OFF FOR WRANGELL ISLAND
From time to time there came rumors of how close the season was and how
much ice there was about the coast. This was disquieting. I had told
the captains of the vessels that from time to time left Nome for the
northern waters, walrus-hunting or trading, about the men on Wrangell
Island and had asked them, if they got anywhere near the island, to
take a look around. By the first week in July I began to get more and
more uneasy and anxious to get started. The _Bear_ had been in the
north and reported on her return that the ice was heavy and still
closely packed, and the walrus-hunter _Kit_ came back from north of
Bering Strait with the same story. Such news was not at all reassuring,
though I knew that the ice could be broken up in a few hours’ time just
as it could form in an equally short interval. The tenth of August, I
reckoned, should see us at Wrangell Island; the men would not really be
expecting me much before that time.
The _Bear_ finally got away, with me on board, on July 13. She had a
number of calls to make on her way north, for in addition to being
the mail-boat, she had to bring help to the needy, act as a kind of
travelling law-court, carry school-teachers and missionaries around
from place to place and make herself generally useful. It was a great
relief to me to be really doing something at last, after so many
weeks of inaction. My thoughts were constantly on the castaways and I
wondered how things had been going with them since the middle of March.
We had a pleasant ship’s company. I slept in the captain’s cabin.
On the port side in a hammock was the Reverend Doctor Hoar, who was
accompanying us as far as his mission station at Point Hope. In another
hammock was Mr. Shields, the Alaskan Superintendent of Education, an
able young man who has done wonders with the means at his disposal to
foster the spirit of thrift among the Eskimo in their reindeer-herding.
He knows every nook and cranny from Nome to Point Barrow and has won
the respect and admiration of the Eskimo everywhere. On the starboard
side were Hershey and E. Swift Train, who was taking motion-pictures
and gathering material for the use of schools.
Just across the way was the wardroom and a finer set of men than the
officers of the _Bear_ I never met. They had the latchstring always
out. I was privileged to visit the chart-room at any time and had the
rare opportunity of learning from Lieutenant Dempwolf, the navigating
officer, much about Alaskan and Siberian waters. It was fine to feel
a good ship like the _Bear_ under one and worth while seeing others
navigate. A lot of merchant-marine men would be greatly benefited by a
trip on a revenue-cutter.
Our first stop was Reindeer Station at St. Lawrence Island. Then we
went to other stations on St. Lawrence Island, with supplies for the
schools there, and then on to St. Lawrence Bay on the Siberian coast,
to Lütke Island. From there we went to Emma Town and picked up Lord
Percy, who had been collecting birds at Lütke Island and had come up
with a native in a skin-boat. At Emma Town I again met the Mr. Caraieff
who had taken me to Emma Harbor; his brother had gone to Vladivostock.
Here I paid the money I owed. Some of the dogs I had left were still
here but only two of them were any good; the others were still not
rested enough to be of use. They were offered me again but I told my
kind friends to keep them if they could get any good out of them. When
I had been there before the snow had been piled high over everything.
How different it all looked on this beautiful July afternoon! When Lord
Percy had picked up his things at Emma Town we steamed along the coast
to East Cape, and then to Ugelen, near by. From here we went across to
Teller, on the Alaskan coast, and visited various settlements.
At Reindeer Station, at Port Clarence, I met again the Reverend Mr.
Brevick, the missionary in charge, whom I had met the previous year
when we were there in the _Karluk_; he again treated me royally.
We waited here while Mr. Shields and Lieutenant Dempwolf, in the
steam-launch, visited some of the settlements farther up the bay.
It was while we were in Kotzebue Sound on August 4 that we heard over
the wireless that war had been declared between Germany and France and
then between Germany and England. It may be imagined what an effect
such an amazing piece of news, coming to us in such a detached way in
so remote a corner of the world, had upon us; at first, of course, we
had difficulty in believing it, but there seemed to be no doubt of
its accuracy, so Lord Percy, who was an officer in the British army,
left us to get back to England as soon as possible. I have heard from
him since of his life in the trenches. He is one of the many men of
the “nobility and gentry” who have uncomplainingly done their duty
for their country. Mr. Shields went ashore at Kotzebue with Lord
Percy, for somewhere in the vicinity he was to establish a new Eskimo
village. We went on to Point Hope, where Doctor Hoar left us.
At Point Hope I again met Kataktovick, who had been brought over from
East Cape by Captain Pederson in the _Herman_. I paid him his wages, as
a member of the _Karluk_ expedition, and gave him a complete outfit of
clothing which the Canadian Government was providing for each man of
the party. He would have liked to go with us on the trip to Wrangell
Island, if it had been possible. He was feeling well, he said, and from
the looks of things seemed about to be married.
From Point Hope we headed for Point Barrow. Off Icy Cape we met the
first ice and from there on it was a constant fight to make our way
along; evidently it was not an open season. Accompanying us were the
_King and Winge_, a walrus-hunter and trader, managed by Mr. Olaf
Swenson, and a Canadian schooner, loaded with supplies for the mounted
police at Herschel Island. The schooner had a big deckload and was
very heavy in the water. She was not sheathed and had no stem-plates,
and was evidently not at all adapted for ice work. In fact, it seemed
doubtful to me whether she ever would reach Point Barrow. The _King and
Winge_, on the other hand, was just in the right ballast for bucking
the ice; besides being small, she was short for her beam and was quick
to answer the helm.
The ice through which we were making our toilsome way was not so heavy
as it was closely packed. It was great to see the good old _Bear_
charging and recharging, twisting and turning; being heavy in the water
she was able, with her great momentum, to smash off points and corners
of the ice and make her way through it. I should have been delighted to
be in the crow’s-nest, for steering such a ship through the ice is not
unlike driving a big automobile through a crowded thoroughfare; this
time, however, I was a passenger.
Near Wainwright Inlet we found a large four-masted schooner ashore. The
_Bear_ tried in vain to get her off; she was fast aground and heavily
loaded. The only thing that could be done was to take her cargo out of
her. While we were standing by, the ice began to close in and we had to
turn round and steam south in a hurry, leaving our big line with the
schooner. When we got back again some days later she had been floated
all right.
We reached Point Barrow on the evening of the twenty-first of August.
Here I found McConnell, who had come in a small schooner from the
eastward. He told me all about what had happened to Stefansson after
the _Karluk_ had been blown offshore by the storm which began her
drift in the September of the previous year.
The party that left the _Karluk_ on September 20, 1913, as I have
related before, consisted of Stefansson, Jenness, Wilkins, McConnell
and the two Eskimo boys who had come aboard at Point Hope, Panyurak and
Asatshak. They had with them two sledges and twelve dogs and equipment
sufficient for the purpose which took them ashore, a two weeks’ caribou
hunt in the country back of Beechey Point to provide the ship’s company
with needed fresh meat for the winter, which it seemed likely would be
spent with the ship frozen in at that point. It took them, McConnell
said, two days to work their way in over the ice to one of the Jones
Islands, about six miles northwest of Beechey Point. When they finally
reached the island they found that the ice between them and the
mainland was not safe for travelling, so while they were waiting for
it to freeze more solidly, Stefansson decided to send him and Asatshak
back to the _Karluk_ for some things they wanted.
That night, however, the storm that sent us drifting off shore came up
and it was clearly not safe for them to go out on the sea-ice for the
present. At the end of the three days’ storm the sea was clear on the
outside and the ship was nowhere to be seen. Whether she was free at
last and on her way eastward towards Herschel Island or had been blown
westward into the waters north of Point Barrow they did not know. It
was impossible for them to get ashore until the twenty-eighth, when
they reached Beechey Point. They stayed in this vicinity for several
days and Stefansson did a little caribou hunting without success. The
Eskimo became alarmed because there was not a larger amount of food,
for they were civilized Eskimo and unused to living off the country,
so finally on the third of October the party started westward towards
Point Barrow. They made the march of 175 miles in nine days.
They stayed at Point Barrow for some time to procure fur clothing
and provisions for the party, as well as a sledge and a dog-team. On
November 8 they started east again. The latter part of the month they
reached Cape Halkett, where they met an experienced Eskimo hunter
named Angupkanna, otherwise called “the Stammerer,” who told them that
early in October he saw a ship in the ice off shore and through his
telescope could see her distinctly. Stefansson was sure that she was
the _Karluk_, a ship with which the Eskimo was well acquainted from
her whaling days. Angupkanna told them that he watched her for three
or four hours and then fog settled down for three days, at the end of
which time he saw her no more.
Leaving Jenness at Cape Halkett to make some ethnological studies,
Stefansson, Wilkins and McConnell went on to the east once more and
the middle of December reached Flaxman Island, where they found
Leffingwell, who had come up on the _Mary Sachs_ to finish some work
he had begun the year before. He was wintering alone, though an Eskimo
family was living not far away from him.
Leaving Leffingwell on December 14, they reached the winter quarters of
the southern party at Collinson Point, thirty miles to the eastward,
on the evening of the same day. Here they spent the winter. Stefansson
made a journey later on still farther to the east with a member of
the southern party to Herschel Island and Fort Mackenzie, to make
plans for the journey which he was to undertake in the spring over
the ice to the north of Martin Point in search of new land. In the
latter part of February McConnell made a trip to Point Barrow for the
mail, returning to Martin Point not long after Stefansson, with a
party of seven men, had started north over the ice on March 22. With
a companion McConnell overtook them the next day and they travelled
on for more than two weeks, until, on April 6 they reached the edge
of the continental shelf, discovered by Mikkelson and Leffingwell in
the _Duchess of Bedford_ expedition in 1907. At this point Stefansson
sent the supporting party back, and went on to the northward with six
dogs, a sledge and forty days’ supplies, together with two rifles and
360 rounds of ammunition. He had with him two companions, Storker
Storkerson, who had been mate of the _Duchess of Bedford_ and had
been living as a hunter and trapper at various places along the shore
since the date of the Mikkelson expedition, and Ole Anderson, another
experienced man. Stefansson intended to go on for fifteen days’ march
before turning back and hoped to do by ice travel what the _Karluk_
had been prevented from doing—to discover new land along the 141st
Meridian.[1] Stefansson had not since been heard from, McConnell said,
but there should be plenty of bear and seal for his party to subsist on
and it was likely that in any event they could make their way to Banks
Land.
[Footnote 1: Stefansson was successful in his quest for new land and,
in 1915 and 1916, reported his discoveries.]
[Illustration: THE CAMP AT RODGERS HARBOR, WRANGELL ISLAND
“Following their instructions to divide into smaller parties, for
general harmony and larger hunting areas, Mamen, Malloch and Templeman
... went down ... to Rodgers Harbor. Here they erected a tent.” _See
page 319_]
At Point Barrow, too, in the _Bear_ we found several shipwrecked crews
waiting for a chance to go south. We landed the mails and the various
other things we had brought for the station there and then, finding
that, as I have related, the schooner that we had found aground had
floated, we headed at last for Wrangell Island. I was becoming more and
more anxious to get there and hoped that meanwhile the Russian ships
or one of the walrus-hunting boats had been there and taken off the
men. It was getting late and before many weeks the ice might close in
around the island and render it inaccessible to a ship, but it was not
altogether this danger alone that worried me but also the feeling that
the longer the men were kept on the island the greater would be their
suspense and the harder it would be for them to keep up their spirits.
Of course, until some one came to rescue them they would not know
whether I had ever succeeded in reaching the Siberian coast or not.
Every day of this suspense must be telling on them and bringing them
face to face with the thought that they might have to spend another
winter on the island, an experience which would be likely to kill them
all. So altogether these days had been nightmares to me, the more so
because naturally under the circumstances I was not in a position to
do anything to hasten matters. The _Bear_ had her own work to do, of
course, and only a limited season to do it in. My feeling of relief at
being at last on the way to the goal of all my thought and effort may
be imagined.
We left on August 28, with a fresh north-north-east wind behind us, and
straightened her out for Rodgers Harbor. The harder it blew the better
I liked it, for our voyage would be so much the quicker. The only
thing I was afraid of was that we might get thick fog or snow and be
delayed indefinitely.
On the afternoon of the twenty-fourth we met the ice, large loose
pieces similar to the ice I had seen off the southern end of the island
on my way across with Kataktovick. The weather became hazy and then
we had the fog that I was fearing. All the square sails were taken in
and we slowly steamed to the northwest. At eight P.M. the engines were
stopped and the ship was headed east half south. During the afternoon
countless birds were seen, denoting the proximity of land; it seemed as
if we must soon be there. During the next day the ship worked slowly
towards the island again and at ten A.M. we met a lot more large, loose
ice. We were now between fifteen and twenty miles from the island and
if the fog had lifted should have been there in a short time and had
the men off. We had about ninety tons of coal in the bunkers. All day
long on the twenty-fifth it was thick, but we could see a mile or so
ahead and were still going along easily, just keeping the ship under
steerage-way. Finally, at eight o’clock in the evening, the engines
were stopped, the ship was hove hull to and allowed to drift. The next
day the wind had hauled to the north-northwest and sent us drifting
away from the island, towards the Siberian shore. At 4.12 A. M. on the
morning of the twenty-seventh, Captain Cochran decided to go back to
Nome for a new supply of coal. My feelings at this moment can be easily
imagined. The days that followed were days to try a man’s soul. In
fact, until the final rescue of the men, I spent such a wretched time
as I had never had in my life.
We did not return directly to Nome but called at Cape Serdze to make
an attempt to find out about a missing boat owned by Dr. Hoar, which
had broken away from Point Hope the previous fall. Mr. Wall was away.
I went ashore with Lieutenant Dempwolf and tried to find out whether
the Russian ships had been to Wrangell Island. I learned from Corrigan
that a Russian ship had passed west but that he had not seen her coming
back; it turned out that she had gone up to Koliuchin with coal and was
not one of the ice-breakers. I gave Corrigan some pipes and tobacco.
From Cape Serdze we went on to East Cape and I went ashore here to
see if I could learn anything about the Russian ice-breakers at Mr.
Caraieff’s. Mr. Carpendale told me that the report was that the
_Vaigatch_ had been within ten miles of Wrangell Island on August 4,
when she got a wireless message with news of the war and was ordered
south to Anadyr with the _Taimir_. I could only hope that when we
reached Nome, we should hear that some other ship had been to the
island and taken the men off.