the news of the third fourth winter. If it is good, a war has been won; if it is bad, a skirmish has gone against us, but other battles and the war itself will be won hereafter. Through the nature of the animals and the country, the reindeer enterprise must sometime succeed in arctic Canada.

My second undertaking was to create interest that should eventually lead to the domestication of the ovibos, or musk ox, a project the importance of which is outlined in one of my books, “The Northward Course of Empire.” Besides these I had to earn money not only for a living, but also for paying the gradually accumulating salaries of the Wrangel Island party of five. These things kept me so busy that I had no time to go to Ottawa for a full discussion of the Wrangel Island situation with the new Liberal Government of the Honorable W. L. Mackenzie King which had replaced the Conservative regime of the

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Honourable Arthur Meighen, with whom I had previouslybeen dealing.

I was also hampered by a naive faith in the inevitable triumph of a good cause. It seemed to me the facts were all with us and that people would eventually take the time to look into them, whereupon they would flock to our side. I thought this especially reasonable in a country like Canada, where within living memory the Prairie Provinces have changed from the supposedly frozen wilderness of fifty years ago to the “bread basket of the world,” and where the development of Alaska from “Seward’s Ice Box” to an empire of wealth was about as well known as it is in the United States. But I found that both lessons have been lost upon the majority of Canadian editors and that they seldom analogize from the Manitoba or Alaska of yesterday to the "Frozen North" in which they believe today. There are also those who seem to realize the coming value of the remote north, but who simply do not have the imagination to see their own advantage in developments which probably will not yield profits for twenty or thirty years. These people are logical according to their lights in refusing to do anything for posterity on the ground that posterity has never done anything for them.

For years I had been writing long letters to the prime ministers of Canada, to the ministers of the interior and to other influential people setting forth in what appeared to me conclusive terms the background of our northern work. It was another piece of childlike simplicity to feel that all I had to do now would be was to refer to this correspondence which the new Government would find in the files of their predecessors, and to rely on their reading it and doing something about it. In a way I knew how

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busy cabinet ministers are, for I have associated with them enough for that; but I somehow looked for expected an exception in this case.

Eventually, when correspondence failed to get results, I did go to Ottawa. Before my arrival, several types of opposition had been expressed. The speeches of certain members of Parliament showed that they felt it would make Canada and the Empire seem ridiculous to try to retain, on the basis of its supposed value an island “well known" to be undesirably cold and, in consequence, worthless. Other members seemed to have the feeling that if the Government did not advance the money for a relief ship I would find some way of securing it privately. This may have been the chief of the reasons why the Government were so slow to act. Or it may have been only that they were too busy with other things. There probably never was anything to the explanation that has since been advanced—that I had members of the Government so thoroughly converted to viewing looking upon the Arctic as a paradise that they found my appeal for a supply relief ship in contradiction with what they believed to be my views. There is, of course, always a danger that the convert may develop a faith more passionate than that of the missionary.

But if there was opposition, there was also a good deal of warm support. Sir Edmund Walker, for instance, the President of the Canadian Bank of Commerce, gave had given us substantial help and used his influence to forward our project in his usual quiet but effective way. He was the only Canadian who gave us money, but there were many others of consequence—members of Parliament, editors and private citizens—who made themselves spokesmen for the Wrangel undertaking.

In the negotiations with the Government, one of the

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first inquiries of the Minister of the Interior was what financial return I would expect if the Government decided to stand on its legal rights with regard to Wrangel Island. After making it clear that retaining this originally and still British land within the Empire was more important to me than any money that could be involved, I went on to say that I hoped the Government would return without interest, or with bank interest, the money my friends and I had put into the enterprise. In this connection we would want our books carefully audited to make it clear beyond question that we had neither profited nor tried to profit through doing what we thought foresighted and patriotic. But if the Government preferred, either for economy or to demonstrate the value of the island, we would take a long lease and get our money back by subletting the island to some one of the many arctic commercial companies. I made it very clear that we would much prefer the refund of what we had actually spent, for a lease would expose us to newspaper allegations that we had been working for money all the time. The very papers that were now protesting against the retention of Wrangel Island on the ground that it was worthless, would be the first to accuse us of fattening at the public expense if we were given a lease of it.

When pleading with the Canadian Government the spring of 1922 for help (since my money and borrowing power were exhausted) so that a supply ship could be sent to Wrangel, I had made the alternative proposals that they should send in a ship themselves, give us money to send in a ship, or give us a lease of the island which we could sell or otherwise use to raise money for a ship.

While negotiating with the Government I had been negotiating also by cable with Nome and had found

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available the schooner Teddy Bear, whose captain, Joe Bernard, I had known since 1910, when the Teddy Bear was the first craft to enter Coronation Gulf from the west since Collinson was there in 1852. Acting through the Lomen Brothers of Nome, I made a bargain with Captain Bernard that he would try his best to reach Wrangel Island, receiving a certain sum if he failed, but double three times that amount if he succeeded. The suggestion of doubling tripling the amount had come from me, after Bernard had submitted a tentative minimum figure, for success was worth to us a price immeasurably beyond the reasonable wages of a faithful failure.

One thing I seemed to be unable to make impressive enough at Ottawa was how rapidly the summer was passing and that it was now or never. The friendly attitude of the Prime Minister and the Minister of the Interior, the Honorable Charles Stewart, and his deputy, the Honorable W. W. Cory, when coupled with my inability to get action, made me more and more desperate until I finally appealed for money to a personal friend and secured it on the plea of life and death. I said to him in substance that, while we could assume the safety and comfort of everyone on Wrangel Island on the basis of continued good health and absence of any accident, there were dangers of sickness and accident sufficient to warrant my saying that there was a possibility if not a probability that lives might be sacrificed if nothing were done that year. I had not appealed to this friend earlier partly because he was an American citizen and, although I thought him sympathetic to my plans in every way, I did suppose he would have the feeling that there ought to be enough wealth and public spirit in the British Empire to finance so small and altruistic a British enterprise. This same

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feeling had prevented me from appealing to any of my other American friends. I have been in British service either partly or wholly during the entire time of my polar work, but the rest of my life I have lived in the United States. Most of my best friends are naturally where I have lived but I could not go appeal to them on the score of national interest. Those in Great Britain or Canada to whom I could appeal on a patriotic basis were in the main strangers to me personally, completely out of touch with the developments I was advocating and unconvinced of their fundamental soundness.

It may seem that Canadians ought to know more about Canada than any other people, about even the remotest parts of Canada. But that is a view not based upon observation. It is a commonplace with travelers that the ignorance about the interior of Africa is nowhere so dense as in the cities along the African coast. If you live in Durban or Cape Town you are tempted to assume that you know Africa because you are an African and you take no interest in meeting travelers who have been in the interior, or in reading books about their journeys. But if you live in Scotland you are vividly conscious of your lack of knowledge and, if you have an inquiring mind at all, you will grasp every opportunity to converse or read about the interior of Africa. The same is true in Canada where the trains fly like shuttles back and forth across the transcontinental railways that follow the southern fringe of the country. Most Canadians who travel in Canada merely attach themselves to these shuttles and dart with them through the industrial cities of the East, the grain fields of the prairies, and through the magnificent forests of British Columbia. They climb into the transcontinental trains expecting to see Canada and they climb out again a few

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days later imagining that they know Canada. It is not uncommon to find even these “traveled” Canadians referring to such places as Edmonton or Cochrane as being in northern Canada. Our Scotchman who depends upon the map knows better. If you try it out it will be your experience as it has been mine, that in corresponding clubs of London and Toronto you will find a far higher average of members with well grounded opinions about the whole of Canada in the English club than you will in the Canadian.

If you remember, then, the principle that ignorance of the land beyond the frontier is always densest on the frontier, you will know the fundamental reason why it is in particular difficult to interest Canadians in an arctic enterprise and why it is in general difficult to get the people of any pioneer country to take an interest in parts of it they have not seen. This explains, at least partly, why it was that British and American capitalists were putting money into the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway at a time when nearly half the people of Canada itself were firmly convinced of the folly of the enterprise and passionately opposed to having anybody try it. It is also a partial explanation of why Canadians of today will invest money in cattle ranches in the Argentine rather than reindeer ranches in their own country. It is not wholly because cattle are an ancient domestic animal and reindeer new to west Europeans. It is rather because their frank ignorance of South America has opened Canadians’ minds to any information about the Argentine, while their limited knowledge of their own country has prevented them from taking an interest in places not half so far away or half so difficult to reach.

With American money at last available for carrying

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supplies to a party of British pioneers, I cabled to Nome, closing the bargain with Captain Bernard. The season was already at its most favorable stage. Knowing this, the Captain made the hastiest preparations and set sail on August 20,1922.

A vote of three thousand dollars was given me by the Canadian Government before the Teddy Bear actually sailed, but not in time to affect the sailing date, which had been determined by the help of my American friend.

The vote was made on the basis of the following written appeal summarizing (though by no means completely) many conversations I had had both with the Minister and Deputy Minister of the Interior:

“Ottawa, Aug. 8, 1922.

Dear Mr. Cory:

Attached is the brief statement you asked for to be presented to Council on Friday. Please urge upon Council that there are on Wrangel Island four men in Canadian service whose lives are in danger. The arctic summer is nearly over.

Respectfully,

(Signed) V. Stefansson.

Hon. W. W. Cory,

Deputy Minister of the Interior,

Ottawa, Ontario.

STATEMENT REGARDING MEN NOW IN DANGER ON WRANGEL ISLAND

The facts with regard to the Expedition now on Wrangel Island are in the hands of the Prime Minister and the Minister of the Interior. The men went to Wrangel Island to hold it for the Empire and Canada, and I had no other motive in sending them there. I have spent on this enterprise all my own money and all I can borrow. Our claims to the island are clear and we should hold it. But the four men there have now been isolated for one year; they may be ill for all we know. They were confident, as I

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was, that I could get support to send a ship to them. We could have borrowed money had we received a lease in time, but this is now probably too late. A ship can be chartered in Nome to take supplies to Wrangel and to bring out such of the men as want to come out—total cost of charter and supplies about $5,000.00. Can the Government advance this money in some way—details of repayment, etc., to be settled later?

When our men were on Wrangel in 1914 the American Government sent a cutter for them at many times the cost of the present enterprise. These now are our own men—a Canadian expedition engaged in a service for Canada. They have already accomplished their task and now need help.

Our arrangements are all made through the Stefansson Arctic Exploration and Development Company, Credit Foncier Building, Vancouver. Credit should be telegraphed there so arrangements can be made with Nome.

This Company was incorporated for the single purpose of securing Wrangel Island to Canada.

(Signed) V. STEFANSSON.

The season of 1922 proved to be particularly icy in the region north and northwest of Bering Straits. Contrary to popular opinion, the amount of ice in a certain part of the polar sea any given summer has no relation to the temperature that summer and depends only on the winds that prevail in the wide region surrounding the area you want to navigate. Generally speaking, there is ice between Wrangel Island and the mainland of Asia when the winds are from the northeast, north or northwest. The favorable winds are from the east, southeast, and south.

Captain Bernard made a faithful attempt. He followed the edge of the ice westward. Sometimes he ventured a little way out into it and was nearly caught, an event to be more carefully guarded against here, although not serious than in the arctic north and northwest of Europe.

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If you get your ship fast in the ice of the European arctic you drift south into open water and freedom. If you get fast in the ice to the north of Alaska or eastern Siberia you drift with it to the northwest, being inevitably frozen in and carried across the polar ocean north and west unless the ship is broken and sunk. This has been proved by scores of whaling ships and by De Long’s Jeannette, Nansen’s Fram, my own Karluk, and more recently by Amundsen’s Maud.*

Had the Teddy Bear been frozen in, it would have meant not only the loss of the ship, but also that she would have been powerless to help the men on Wrangel Island. No one could be better aware of this than Captain Bernard, and so he was wise in running no risk of being caught. He retreated again and again barely in time and followed along westward until he came to where further progress was impossible because the ice touched the Siberian coast. He climbed high headlands in one or more places and saw the ice lying heavily packed twenty or thirty miles out to sea. There arose later rumors that Bernard could have reached the island had he tried harder. These must have originated among people who did not understand the conditions, and they were eventually completely removed by the testimony of the Wrangel Island party itself, who watched from the hills of the island the same ice that Captain Bernard saw from the hills of the continent.¹

On September 23, 1922, Captain Bernard returned to Nome and the Lomen Brothers reported to me by wireless his failure to reach the island. This did not cause me any great worry, for I knew that, barring accident or sickness, the men were safe. The chances of accident

² The text of Captain Bernard’s report is printed in the Appendix to this

*Later Maud information seems to brief [despalclur] from the seem to indicate she was not carried accross the basin, but made to circle in an eddy.

THE MAIN CAMP. TAKEN FROM THE Silver Wave.

EARLY SPRING - THE PRARIE PARTLY FREE OF SNOW BUT THE MOUNTAINS STILL AS IN WINTER.

MAURER WATCHING FOR THE SHIP THAT COULD NOT COME, BECAUSE OF THE ICE PACKED AGAINST THE LAND BY THE WIND, SUMMER OF 1922.

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were not many for careful men; the chances of good health are nowhere in the world better than in the Arctic. It is, in fact, one of the chief reasons why arctic explorers always go north again. You cannot be unhappy when you are exuberantly healthy. Describe a blizzard vividly and correctly to a man in the south. He will shudder at the thought, pity the poor fellows who have to struggle through such a storm, and will congratulate himself that he is safe from it. But take that same man north and the climate and conditions will change his temperament so that the howling of a gale outdoors becomes a challenge with an agreeable thrill and difficult to resist. When you are well dressed and have mastered the technique of northern travel you face exultantly a blizzard which your twin brother in the south [unviel] shudders to read about.

Although Bernard had not succeeded, I felt much better because he had been able to try. Had financial difficulties prevented me from sending a ship at all, I should have been worried by my inability to hold up my end of the bargain with the boys. men in the field. There had been the understanding that they would go into the field and do the actual work of keeping the flag flying while I was to have what they considered the easier if not the pleasanter task of converting those in power to the wisdom of our plans. Had the ocean been clear at Wrangel Island they would have had no theory upon which to explain the absence of a ship except my failure to interest Canadians the British public in what we were trying to do for Canada and the Empire, and that would have hurt them who knew so well their own unselfishness and who expected approval so confidently. But Bernard told us that the ice had been blocking the way. That made my mind easier, for I knew the party at Wrangel boys must have seen the same ice and must

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have placed upon it and not upon me or Canada the pacific the blame for keeping the ship away. I considered they would, accordingly, face the winter cheerfully, not conscious that what they were doing was being considered by their countrymen more foolish and less glorious than they had imagined.

As the winter advanced, my attitude about Wrangel Island remained unchanged except that I began to worry a little that I might receive a wireless message from some place in Siberia. The understanding when the party sailed had been that they would certainly not leave the island by sledge during the winter of 1921-1922. There had been the suggestion that they might make a quick trip in March of that year to the Siberian mainland to send out letters and despatches through one of the American or Russian traders, but we had decided against that for two reasons. There was nothing to gain, and there would be considerable expense. There would not even be any increase of peace of mind to the relatives, for anyone who fears that the journey from Wrangel Island to the mainland may possibly be dangerous will feel no differently about the journey back from the mainland to Wrangel Island. The very men who had come through danger to report their safety might easily be lost on the way back. If the letters taken out were to be of any value in guiding our policy the following summer they would have to be carried by messenger at least seven hundred miles overland from the first trader south of Wrangel into whose hands they were given, and that would be costly out of proportion to anything that we might hope to gain. I am sure that in all this reasoning I had the complete agreement of the families of Knight and Maurer who had become familiar with polar condi-

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tions through several years of association. The families of Crawford and Galle I knew were considerably worried.

But while no trip was to be made to the mainland the winter 1921-22, our plans left the matter optional for 1922-23. This was the second year on the island and homesickness might have developed. Crawford in particular would be anxious to get out so as to continue his university studies. They were to discuss the situation thoroughly on the island and come to an agreement. My general urging had been that even the second winter they should all remain through, waiting for the ship that was practically certain to come the second summer. One year in ten or so may be expected to keep a ship out, but two bad seasons, one following the other, were unlikely. But if it seemed that certain information must be sent to me or that there were other adequate reasons for leaving the island, then the party might make their own decision. Two of them might then come across to Siberia and might send hired messengers out with mail from there, remaining themselves with some trader south of Wrangel till navigation opened, or returning to the island; or they might make the seven-hundred-mile journey to Bering Straits, as they thought best. The other two would remain on the island until a ship came in 1923. The danger of crossing was greater than that of staying on the island but, since all of us considered the journey to the Siberian mainland a comparatively simple one, it is difficult to say now whether we weighed the danger at all in our planning.

Although somewhat difficult and expensive, a journey by our men from Wrangel Island to the outside world could have been undertaken any time between January and April with the purpose of reaching “civilization” a

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month or two before the opening of arctic navigation. Doing this might seem advisable to them on the basis of what they knew about conditions on Wrangel Island. Their objectives on the island were two—the continuance of occupation and the gathering of knowledge. The occupation had been accomplished. Knowledge, even when recorded in notebooks and photographs, is the most portable of commodities. They could, therefore, leave the island if they liked. But a journey from the outside to Wrangel Island similarly undertaken in winter by myself, for instance, would not have been practical. The island could be reached before spring, but a party coming over the ice from Siberia could bring with them no appreciable amount of supplies. The only way in which succor could be brought in winter to a party isolated on Wrangel Island would be by sending in a hunter of greater skill than the ones on the island. But we had no reason to fear that assistance was needed and no reason to think that the skill of the men already there was inadequate to meet the situation. In consequence I attempted no active undertaking during the winter 19221923, devoting myself merely to writing and speaking along lines which I thought would eventually bring conviction to the public and the Government, and win from them the sympathy and support we needed.

CHAPTER IX

The Summer of 1923 and the Tragic News

When the spring of 1923 approached action became imperative. A telegram to Ottawa brought the assurance that the Prime Minister would see me and that the Cabinet would devote an afternoon to the consideration of any statement I might want to make about the arctic situation in general, Wrangel Island in particular, and the steps which I considered they should take. The first week of April I had lunch one day with Mr. Mackenzie King and Sir Henry Thornton, who had been recently appointed head of the Canadian National Railways, an organization logically second only to the Dominion Government itself in its interest in the potential resources of northern Canada. After lunch the Premier took me to a Cabinet meeting where all but two or three of his ministers were present. They listened to my statement for an hour, asked questions for another hour, and then went into secret session while I returned to my hotel room and Waited for their verdict. One hour more, and

The first week of April I had the promised opportunity of stating the case to a Cabinet meeting where all but two or three of the ministries were present. Later the Prime Minister sent for me to give me the substance of the decision.

The Cabinet considered, on the basis of my statement, that the general subject of arctic development was of great importance and that I had made out what appeared to them a good case for the probable future importance of Wrangel Island. While they had always considered that the island was historically and legally a part of the

143

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British Empire, they had not come to a conclusion as to whether it was, therefore, legally a part of Canada, nor were they sure that incorporating it into Canada would necessarily be advisable even on the assumption that it was valuable and ought to be retained by the Empire through continued occupation. It seemed to the Cabinet that the question was really an Imperial one and should be settled by London. They wanted to ask me, therefore, whether I was willing to go to England and present the same case in the same way to the British Government. I said I would be glad to do so if the Canadian Government would guarantee me a prompt hearing in London and would ask that the British Government would render a decision as quickly as possible. On that understanding I sailed from Quebec May 15th on the Empress of Scotland, arriving in England a week later.

My instructions were to report to the Minister for the Colonies, the Duke of Devonshire. The Colonial Office did not disappoint me in the promptness with which it enabled me to state my case to the departments most concerned. I had been in my hotel room only an hour when I received a message from the Duke of Devonshire setting the time for an interview with himself and for meetings with several individuals, and with a committee of the Admiralty under the chairmanship of the Hydrographer, Rear Admiral F. C. Learmonth. Arrangements were later made for meetings with a large committee consisting of members of the Colonial Office, the Foreign Office, the Admiralty, and the Air Ministry under the chairmanship of Sir Cecil Hurst.

Everyone in the Government was kind and at first everything seemed to be progressing rapidly and smoothly. On the whole I have never had a pleasanter

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experience than my summer of dealing with the British Government—cabinet ministers, undersecretaries, admirals and generals, technical experts, officers and civil servants of every rank. Although I came there ostensibly to bring information and recommend action, I learned more than I was able to teach. They were technical experts in the true sense, men of scholarship and wide outlook. To few of them were the subjects I presented new, and in many cases their range of information was wider than mine. There were manuscripts, for instance, in the Admiralty, both maps and journals, which showed the historical case for the British ownership of Wrangel Island to be even stronger than I had realized. They also had records of more American landings than I had known about, making it still more evident that if Great Britain were to withdraw her claims those of the United States would remain strong and clear as compared with the Russian.

Although my original introduction had been to the Colonial Office, it soon became obvious that the subject really belonged to the Foreign Office. Nevertheless, the practical sides of the question came under the Admiralty and the Air Ministry. In that connection I had constant dealings with the First Lord of the Admiralty, Colonel L. S. Amery, and various of his admirals and captains in an official and semi-official capacity. I always had the feeling that much of what progress I made was due to Colonel Amery’s constant interest and his thorough grasp of the arctic situation both in its economic and political aspects.

I learned from Colonel Amery some of the steps in the development of British territorial policy in the Antarctic in which he had been a prime mover. The glamor of the voyages of Scott, Shackleton, and Mawson had

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attracted the attention of the Empire to these southern lands, the British ownership of some of which had just been proclaimed. Except for projecting mountain peaks and a rare strip of foreshore, these lands are covered with ice and are therefore less inviting than the ice-free and grass-covered arctic islands. The arctic lands, as we have said elsewhere, are towards the center of the land masses, and may, therefore, become way stations between them, but a map of the southern hemisphere will show that this is not true of the Antarctic. If you fly from Australia, to South America direct, you will certainly cross the Antarctic, but a dirigible would have to avoid that route even were the climate tropical, for the mountains are among the highest in the world. No other flying route that we can conceive between the countries now populous leads anywhere near the antarctic continent. Yet the British are wise in claiming it, for now is the time to establish title and no man can tell what lands may become valuable in a hundred years.

Although my personal and social contact with the officers of the Navy was uniformly delightful, my frequent meetings with Rear Admiral J. W. L. McClintock made on me an especially lasting impression in which were blended my liking for himself and my great admiration for his father. I have few heroes; SirLeopold McClintock is one of the few. His and Parry’s are the greatest names that the British Empire has given to arctic history.

But more interesting than any of my summer’s experiences were the frequent long talks with Commander J. G. Bower. I had met him first at Washington a year before when he accompanied Balfour in connection with the Conference on the Limitation of Armament. We had

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been brought together by Sir Robert Borden, the great war premier of Canada. I had been discussing with Sir Robert the feasibility of polar exploration by submarine, urging also that a craft which can occasionally dive under the ice is of importance to the maritime commercial development of Canada and of every other country, some or all of whose harbors or coasts are blocked by ice in winter. Bower was with Balfour as submarine expert and was said to have had more experience than any man in the British Navy with the actual operation of submarines under ice during the war, to the north of Europe. Between what I knew of the nature and distribution of arctic ice and what Commander Bower knew about the general capabilities of the submarine and its particular adaptability to ice-covered areas, we were able to arrive jointly at the conclusion that a submarine voyage north from England to the Bering Straits and the Pacific could and would be made whenever the need arose.

Now that I found myself in England, I used the opportunity to visit Commander Bower aboard his ship, the Cyclops, and he occasionally called on me when passing through London. We talked about every detail of a transarctic journey by submarine, how much it would cost to build a vessel specially adapted to the task, how difficult it would be to remodel the best of the modern submarines, how feasible it might be to propose to the Government that instead of scrapping some sound submarine that was obsolete for war purposes, they should remodel it, replace the torpedo tubes with fuel tanks, and call for volunteers from the submarine service for the first sea voyage north and south between England and Japan. Since I have already dealt with the subject in

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another book,¹ I shall not repeat here the facts and theories upon which these speculations were based.

I find that submarine men who know nothing about ice usually dismiss the suggestion of under-ice navigation as ridiculous. I have found also that most polar explorers ridicule the suggestion because they have not supplemented their knowledge of ice by a study of the submarine. But among the few who have a knowledge in both fields I think there would be fairly unanimous approval of a dialogue which took place at one of our meetings. There were one or two other submarine officers present besides Bower when I asked him which he considered more dangerous and probably more uncomfortable, such voyages as the Norsemen used to make nearly every year from Norway to Greenland during the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries and their occasional voyages to America, or a voyage in an ordinary British submarine from Scapa Flow north and south to Vladivostok. After careful thought and some discussion with his colleagues, Bower replied that in his opinion the transarctic submarine voyage would be far safer, far easier and far more pleasant. I gathered that Commander Bower and several other submarine men would be as eager for an opportunity to cross the Arctic as John Smith and Sir Humphrey Gilbert were to cross the Atlantic, and that the chances of tragedy would be about the same. John Smith came back, but Sir Humphrey Gilbert was lost.

I am wishing the Americans the best of luck with the proposed Shenandoah² flight across the Arctic. If the Shenandoah does not do it, some other dirigible will, and it is in keeping with American character to persist until

¹ Pp. 189-199. “The Northward Course of Empire,” New York, 1922, and London, 1923.

² This was written just after the announcement by the U.S. Security of the Navy that the Shenandoah would cross the Arctic sea. This plan was later cancelled, but Hausen has since announced that he will take it by with a dirigible made in Germany. So over

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the job is done. But for Bower’s sake and the credit of the British Navy Great Britain. I hope they give him a chance to be the first to cross the Arctic by water and thus to make good the dream of the Elizabethan navigators of a short sea route to Cathay.

With the general ideas back of the Wrangel Island enterprise, it was natural that I should be thrown into a contact with the Air Ministry that was even closer than that with the Admiralty. Here I dealt chiefly with the Secretary of State for Air, Sir Samuel Hoare, and with Major-General Sir Sefton Brancker, the Director of Civil Aviation. Especially with General Brancker it turned out that our definite plans and vaguer dreams alike had much in common. I had long been advocating the practicability of carrying by dirigible over the Arctic the important mails that constantly must pass between London and Tokyo, and I got so far as to publish this proposal in the National Geographic Magazine for August, 1922³² About the same time General Brancker had actually been planning with General Maitland a dirigible trip from London to Tokyo; but at that time they had been so misinformed about the temperatures and other meteorological conditions in the Arctic that they had not considered the feasibility of taking this most direct route, and had instead contemplated a flight only a little north of the Trans-Siberian Railway. With that route they found there would be considerable difficulty because high mountain ranges would have to be crossed. They had got so far in their arctic thinking as to say to each other what a pity it was that the Arctic was so prohibitively cold, since the route across it had no mountains and was also

³²See also Chapter VII, “Transpolar Commerce by Air,” in The Northward Course of Empire.

good wishes are extended to him instead. Barring accident, whoever first tries it, with a dirigible as good as the American Las Angeles, or better, will succeed.

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much shorter. But what really stopped this planning was the tragic death of General Maitland in the explosion of the dirigble R-38. When I turned up with my gospel of the friendly arctic, insisting that we forget the ancient views of the terrible north inherited from the Greeks and base all our thinking and planning on the actual verified principles of modern meteorology and the reliable observations of travelers, General Brancker resumed his interest in the London-Tokyo plans that had been interrupted by General Maitland’s death. We went into the question very thoroughly—length of jumps, prevalence of fogs, direction and violence of winds, absence of mountains, advantages and disadvantages of the polar temperatures both in summer and winter. The conclusions were crystallized in a speech made by General Brancker at Sheffield, in which he said that regular mail service by dirigible between England and Japan over the Arctic was a probability of the next ten years.

During the summer 1923 I took the time for discussions of every arctic problem with whoever would listen, because they had a bearing on creating public interest in the pressing situation of the men on Wrangel Island. I also wrote articles for the Spectator, Times, Manchester Guardian and Observer, for in a democracy it is necessary to convince not only the Government, but also the people who support the Government with their votes and who are likely to register disapproval at the polls if the facts and reasons behind the actions of the Government are not made clear to them.

My intercourse with the Government continued smooth and pleasant, but progress no longer appeared to be rapid. I speak with no authority, but I blamed the delays upon the slowness of diplomatic correspondence,

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since the Foreign Office doubtless wanted to sound out the various Powers as to their attitude. The technical advisers of the Foreign Office seemed to be clear as to the superiority of British rights in the case. The Russians did not seem appear to have any legal claims, but they were making a great deal of fuss—wireless despatches from Moscow, notes to the Foreign Office, and threats from Vladivostok. The United States had undeniably been the owners of Wrangel Island for a period following their taking possession in 1881 and here was at least a reasonable ground for discussion. American newspapers, doubtless basing their editorials on inaccurate encyclopaedias and other books of reference, were asserting that the question was whether the United States should surrender territory which belonged to them to the British Empire. Amusingly, the papers in Canada were at the same time discussing the question whether the British Empire should take Russian territory away from Russia, and both parties were talking about Wrangel Island. Most of the Canadian editors evidently based their idea of Russian ownership on the Moscow declarations to that effect, but a few apparently took it from the Mercator’s charts on their walls. To one as unlearned in west-European history as these men were in the history of Russia, it might seem reasonable to glance at the map and conclude that England belonged to France.

When you are trying to lead a nation to a change of policy nothing is more important than the attitude of the press. Through my fortunate and most valuable friendship with Sir Michael Sadler, I got in touch with the London Times and the Manchester Guardian. For years I had been a great admirer and constant reader of the Guardian and I had in part, therefore, the necessary

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background for the delightful day I spent with its owner and editor, C. P. Scott, whose personality intensified the impression which the Guardian had made. Since this paper is mainly concerned with social and political movements and with the cause of truth and progress along those lines, it is probable that my visit to Manchester was really important in turning the attention of Mr. Scott and his editors to the study of a geographic field they had not previously cultivated and where their ideas had been only those of the average educated person.

Equally pleasant and profitable were my dealings with the managing director of the Times, Sir Campbell Stuart, and its editor, Mr. Geoffrey Dawson. When things became difficult later in the summer the support of the Times was invaluable. They would have come out openly sooner except that it seemed to Mr. Dawson that a press campaign would probably do more harm than good at a stage when the Government appeared to be favorably inclined.

It was perhaps only logical that the British Empire League should be interested in Wrangel Island, but the enthusiastic support of its secretary, Mr. Evelyn Wrench, went far beyond official routine. One of the most valuable things he did was to bring me in touch with Mr. St. Loe Strachey, and Mr. J. B. Atkins of the Spectator. It was through the Spectator that I was able to publish for the first time in England a comprehensive if brief history of Wrangel Island. Since the Spectator is read by practically all the influential people in Great Britain, this really amounted to submitting to the men who controlled the Empire the facts on the basis of which they could make up their minds independently as to whether

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the issue was an important one and what should be done about it.

There were other journalists who were personally friendly, but were unable to give us any support because of their views on domestic and foreign politics. For instance, Mr. J. L. Garvin, the editor of the Observer appeared to me to believed that the Empire was already too large and that no riches or possible advantages of Wrangel Island would be any argument for retaining it in the Empire. I am still of the opinion that if Mr. Garvin had gone farther into the subject he might have seen that Wrangel Island was an exception to his general rule, even assuming the rule to be valid. Until the Empire is much contracted, it needs half-way stepping stones in every ocean to connect the various dominions, and Mr. Garvin might have recognized Wrangel as an important way station of the future. However, in practice he observed a sort of benevolent neutrality and did help a good deal indirectly by publishing articles on transpolar commerce by air, emphasizing the epochal possibilities of the transarctic flight of the United States Navy dirigible Shenandoah which had just then been announced. Anyone who already had Wrangel Island in mind would inevitably see in it added value if he only grasped the general effect of Admiral Moffett’s plans.

However, I am afraid I did not make full use of my opportunities to influence the press, for I was so occupied with other things.

I had at first supposed my mission to be to the Colonial Office and that a decision would soon be arrived at by them. I next learned that the question would have to be decided by the Foreign Office; in another month I was told that it was too important for the

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Foreign Office and would go before the Cabinet. My experience with the British Cabinet in 1923 began to be in a sense a repetition of my experience with the Canadian Cabinet in 1922. Everyone seemed friendly, but the difficulty was in arriving at a decision. I had been ignorant of the causes of delay at Ottawa, but in London it was impossible not to know and still more impossible not to sympathize. The nation and the Government were facing momentous decisions. At home there was political unrest; abroad there were pressing issues with Russia, Germany and France. Even Italy, Turkey and lesser countries contributed their share of worries. There was unemployment, business was stagnant, and the failures of large commercial concerns were reported in the papers every day, especially from the textile districts.

One would have to be ignorant of the way in which geography affects history not to be profoundly worried by the closing of a textile mill in Lancashire or Yorkshire. Britain is an isolated island and it is only the enterprise and ambition of her citizens that have enabled her to be the spinning center of the world. Success in building up these giant industries had been the reward of inventive genius and of a consistent program of expansion and development carried out a few years sooner than anyone thought of trying similar things in other countries. Not being based upon any geographic condition, except perhaps on the climate of Britain which makes energy and ambition the second nature of anyone who breathes her air, this textile supremacy had to be maintained unbroken. Once let it collapse and there could be no rising from the ruins.

In the United States the cotton mills are being moved

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from Massachusetts to the Carolinas, but without any national calamity, for the movement is within the borders of the United States. The capitalists and managers are the same and even the laborers can move without much inconvenience from their old cottages in New England to new cottages made ready for them in the South by their old employers. But when an English paper reported that simultaneously with the closing of a mill in Lancashire, a new one as large and better equipped had been opened in Czecho-Slovakia, the implication was a wholly different one. I could easily understand that a government worried with such problems had difficulty in concentrating its attention on arctic developments which even I, their advocate, admitted to be decades in the future. With more than a million unemployed at home receiving doles from the Government to enable them to live, and with famine in neighboring European countries intimately known to Englishmen through travel and daily exchange of news, it was difficult to get anyone to concern himself about whether four young men might die on an arctic island in case no ship could be sent to them to end their second year of isolation.

I know there were several members of the Cabinet personally concerned about the Wrangel Island situation, but I suppose it to have been chiefly due to the urging of the heads of the Admiralty and the Air Ministry that the question finally came up. I never received a written communication about what took place at the Cabinet discussion, but I was given to understand that half a dozen or more of the Ministers expressed themselves in sympathy with my views and with the Wrangel Island undertaking, and that no one spoke in dissent. The general sense of the discussion was that the things which I had

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done and was doing were the very best possible and that it was desirable to continue the occupation through private effort until the Government had more leisure to consider the case and especially to consult with the Prime Minister of Canada who was expected to arrive about the end of September to take part in the Imperial Conference of Prime Ministers.

On learning this decision I said to Colonel Amery that I agreed with it exactly and that I would never have come to the Governments of either Canada or Great Britain for help if it had not been that the enterprise had proved beyond my financial resources. For a rich man I could conceive of nothing more agreeable than to support such an undertaking as that of Wrangel Island unostentatiously through a period of years against the time when the world should realize his foresight and the great value of it to the public. But I was poor and beyond my depth. I had spent on the organization of the expedition itself all the money I had saved up to that time, and since then its running expenses had absorbed most of what I could earn. I had already borrowed on every security I had and also from friends without security. Colonel Amery said at once that he understood all this, and that he would do his best to find some private person who had the necessary vision and could afford to finance our work. I have abundant evidence that he tried hard. He himself and several of his friends eventually subscribed, but the money which actually sent the ship to Wrangel Island came in another way.

No man in England was in such close touch with what I was trying to do as an old friend, Mr. Griffith Brewer. I had not been saying much to him about my worries lately, for I knew his kindness of heart and feared it

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would hurt him to have to remind me that he did not have the money needed for sending the necessary relief ship. But the last week of July he came to me and asked outright whether I did not think that the season was getting dangerously late and that it was becoming a matter of life and death to send a ship within a week or so. When I agreed and stated further my doubt that I could get any help from the Government quickly enough, Mr. Brewer said he would pledge his property at a bank and get the necessary money to cable to Alaska immediately as an advance against subscriptions, which he felt sure he could secure if I would authorize him to make a public appeal for funds through the Times. I at once consulted the Editor of the Times, Mr. Geoffrey Dawson. When I found him willing to carry the appeal, Mr. Brewer arranged for borrowing the money, assuming the risk of getting it returned to him if and when the subscriptions came in. The amount he eventually advanced was more than $10,000.about £ 2,500.

Meantime I had been making certain preparations, banking on the hope that the money would come from somewhere before it was too late. When it came I would charter a ship in Nome. I had been negotiating for that by cable, as last year, through my friends, the Lomen family. I found that there was available the schooner Donaldson, owned by an old friend, Alexander Allan. Indeed, Allan had once been connected for a year with one of my expeditions, co-operating with us through the services of the schooner which he then owned, El Sueno.³⁴ Like Captain Bernard the year before, Captain Allan was willing to go for a very reasonable minimum fee in case of failure, with a larger payment if successful.the amount doubled for success.

³⁴ See index of “The Friendly Arctic” under Allan, Alexander.

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It is usually possible in Nome to engage any one of ten or twenty men who would be capable of taking charge of such a schooner for a voyage to Wrangel Island. But there was in New York the young man already referred to, Mr. Harold Noice, who had been a member of my 1913-18 expedition. He had now been in “civilization” over a year. Like most men who have been in the Arctic, he was getting tired of “civilization” and for that and other reasons he was anxious to go North. Thinking to give him a chance to do so, and considering him sufficiently qualified by experience, I had spoken to him before I left for England about whether he would like to be in charge of the Wrangel Island ship in case I got the money. He said he would be eager to do this. The understanding was that when he reached Wrangel Island he would discuss the situation with the party of occupation. If all the party wanted to come out, then Mr. Noice would take charge in their place, or if before leaving Alaska he decided he did not want to stay in Wrangel himself, he was to employ and take with him some one to put in charge. But if one or more of the original party desired to remain, he would bring out the others, leaving on the island, under the command of the senior officer remaining, a small party of Alaska Eskimos which we intended to take in.