stefansson-wrangel-09-25-004

Second Article on Wrangel Island

For me at least Captain Jack Haldey is the first big figure in the story of Wrangell Island. Baron Wrangell, who first searched for it as a continent (1821-24), did not find it or any other land. Kellet, who found it (1849), did not land on it nor did he know it was an island. De Long, whose voyage proved it to be an island (1879-81), saw it only from a distance. Hooper, Muir and Nelson, who first landed (1881), stayed only a few hours. Berry and his men came a few days later and remained three weeks. From them we have an approximate map of the island by the information about it in other respects is neither compregensive nor detailed. Bartlett in 1914 remained only a few days and his story of them is only a few pages with little but personal information of how the landing was made and why he had to leave his ment there while he proceeded to the mainland of Siberia. John Munro was in command of the party on the island after Bartlett left but he has given us no printed accound of what happened during the following seven months. McKinlay and Maurer both published newspaper artciled and it is possible that other members of the party may have printed fugitive pieces that have not come to my attention. The only story that approaches completeness is narrative, discussion of motives and methods, and in information about the climate and country, is a handwritten manuscripts by Jack Hadley now in the archives of the Department of the Naval Service at Ottawa.

Jack Hadley was in himself no less pleasantly unusual than his career was romantic. Of English parentage on both sides, he was born in Canterbury and told his various escapades as a choir boy in the

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Cathedral with greater relish than any of the other stories of his adventurous life. He was born with a love for music and with a voice beyond the ordinary. Apart from the Cathedral choir, he had no musical training but he had listened to operas in big cities and to native songs in every corner of the earth, and whatever her heard he could reproduce, modified by his peculiar temperament and talents. He could play a variety of wind and string instruments and usually carried an assortmrnt of them with him wherever he went.

And he went nearly everywhere. Besides sailing every sea, he had been a tramp in Australia and, I think, in Africa. He had run away from ships in tropical islands both of the East and West Indies. He had been an officier in the navy of Chile and had "fought" as a lieutenant on a chinese ship in the Chinese-Japan War. When the United States sent its first revenue cutter to arctic Herschel Island in 1889 to determine whether that central rendevous of the new whalemen's paradise was American or Canadian territory, Hadley was a minor officer on the ship. The island turned out to be well east of what had perviously been agreed upon as the international boundary. The Government of the United States, therefore, lacked the power which many wished it has to regulate the rather turbulent whaler-Eskimo metropolis, and Hadley sailed west beyond Point Barrow.

But he had seen The Arctic and it pleased Hadley beyond every country. He returned there in a year or two. The nest twenty-five years he made occasional forays to San Francisco or England but wintered in the Arctic more than twenty times, always whaling or trapping except for a brief connection with the Arctic coal mines near Cape Lisburne. No man

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whose name is found in reference books under the heading of "Polar Explorer" ever spent half that much time beyond either of the polar circles. Sir John Franklin died durind his second winter and so did Captain Scott. Shackleton spent three polar winters, Bartlett four, Nanson four. Amundsen has eight winters to his credit and so has Sverdrup. Peary spent nine winters in the Arctic. I have ten polar winters behind me now, but my record was only half that when Hadley joined our expedition in 1914.

Hadley's experiences besides being more extensive then that of any so-called explorer was also in a way more varied, for he had been there as a trader, whaler, naval officer, coal miner and (the last four years) as an explorer. He had traveled on foot and by sledge and in every variety of sea conveyance - skin-boat, wooden whaleboat, sail ship and steamer. He has hunted and trapped on the arctic lands; he has traveled on the landfast sea ice and to some extent on the moving pack. On one occation he and his party had been given up for dead when a terrific gale broke the ice on which they were whaling west of Point Barrow and carried them they knew not where, for they had no instruments of precision. When they sighted land after several weeks of struggle, it was four hundred miles from Point Barrow and about that far from where they had supposed themselves to be.

As related in "My Life With the Eskimo," I first met Hadley at Cape Smythe, near Point Barrow, in 1908, and liked and admired him from the first. When the three ships of my expedition sailed past Cape Smythe in 1913. Hadley he was there and wanted to join both because we had always been good friends and because he was beginning to consider the nort tip of Alaska a little tame and felt he needed fresher experiences.

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I wanted to give him one of the cheif positions of responsibility in the expedition but, since it had been organised before I knew he would join it, I found no berth for him at once and, without official rating, he was sharing my cabin on board the Karluk as my friend and travelling companion when an accident (see Chapter VI, "The Friendly Arctic") separated five other men and myself from the Karluk, which drifted off held fast in the shifting ice while we watched from the shore helpless. The ship was now under my official next in command, Captain Robert A.Bartlett, and Hadley remained without official status as the sole occupant of my cabin during four months and a thousand miles of drifting between August, 1913, and the end of that year. He did not, therefore, belong to the official machinery of the expedition when the Karluk broke and sauk. was crushed on January 10th, 1914, some sixty miles northeast of Wrangell Island.

I did not hear of that wreck until a year and a half later and I did not learn the full story until still another year had passed and Hadley had jointed us again after the adventured of the shipwreck, the march over shifting floes to Wrangell Island, the seven months on the Island, and the voyage to Victoria, B.C., after the party had been picked up in Wrangell Island by Swenson, Jochimson and McConnell of the King and Winge.

Hadley had a pungent and inimitable way of speaking, only a faint flavour of which remians in what he wrote. I had every form of interest in the story as he told it, sometimes in casual fragments and sometimes in long chapters when we were together between 1915 and 1918. the winters of 1915-16 and again in 1916-17 and 1917-18. I knew the ship that sank with many of my hopes and with many a book and memento treasured from childhood. I knew the gods that died pathetically the first few days, and the men who died soon thereafter partly because those dogs had not survived to help them.

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I knew the other dogs that helped the seventeen people to reach Wrangell Island and that took the Captain and his one occupanion from there to Siberia. I knew the men who died later on Wrangell Island and the men who lived through. Some that died and some that lived were dear friends, and the responsiblility for it all was mine in greater or less degree.

During the expedition there has always been at least three theories aboard the Karluk as to almost anything that we did or failed to do. James Murray and Forbes Mackay, veterans of the Antarctic, had view from Shackleton's expedition which prevailed with them and confused those whom they tried to convert. Bartlett had his opinions ideas gained under the leadership of Peary and from association with the Greenland Eskimos, who differ in many of their ideas and methods from those of Alaska, Hadley and I had ideas developed in the western Arctic, partly from association with the local Eskimos, of whom there were five aboard, a single man and a married man and his wife and two children. The scientific staff and crew were divided and perplexed by these three sets of views.

As Hadley told me the story during long winter evenings, we talked much of what should ahve been done and might have been done with condemnation, approval or regret. When he wrote the story at my request he naturally filled it with long discussions of what himself and others had argued as to whether this or that were safe or wise. It has long been the custom to publish certain historical documents only after the men concerned with them are dead. Some time Hadley's manuscript will doubtless be published as he wrote it. It will then be far more enlightening than the fragments of it which we can publish now. Even so, I feel that Hadley should be allowed to tell at least part of the story in his own words, editorial discretion imposing silences in one place and softening a phrases here and there

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in anothers

When the Karluk was about to sink, as Hadley will presently relate, there were aboard of her twenty white men, two Eskimo men, an eskimo woman and two children, who were eventually divided into three parties. Captain Bartlett led safely ashore in Wrangell Island the following: G. Breddy, firemen, Ernest F. Chafe, cabin boy, John Hadley, William Laird McKinlay, magnetician, George Mallooh, geologist, Djarne Mamen, assistant to the geologist, Frederick W. Maurer fireman, John Munro, Chief Engineer, Robert Templeman, steward, H. Williams, sailor, Robert J. Williamson, second engineer, the Eskimos Kataktovik and Kurraluk, the latter's wife Keruk, and their two little daughters Makperk and Helen. Because of a difference of opinion as to methods and plans, Captain Bartlett permitted at their own request that four men should separate themselves to go, as they intended, first to Wrangell Island and then across Siberia to Petrograd, using "Shackleton methods of travel as developed in the Antarctic." These were A. Forbed Mackey, surgeon, James Murray, oceanographer, Henri Beuchat, anthropologist, and S. Stanley Morris, sailor. Beyond the pathetic details which Hadley gives, nothing further was ever heard of them. Four men acting under the Captain's instructions were sent towards Herals Island - Alexander Anderson, first mate, Charles Barker, second mate, John Brady, sailor, and A. King, sailor. These were also never heard of again, and/beyond Hadley's reasonable conjectures, there is nothing known.

Hadley's story beging at a point about seventy-five miles northeast from Wrangell Island where the Karluk had arrived after a thousand-mile drift since she was frozen in four months before north of eastern Alaska.

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Hadley's Narrative

The evening of January 4th (1914) there was a crack like a shot that brought everybody out on deck with a startled look. We found the ice had split with a narrow crack from the ship's stem right out ahead. When we returned to the cabin there was a gret discussion started among the scientific staff. Each one had his theory about it but it seemed to be finally decided that the tides were at the bottom of the trouble. The Doctor asked me what I thought of it and I answered him that, as the wind was blowing pretty fresh from the north, I thought that might acocunt for the pressure. Whenever there was pressure during our drift there was always a dicussion about it.

The next Saturday about five A.M. all hands were awakened by a loud crashing and groaning of the ship and for a few minutes she was writhing in her ice dock as if her last hour had come. But after a while things quieted down. It happened to be blowing rather strong from the north and everybody was in the alert that evening. About seven P.M. we got a strong squeesing which seemed to lift the ship several inches. Fifteen minutes later there was a loud cracking of timbers, she heeled to starboard several degrees, and water commenced to pour into the engine room. A few minutes later the Captain gave orders to abandon the ship.

The only food that was taken out of the ship at this time was [pemmican]. The Captain detailed me to look out for all the bags of clothing that were in Mr. Stefansson's cabin, and also the rifles, ammunition, etc. We took also a twelve-gauge shotgun, but the ammunition that was passed out of the ship with this shotgun wwas all sixteen-gauage loaded shells and the mistake was not discovered until too late.

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After the pemmican and other stuff was on the ice, the Captain ordered me to take the two Eskimos and build two large houses. The walls were made of boxes of bread and sacks of coal reinforced with snow and covered with the ship's sail that had been placed on the ice several weeks before. We lived in these houses very comfortably until Shipwreck Camp was deserted several weeks later.

During this time a blizzard was blowing from the north. As fast as anything was placed on the ice it was covered with the drifting snow. I put an extra case of .30-30 ammunition on the ice, as the two natives had each a .30-30. Later these cases of ammunition could not be found nor yet a case of 6¹/₂mm. (Mannlicher) ammunition.

There was plenty of time to save everything we wanted from the ship, for she was held tight in the ice all that night and till mid-afternoon, A few minutes after three-theirty P.M. the ship when she began to go down by the head until she was almost perpendicular. Then she suddenly straightened out on a level keel and slowly sank with the Union Jack flying. The depth of water was thrity fathoms.

For several days after this all hands were engaged getting ready for the trip ashore, fixing up boots and socks and sleeping gear, making these the best they could out of deerskins. About the middle of January the Captain sent three sled-loads of provisions and all the dogs (over twenty) with the first and second officers and two sailors with orders to go to Wrangell Island and form a base and build a house to be ready for the ship's company whenever they should arrive.

I think it was sixteen or seventeen days before the teams returned. During that interval the Captain had a line of depots made at distance of one, two, three and four days' travel towards Wrangell Island from Shipwreck Camp. These contained food and oil. He asked me

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what I thought of his doing this and I told him we would never find them, or at least the chances were we woudn't, as the ice was on the move all the time.

I forget who went on the first trip but on the second one were Mallooh and Munro and they had a mishap. It was before they had cached their loads. They started across a patch of young ice and got about ten feet from the strong ice when their sled broke through and what they didn't lose they got wet, with themselves in the bargain. So they dumped their load and started back to Shipwreck Camp, but night ivertook them before they reached it, as they were about thirty or forty miles away when they broke through. When they camped, they had a very pleasant night of it by their own account. I forget whether they lost their primus stove or not, but if they didn't it would not burn, as everything was frozen up. They had to stand up all night and move around to keep from freezing, waiting for daylight, which in the early part of January was quite a long wait. The next day they got to us more dead than alive. I forget who it was made the next trip - the last. I was busy making sledges, so I made no trips.

I think it was February 4th or 5th that we heard dogs howling several miles from camp. Some of the men went out to look and shortly after the sleds returned to camp with the news that they had left the Mate's party on the ice with about three miles of open water between them and Herald Island. They had one sled, three seld-loads of provisions and no dogs. The I feet of one of the four were badly frozen already. I thought this a bad position for the Mate's party to be in, for if he ice started to crush, which in all probability it would do, it was all off with his outfit. They might save themselves but they wouldn't save much of their gear.

[After describing how, through difference if opinions as

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to methods between Captain Bartlett and the surgeon, Dr. Mackay, it was decided that the dissenters should be allowed to separate from the main party, Hadley goes on:]

There was great excitement in camp that evening. The Doctor's party were planning to start out on their own account. The next day they got ready and packed their sled with fifty days' rations for four men. The Captain told them they could have anything they wanted (except dogs - these would all remian with the main party).

I think it was the third morning after this that the Captain sent two or three sleds with loads of provisions to Herald Island with the intention to join the Mate's party. It was About the 10th of February the sleds returned with the news that when they arrived at Herald Island they found the ice had done considerable crushing. They could discover no sign of the Mate's party. They seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth. The search party camped about three miles from Herald Island for they could not get ashore because of water and slush ice. Next day they hunted for signs of the Mate's party but found none. During the next night the ice commenced working. The piece they were camped on was a small, solid cake, but the next morning at daylight they found they were adrift with water all around them, going to the west at a mile or two an hour. (Some similar things had probably happened to the Mate's party.) After drifting a few hours, their cake touched the peak and they were able to get off. One of their sleds collapsed, so they met the Doctor's party and found them in pretty bad shape. The sailor, Morris, had blood poisoning in one of his hands and poor Beuchat had frozen both feet from the ankles down and both hands from the wrists solid. He couldn't get his boots and stockings on

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or his mittens, and he was in a very pitiable plight. The most cheerful one seemed to be Murray. The Doctor appeared all in. They were doubletripping their stuff and Beuchat remained at the camp to look out for their things. Chafe wanted him to return to Shipwreck Camp but Beuchat would not. He knew we could not do anything for him there. The Doctor's party was never seen or heard of again, nor any trace of them found.

That evening the Captain informed me that on the 12th of the month I would leave with the two engineers, two firemen, Malloch, Chafe and one sailor. We would have two sleds and would go to Wrangell Island. The chief engineer was in command.

The next day we got everything ready. We had a lot of collapsible iron stoves for burning driftwood and I wanted to take two of them along to Wrangell Island so we could use wood for fuel. They weighed only a few pounds. The Captain did not approve of this, however, and gave us orders to burn kerosene instead of driftwood. We started with a light load and we were to replenish our loads as we went along from the depots which had been made at the Captain's orders at various intervals towards land. I should judge we had nine hundred pounds to a sled and five dogs. We had one Mannlicher rifle for each sled and three hundred rounds of ammunition for each rifle. We also had one .22 caliber rifle with five hundred rounds.

About nine o'clock February 12th the chief engineer's party started from Shipwreck Camp towards shore with me in it. We tried to follow the old trail made by the sledges when they were carrying out the supplies which had been cached. in several depots at varying distances from Shipwreck Camp along a line running towards shore. We found the trail broken by ice movement and difficult or impossible to follow. In some

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please we would come to where the trail ended abrubtly along a line of ice movement and after long search we might find it two or three miles to one side or the other. Usually it was found to the left, for the farther away from Wrangell Island the ice was faster it was drifting to the west. Our progress was pretty slow, for in addition to searching for the trail we had to chop a road through pressure ridges frequently with the pickaxes. Our reason for trying to follow the old trail was to see if we could find any of the depots. When we arrived in a locality where we thought one of the depots ought to be, we stopped for several hours or perhaps over-night to make a search. I did not expect to find any of them but we did find one which by good luck was in the middle of an old ice floe that had escaped crushing.

The second morning out I shot a small bear, but the rest of the boys would not eat it as they weren't hungry ehough yet, so I fed it to the dogs. This was better for them than the pemmican ration.

The morning when we left camp the wind was freshening from the northeast. It gradually increased to a blizzard and kept up for five or six days. In the morning of the sixth day we arrived at the pressed-up ice where the edge of the landfast floe meets the moving pack. This proved to be about forty miles from Wrangell Island. The ice was crushing and tumbling so that we just had to wait for it to stop. I picked out what I thought was a good cake for camping. I then went to have a better look at the ridge and found the ice in a frightful condition. I got on top of a small pinnacle which was not moving just then and found the ridge extended about three and a half miles through such ice as I had never before seen in my twenty-five years' knowledge of the arctic sea. Nothing could be done till the crushing stopped. I had grave fears for the Doctor's and the

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Mate's parties if they got caught in this.

We camped and waited for the ice to stop crushing. That evening about eight o’clock we were all in our blankets and I was listening to the ice groaning and vibrating when, snap! the ice cracked right across the floor of our house. We tumbled out as quickly as we could, packed the gear on the sled, hitched up the dogs and got everything ready for retreat. I found we were surrounded by lanes of water, but, as we were two or three miles from the ridge, 1 thought we wouldn’t do anything until daylight unless we had to because it was so dark you could cut it and it was impossible to see where you were going, So we walked around to keep ourselves warm until daylight. When it was light enough we started to climb back. Then the ice began to get its work in, splitting and opening up in all directions. But there was no crushing where we were. About 4 P.M. we managed to get back to the solid pack and picked a place to camp.

Nex t morning I heard more crushing. We again packed up. We moved southeast a few miles and then south and camped about two miles from the ridge. The Chief and I walked down to have a look at it and found it still crushing a bit, so we concluded to wait another day. We knew the Captain's gang would be along shortly. All hands could then pitch in and cut our way through, for we know the ridge was solidly grounded on the sea bottom and oncw inside it we would be safe. It certainly was there to stay till summer. When on our way beck from this inspection we saw the Captain coming from the north. I walked ahead to meet him and tell him how things were going.

Next morning all hands pitched in with everything they could work with. After a discussion with me the Captain decided to send me with two sleds back to Shipwreck Camp to rush some grub over the ridge ^{onto the [landfast ?] ice} and

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we could return from the beach and get it anytime.

We started next morning and arrived at Shipwreck Camp at 6 P.M. I should judge it was forty miles. Next day we loaded the sleds. It took us three days to cover on the return journey what we had made in one day coming out.

On the second day about three P.M. I was behind the team when my dogs stopped, turned in their tracks, and commenced growling, their hair standing stiff. I looked behind me and there was a bear about six feet from the sled. If the dogs hadn't smelt it I should never have known what hit me. They made a break for him and he backed off a few feet, giving me a chance to get my gun and give it to him in the head. We found him about ten feet from tip to tip, with three inches of fat blubber. We made camp, for it was getting dusk.

While I was tinkering at the camp and the other boys were cooking the dogs commenced a racket. I looked up and there was a big bear alongside the sled between me and it, sitting on his haunches and making passes at the dogs. I ran around the sled and got my rifle, which was about four feet from the bear. We were not needing any bear meat, so I tried to frighten him off, but he was too scared of the dogs to pay any attention to me. I did not want him to kill any of the dogs, and finally had to shoot him. As I shot I heard another growling match and another bear piled over a small ridge that was about ten feet from the seld. He had blood in his eye and went for the dogs as if bent on murder. I had to kill him, which closed a pretty good day so far as bears and dog feed were concerned.

About noon the next day as we were drawing near the ridge, two men came running to meet us. They were the Chief and one of the sailors, who helped us over the ridge to camp.

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The next morning Kurraluk, McKinley, Mamen and I went back for bear meat while the rest wore double-trlpping stuff towards the beach. We got ashore in Wrangell March 12th, having had a fairly good road the forty miles from the ridge. There was plenty of driftwood on the beach, which was a bgodsend to us.

The next morning the Captain sent one of the Eskimos and me out to look for the Mate’s and the Doctor’s parties but no sled tracks or other signs were to be found anywhere on Wrangell Island. Big fires were made with wet driftwood to cause smoke which they could see a long way if they were there to see it. The Captain and one of the natives started March 18th with fifty days’ rations for the men and thirty days’ for the dogs, Me learned later they had a fairly easy trip, reaching natives and traders in Siberia thirteen days after they left Wrangell Island.

Shortly after the Captain left, Mamen, Malloch and the steward went to Rodgers Harbor to live through the summer. The native went along to help them. About the end of March the native returned. On the way back he killed a female bear and two cubs. The next week the Eskimohe and I got two more bears and a small cub.

As there did not seem to be much game near the shore, the Eskimo and I went out to the edge of the landfast ice, forty miles from the coast, and made camp. Next morning bright and early we went out to the open water about three miles beyond the ridge and got five seals. For two or three days after that the sealing conditions were bad, so the native decided to go ashore with two seals and bring back a load of driftwood to burn. He took the sled we had come with and two dogs, leaving one with me to give me warning in case of the arrival of a bear. He intended to be back in four days.

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That night I slept in my sleeping-bag and the dog was fastened to the sled just outside the door. About four A.M. I was awakened by his barking, and that meant a bear. I tried to get out of my white drilling sleeping-sack but the more I stuggled the harder I stuck. Finally, when I got out to my gun I saw the bear and two small cubs disappearing over a ridge. I swore, "No more sleeping-bags for me," and for about ten days I slept on top of the bag, but no bears. Then one night it felt pretty cold and there being no bears, I got into the sleeping-bag. Of Course, the same thing happened, even to the hour of four A.M. I finally freed myself from the bag in time to get one shot as the bear was disappearing over a ridge. I then cut the dog loose to see if we could stop the bear. It had been snowing and was pretty dark and both the dog and I had several hard falls in the pursuit. The rough going did not seem to bother the bear and he got away.

The native had now been away twice as long as he said but I decided to give him four or five more days. It was blowing hard from the south, and I knew that when the wind dropped there would be open water beside the ridge, with plenty of seals. But I was beginning to worry about the native, so I set out on the fourteenth say. I got to the beach at seven A.M. and found everybody asleep. It seemed the native had loaded up with wood as he had said he would and had started for my camp when he got severely snowblind five or six miles from land and was unable to procees. After being sick there for some time he had returned ashore.

Shortly after this McKinlay left for his camp at Rodgers Harbor, where he was to stay according to the Captain's orders. He was gone several days and came back with the news that Malloch had died and that Mamen was sick and swelling up, which most of them were doing at out camp, see, He said Mamen could not eat their [pemmican] and had asked him to go to

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Skeleton Island, some twenty or thirty miles from our camp, to get him a tin of another kind of pemmican. McKinlay had tried to do this and had got lost to the extent of not finding Skeleton Island, whereupon he had continues along the land until he came to our camp. He was snowblind and played out, so he got the Chief and one of the firemen to return to Rodgers Harbor to look after [Namen], as Templeman was unable to do it.

From now on the seals began to come out of their holes to sun themselves on the ice and the native and I occasionally got one. which was a change from the pemricas. Birds would fly over us in flocks but we rarely got one of them on the wing with out rifles. It was then we felt not having the shotgun.

The second of June McKinlay, the Eskimo family and I left for Cape Waring where I know of a crowbill rookery. McKinlay was to take back the sleds and team of three dogs to fetch the rest, who were all sick. Before we arrived at Cape Waring we were met by the Chief and the fireman from Rodgers Harbor with the news that when they arrived [Namen] had died and the steward was nearly out of his head with the two dead men beside him in the tent. hey had come back to get their effects and return to the harbor.

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[Hadley noted in Wrangel Island that the swelling and other symptoms of illness developed most rapidly with those men who ate the most pemmican, and in consequence the least seal or bear meat. The situation was not thoroughly understood at the time even by Hadley, and his own escape and that of the Eskimos was not due to a thorough understanding but merely to the general notion that fresh food was better than "canned stuff.” Also it was a matter of taste. The Eskimos and Hadley preferred the fresh meat, and McKinlay seems to have fallen into their tastes early, which kept him freer than any of the others from the symptoms of the disease - wholly free, I believe. Hadley and the Eskimos were entirely free of every symptom of nephritis.]

We found [Hadley continues] millions of ducks and gulls at Cape Waring. We immediately went to the rookery, a matter of three miles from camp, but there was not a crowbill in sight though there were plenty of gulls. I shot twelve gulls, one for each of the party, and then returned to camp where McKinlay was waiting for me to return with the team to fetch the sick. I put one gull for each of them on the sled and he started back. The native caught a seal during the day, which put us on Easy Street for the time. Next day McKinlay returned from our old camp with the rest and I thought a few days' feeding on ducks and duck soup would bring them around all right. They were swelling up more and more all the time, I put this down partly to the fact that they lay too much in their houses, never going out. When they made tea they would dig snow from the side of the house for the water

We got ducks and seals most every day and leater three ugrugs (bearded seals) and one small walrus. Eventually I told the native to build

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a small umiak so that when the ice left the beach we could go after walrus, he and I. But he thought a kayak (one-man skin hunting boat) would be better so he built one, covering it with sealskins. Later we wished we had an umiak instead, for when we had nothing to do and could get no more ducks we oould see walrus drifting by offshore by the hundreds sleeping on the ice cakes. The Eskimo was too scared to go after them in the kayak, for he was always used to hunting them from an umiak. With an umiak there is no trouble about getting meat. We had not tried to save or bring ashore the big umiak on the Karluk. It was the intention to let her sink with the ship, but after the Karluk sank she was floating around in the water and I had got permission from the Captain to cut out of her a few pieces of leather for boot soles These proved very useful later in Wrangell Island, but If we had brought it with us the boat itselfwe would have had no trouble in killing walrus enough to support us for years on Wrangel Island.

About this time I made a ladder from driftwood to get eggs from the cliff, but after I packed it over to the rookery I found it about twenty feet too short and could get only twenty-five eggs. Later I made another which was about the right length and McKinlay, the Eskimo and I took it over and tried to raise it, but it was too heavy for us and we had to abandon the idea. Tens of thousands of eggs and we could not get one of them! I used the short ladder in every place that I could and got small lots of fifteen and twenty and twenty-five eggs.

July third the wind turned to the southwest, blowing strong, and the ice went off from the beach^{and disappeared.}, ending our sealing and duck shooting. The ammunition was getting low and we could not afford to shoot small game, so we got a net that we had been using for fish, though we never got any, and brought it out to use as a ^bird seine. The first cast we got about

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fifty moulting birds and in all we got about five hundred, so our hungry days were temporarily over.

The first part of September the new ice was strong enough for us to go three miles from shore, where we saw several bear tracks, and several seals but no walrus close enough to shoot. As the season was getting late and no ship had appeared, we thought we were in for another winter and would have to be careful of our cartridges. I had about fourtyfive and the native around fifty, so we decided we ought not to shoot anything but bears and walrus unless we were pinched.

The sixth of September the weather was fine and the Eskimo and I went out on the floe, as our ducks were getting low, and I was lucky enought to get two seals. When we came ashore in the evening we got the welcome news that the Eskimo woman had caught about fifty pounds of tomeod, the first we had seen, so we went to sleep quite happy with great expectations for the narrow.

Next morning we fished for a while with poor luck and then all hands went back to the tent. About ten o' clock the Eskimo went outdoors. A few minutes afterwards he sang out, "I think I see a ship!" I jumped up and there, sure enough, was a schooner coming along the island about twelve miles off. I told the native to runout to the edge of the ice and attract their attention and he was off like the wind. Shortly afterwards she headed in for the floe where she finally tied up, and our troubles were over. A gang of men climbed over the bow and headed for the beach.

It proved to be the King and Winge of Seattle, owned by Mr. Swenson, who was on board. They had along a moving picture man with his machine and he marshaled us up and down for about ten minutes, taking films of us. When that was finished we went on board where we had a bath, a suit

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of clothes throughout, and a good fill of good grub. Then we and started for Nome where we arrived September 13, 1914. (signed) John Hadley.

We have been telling the story from Hadley's manuscript, but nearly every impression I have of Wrangell Island and the adventures and trials of Hadley and his companions is from the stories he told me during the long winter evenings, sometimes with exessive elaboration but more often in brief, disjoint sentences that would have been incomprehensible to a listener not thoroughly familiar with the whole background of polar environment, sailor ethics, and human nature as it manifests itself in remote isolation under circumstances different from the ordinary routine of sailor life.

Without a trace of callousness but with a recognition of the inevitable, Hadley believed that a second winter on Wrangell Island would have meant the death of all those not active and self supporting. This was not so much because the productive hunters would have refused to share what they got with the others, but rather because he believed both food and activity to be necessary for health. It seemed to me that the lives of the whole party were saved by the King and Winge but Hadley always maintained stoutly that himself, the Eskimos and probably two or three of the white men would have lived through the winter and through any number of successive winters. He believed also that these same people could have corssed to the mainland of Siberia, a hundred miles away, after the middle of the winter, and he said they would have done so except for the possibility that some

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sick people might have been still living at that time to hold them back.

Hadley considered that the entire party from the Karluk could have "had a picnic" on Wrangell Island for one or several years if the following things had been done; The big Eskimo walrus hunting boat (umiak) which had been placed on board the Karluk for such an emergency, should have been brought ashore after the shipwreck. Doing this would have necessitated throwing away perhaps a thousand pounds of provisions and petroleum. This Hadley considered would have been of no consequence, for the petroleum was unnecessary in any case as there was abundant driftwood for fuel on Wrangell Island, and the food thrown away would have been negligible because unlimited quantities of walrus meat and fat could have been secured with the skin-boat. The hunting, or at least the use of ammunition, should have been confined to only a few of the party who either knew already how to use rifles or showed themselves capable of learning quickly. But as a matter of fact, thousands of rounds of ammunition were fired off by anyone who wanted to, the target in many cases being distant birds on the wing.

It has been the rule on all exploratory journeys of my various expeditions when we have been living entirely by hunting that no shot was ever fired at an animal smaller than a wolf. Thus we have been able to maintain for more than ten years an average of over a hundred pounds of meat (live weight) for every bullet fired. Hadley thought this average could have been excelled at Wrangell Island if a skin-boat had been available and if the shooting had been restricted to a few of the most capable men.

To the reader unfamiliar with polar conditions and even to those polar explorers who are used to living on provisions brought from home, the story of the Karluk party on Wrangell Island seems one of unrelieved and inevitable tragedy. Out of twenty-five persons involved eight lives had been lost during the sixty-mile journey from the shipwreck

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to the island, and three on the island itself. Nearly every venture in hunting and travel had turned out badly.

But Hadley had lived in the Arctic for a quarter of a century, taking part sometimes in the various activities necessary for self support and always associated more or less directly with natives or white people who were making their living by hunting, sealing or fishing. On the basis of what he know about the north coast of Canada and Alaska and about Victoria, Banks and other islands where we had been living by hunting for years, Hadley Insisted that Wrangell Island was by nature one of the most favorable locations in the polar regions for self support by people who knew how to avoid becoming victims of their environment, capitalizing the very conditions that to the inexperienced are handicaps and hardships. Drift logs for the building of comfortable cabins and for indefinite fuel supply are found in Wrangell Island but in none of the other islands to the north of North America. in that important respect Wrangell, therefore, excels all other islands. Hadley had never seen walrus so abundant and so easy to get (with a skin-boat); polar boars seemed morre numerous than in any locality where he had been. Walrus and polar bears are the biggest game animals in the Arctic and the easiest for the skilled hunter to secure. Seals, more elusive to even the best hunters, were abundant around Wrangell Island and obtainable, of course, on the same basis there as in any other arctic country. The island was separated from Siberia by only a hundred miles of average sea ice such as we are accustomed to travel over at about twelve miles a day. On my various expeditions I have traversed perhaps two thousand miles of similar ice, generally more mobile and dangerous. The numerous hospitable traders and reindeer-owning natives of Siberia, therefore, were near neighbors, as things look to an arctic explorer.

Hadley was constantly

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saying that his next ambition was to go back to Wranggell Island to establish himself there permanently. We talked much of his doing this with my co-operation. I was as much in love with the Arctic after eleven years as he was after twenty. In our mind’s eye we could see the northward march of civilization down the great rivers of Canada and Siberia constantly coming nearer that island-dotted Mediterranean bewteen the Old world and the New which we call the Arctic Ocean. We foresaw that air navigation by dirigibles and planes would have a special field in this new development and that the arctic islands would, therefore, acquire a positional value in addition to whatever intrinsix value they might have by reason of their mineral riches or their vegetation and animal life. I took it for certain that the first permanent transarctic air route for fast mail and for passengers in a hurry would be north from London and then south to Tokyo. This route would mean a saving of several thousand miles in distance and, in our opinion, would be preferable in some ways to any other flying route between these two great cities. It would, however, lie far from Wrangell Island and would at first sight appear to have no bearing upon its value. But we knew that for a hundred years the treeless prairies of North America had been considered worthless because they had no trees, and then the point of view had suddenly changed so that the farmers actually began to prefer the prairie to the forest. When they that change in mental attitude appeared in one part of the American continent it spread rapidly to every other part. Similarly, the success of a London to Tokyo flight would almost instantaneously change the world’s point of view with regard to the polar regions, making those lands coveted that had previously been despised, and that no matter how far they lay from the routes immediately practicable commercially.

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It was these conversations with Captain Hadley that led me to formulate the plans of the Wrangell Island Expedition that eventually sailed north. Unfortunatley, Hadley could not be in command of it, for he died in San Francisco of influenza during the great epidemic of 1918-19. Had he been the leader, the trafic story we have yet to tell would certainly have been very different and probably very far from [].