The last voyage of the Karluk

by Bob Bartlett; Ralph T. Hale

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.