stefansson-wrangel-09-15-095-001

Wrangel

Permanent Address
American Geographical Society
Broadway at 156th Street,
New York, N.Y.

Sydney Australia,
June 2, 1924.

Foreign Office
Downing Street,
Whitehall, London.

Sirs:
During the summer of 1923 I laid before you the case of
Wrangell Island. That information is already in your files or
available in the files of the Colonial, Admirality, and Air
Ministers.

As shown by the investigations of the Royal Geographical
Society (see attached copy of their impartial summary of the case)
and as shown equally, I believe, by the investigatons of the
technical men of your Department, Great Britain has a clear legal
claim to Wrangell Island, the claim of the United States being
second and that of Russian weak in comparison with theirs. No
other countries, I believe, have any claims.

I want to call your attention to the necessity for some
action on the part of the Empire since my work and that of the
Stefansson Arctic Exploration and Development Company must come
to an end. As explained to you last summer, I have already spent
all the money I had and all I could borrow and am physically
unable to go ahead. We have in the twelve Eskimos now
under command of a white man, Charles Wells. I do not have and
cannot find the money to send a supply ship to communicate with
them. I shall, therefore, be forced to try to sell our interests
in Wrangell Island (only the furs with these people may catch)
to an American company. I dislike withdrawing by no other
course is open. I am, of course, anxious to withdraw in favor of
the United States if I do withdraw since that country has the second best claim,
and since through a residence of forty years in their territories
I have their interest at heart almost as much as ours.

When the lives of the four men on Wrangell Island were
considered to be in danger in 1923, Mr. Griffith Brewer, of
33 Chancery Land, London, made me a loan of more than 2,000 pounds
sterling, which enabled us to send a ship. I am in Australia but
he is presumably in London and within easy reach. He is well