stefansson-wrangel-09-20-044-001

Maurer

Copied from Seattle paper of Sept. 2 1923.

MAURER ESCAPED ICE GRIP ONCE--WAS RESCUED
BY SEATTLE MAN.

One of Victims of Wgangel Island Expedition
Gained Famr by Carrying Cat 81 Miles Across
Drifting Field.

Breaking from its frozen fetters, a drifting icefield probably carried Allan
Crawford, Frederick W. Maurer and Milton Gale of the Stefansson Wrangel Island expe-
dition to their doom in the desolate polar wastes when they attempted to cross the
ice to Siberia last winter in the opinion of Olaf Swenson, president of Olaf Swenson
& Co., of Seattle, who rescued the Karluk survivors from the same island in 1914.

Maurer was one of the men rescued from the island by Mr. Swenson. He became
nationally famous as the man who carried the Karluk's cat on a terrible two month's
journey across the ice from the wrecied ship to the island in the early part of 1914.
He went north again two years ago as a member of the advance guard of Vilhjalmur
Stefansson's commercial expedition to Wrangel island, going to the same isolated spot
where he had been marooned with the other Karluk survivors.

News of the death of all four white members of the Wrangel Island expedition,
as cabled from Nome, Alaska, caused a sensation in Seattle's Arctic colony yesterday.
Capt. Harold Noice, youthful navigator of Seattle, sailed from Nome August 3 to rescue
the survivors. After a hard voyage he reached the island August 20 only to discover
that all four white men were dead and that Ada, an Eskimo woman cook, alone survived.

"It is hard to tell what fate overtook Crawford, Maurer and Gale," said Mr.
Swenson yesterday. "They probably were carried to their doom by drifting ice. When
the Karluk survivors were marooned on Wrangel Island, Capt. Robert Bartlett, who
commanded that ship, succeeded in crossing the ice from the island to Siberia, thence
going to Nome on a trading schooner with the first news of the fate of the Karlum
expedition. That trip across the ice was a wonderful feat. Finding themselves in a
plight similar to that of the Karluk survivors, Crawford, Maurer and Gale attempted
to duplicate Captain Bartlett's feat, and went to their death."

The three men set out on their great venture in December. On the island they