stefansson-wrangel-09-27-063

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when the Teddy Bear was the first craft to enter Coronation Gulf from the west
since Collinson was there in 18512 (?). The ship was good and the commander
ideal. Acting through other old friends the Lomen Brothers of Nome, I made a
bargain with Captain Bernard that he would try his best to reach Wrangell Island,
receiving a certain sum if he failed but double that amount if he succeeded.
The suggestion of doubling the amount had come from me after Bernard had sub-
mitted a tentative minimum figure. It seemed to me that the price he first suggested gave
too low a wage to one so skillful, and in any case 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
Honourable Charles Stewart, and his deputy, the Honourable 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 to a personal friend and secured it on the plea on the score of life and death. I said
to him in substance that, while we could assume the safety and comfort of every-
one on Wrangell 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
friendly 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 public British enterprise. This same 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 ser-
vice work, but the rest of my forty years I had lived in the United States. Most of
my best friends are naturally where I have lived and I could not appeal to them