stefansson-wrangel-09-27-050

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ahead of any Japanese or other occupation anyone else that year and obviously the first landing party since our own
men had left there in 1914. Apparently the first thing they did after landing was
to scramble up a hillside, erect a flagpole, hoist the Union Jack and read
ceremonially the following: proclamation a photograph of which is reproduced
herewith.

Proclamation, Know all men by these presents that I, Allan
Rudyard Crawford, a native of Canada and a British subject, and those men whose
names appear below, members of the Wrangell Island detachment of the Stefansson
Arctic Expedition of 1921, on the advice and counsel of Vilhjalmur Stefansson, a
British subject, have this day, in consideration of lapses of foreign claims and
occupancy from March 12, 1914, to September 7,1914, of this island by the survivors
of the brigantine Karluk, Captain R. A. Bartlett, commanding, the property of the
government of Canada, chartered to operate in the Canadian Arctic expedition of
1913-1918, of which survivors Chief Engineer Munro, a native of Scotland and a
British subject, and raised the British flag, declared this land, known as
Wrangell Island, to be the just possession of His Majesty King George of Great
Britain and Ireland, the dominions beyond the seas, Emperor of India, etc., and
a part of the British Empire.

"Signed and deposited in this monument this sixteenth day of
September, in the year of our Lord on thousand nine hundred and twenty-one.

(Signed) Allan Crawford, commander
E. Lorne Khight, second-in-command
Milton Galle
F. L. Maurer

Wrangell Island, Sept. 16, 1921
"God save the King."

When this the proclamation got to me through the mails several weeks
later I took it as a rather inconsequential detail of a successful enterprise.
But it had started a ferment in Alaska which was to bring far-reaching develop-
ments. Until the flag rarsing of the flag and the issuing of the proclamation, it does