stefansson-wrangel-09-25-006-037

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Island and that the boys might be sitting on the highest hilltops watching
day after day and hoping for a ship that never came. I thought that under
such conditions they might feel heartbroken through a neglect which they
could not understand. As long as the ship did not sail from Alaska I was,
therefore, hoping that a blockade of ice would shift the blame from us who
were careless or remiss. That seems to have been actually the case. Up to
September 18th there is no mention in Knight's diaryof the expectation of a
ship or worry because, it did not come. The [Teddy Bear] had been trying to reach
the island for three weeks but when Knight wrote "all hands have about given
up hopes for a ship this year and we intend to move west a short way soon. The
wood for two miles or more on each side of us is exhausted and it is easier to
move camp to the wood than to hwul wood all next winter a long distance to
camp."

September 20th they began making active preparations for
the second winter. "Crawford and I went to the west to the first harbor mouth
two and a half miles distant to pick a campsite for the coming winter. Wood
is quite plentiful and a great deal of it can be hauled with the dory with
little trouble before the freeze-up. "

When the ship had been given up for the year, the party
began to discuss not only the mere plans for wintering but also other plans
which concerned the general purpose of the expedition. We had agreed before
the party left that during the second winter they were to decide on the basis
of what they had learned and how they felt whether they would all remain in the
island until the second season of navigation. We had said that a ship was
certain to come the second year both because it was almost unthinkable that
an island usually xxxx so accessible as Wrangell should be blocked by ice two
years in succession, and also because the general plan which did not insist on
a ship being sent the first year made it necessary that one should go the