stefansson-wrangel-09-21-025-001

The following cable was received in London the morning of
September 5 from Harold Noice, Commander of the "Donaldson"
supply ship which recently returned from Wrangell Island. The
telegram was relayed from Toronto. It seems to have been des-
patched from Nome by Noice August 29. The delay in transmission
is unexplained. The cable is copied below exactly as received
except that figures have been added in brackets to refer to
annotations.

ARRIVAL LAST NIGHT WEDNESDAY BLACKJACK (1) ONLY SURVIVOR
STOP BURIED KNIGHT AUGUST TWENTIETH STOP CRAWFORD GALLE MAURER
LEFT WRANGELL JANUARY TWENTYEIGHTH (2) NINETEEN TWENTYTHREE
STOP BELIEVE ENTIRE PARTY PERISHED YOU NOTIFY RELATIVES OF BOYS
AS YOU THINK BEST STOP HAVE LEFT COLONY OF TWO ESKIMO FAMILIES
TWO UNMARRIED ESKIMO MEN IN CHARGE OF WELLS (3) STOP EQUIPPED
PARTY FOR TWO YEARS SOJOURN STOP FULL GAME CONDITIONS WRANGELL
APPARENTLY EXCELLENT STOP FAILURE OF LAST EXPEDITION DUE TO
COMBINATION POOR EQUIPMENT (4) AND INEXPERIENCE (5).

Notes on the above cable:-

(1) BLACKJACK. This is Ada Blackjack, the seamstress reported
in the newspaper despatches.

(2) JANUARY 28. The newspapers originally reported January 17.
This discrepancy is of no material importance.

(3) WELLS. This man is not known to me. Noice indicates that
he is a competent white man whom he picked up in Alaska.
Presumably he has been in North-western Alaska several
years and should therefore be fairly competent.

(4) POOR EQUIPMENT. Noice's extended despatch makes it clear
that what he had chiefly in mind as "poor equipment" was
absence of skin boats suitable for securing walrus. This
lack is unexplained and incomprehensible. I gave the men
a free hand in outfitting but I mentioned to them the
imperative necessity of at least one good skin boat to
take with them from Alaska. Independently, Maurer had
frequently said to me that the chief lack of equipment
felt by himself and colleagues during their six months
stay on Wrangell in 1914 was that of a skin boat and that
he would never go there again without one. I never got
any detailed report of their equipment apart from the
invoices from shopkeepers. Since the skin boat would
have been purchased from an Eskimo, I expected no invoice
and had no doubt of their having taken one or two boats,
up to the moment of the arrival of news from Noice to
the contrary. Noice's newspaper despatch shows both abun-
dance of walrus when he got there this year and abundance
of them in 1922. With skin boats, securing walrus is so
simple that it is work rather than hunting. I think
Noice is right in assigning this as the central trouble.