stefansson-wrangel-09-20-051-002

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arctic exploration they would find that there have been very few of
the famous explorers of the last hundred years who had more experience
when they sailed upon their last expeditions than either your brother
or Lorne Knight. Scott, for instance, died in the Antarctic before
the end of his second year and your brother had more than two years of
experience when he started North - more in other words than Scott had
when he died. Knight had three years of experience and had traveled
over moving ice more than any explorer living with the exception of
Storkerson and myself. Peary was the only explorer who ever traveled
more over moving ice. I am not sure exactly how old Fred and Lorne
were but my idea is they were about twenty-eight or thirty, which would
be considered about the best age for the sort of work they were doing.

Noice's reiteration that no one in the party had any
experience and that they were all young has had a very painful result
in the case of the Crawfords. From my point of view the silver lining
to the very black cloud we are under has so far been the great kindness,
sympathy and fairness of all the relatives of the boys. But now both
Mr. and Mrs. Crawford have suddenly turned violently against me, saying
it was a crime to let their boy and Milton Galle go out with two men who
were alleged to have experience but really didn't have any. Of course,
it seems absurd for them to take this point of view since they could turn
to my “Friendly Arctic" and find out from that that both Fred and Lorne
had more experience than almost any polar explorer has ever had

My chief worry about the Crawfords is that their present
point of view makes the situation harder for them to bear than it would
have been otherwise. If you read carefully the diary entries published
by Noice, omitting his sensational comments, you will see that the idea
that the boys were in great fear of starvation and were either fleeing
from the island or making a desperate effort to fetch food from Siberia
has been made up by Noice. In their own minds they had several sensible
reasons for making a trip. They thought that I might possibly be on the
coast of Siberia, and wanted to communicate with me. If I were not there,
they intended to go to Nome and send me a wireless asking further instruc-
tions. Certainly I could never say that they were wrong in what they did,
for I should probably have done exactly the same if I had been on Wrangel
Island.

Chapters XIV to SVIII of “The Friendly Arctic" show
just the conditions the boys had to meet between Wrangel Island and
Siberia and just the conditions they knew they would meet. You will
notice in the copy of Knight's last letter, which I am sending you,
that he speaks of accidents being possible in the polar regions just as
they are in civilized countries. I suppose that if asked at the time
they were starting how dangerous they thought the trip was they would have
considered it about as dangerous as flying from New York to Ohio - a journey
where accidents might easily occur but where you did not really expect them.

I am writing to Delphine suggesting that she may