9/16/2005:
Vilhjalmur Stefansson was one of the most noted and famous explorers of the Arctic, mounting expeditions into uncharted territories for years at a time. Although born in Canada, Stefansson grew up in Mountain, ND, and attended college at UND for a time. After several earlier explorations, Stefansson was chief of the Canadian Arctic Expedition that boarded a whaling ship called the Karluk. In June 1913, they set sail from Victoria, British Columbia, toward the Arctic.
Six weeks later, the ship got frozen into the ice. After five weeks, they began to run low on food, so Stefansson took a dog sled, his photographer and two Inuit hunters out to find some caribou. That was the last time he was seen by those left behind. In the years since, the controversy over what happened has left a shadow hanging over Stefansson’s long and otherwise illustrious career.
Although the Karluk was unable to move, the ice below it steadily drifted hundreds and hundreds of miles. Suddenly, on January 11th, the ice heaved and crushed the Karluk. Among the 25 survivors were scientists, crewmembers and several Inuits. One was a woman named Qiruk, who had along her daughters: 8-year-old Pagnusuk and 3-year-old Mugpi. Also surviving were 29 sled dogs and a black house cat.
Captain Bartlett was a Newfoundland sealer who five years earlier helped guide Robert Peary’s North Pole expedition. Bartlett knew they had to get to solid ground if they were to survive, and under round-the-clock darkness, he led his rag-tag group toward Wrangel Island, hundreds of miles away. Eight men died on the journey. Those who made it to the island lived on pemmican and biscuits while Bartlett, with one Inuit man and a dogsled, continued on to Siberia for help.
Some nine months later, a small whaling schooner found a pitiful handful of Karluk survivors suffering from starvation, snow blindness, exposure and even amputations. Two had died from malnutrition, and another died from a mysterious gunshot wound – bringing the death toll to 11.
Survivor William McKinlay later said, “Not all the horrors of the Western Front, not the rubble of Arras, nor the hell of Ypres, nor all the mud of Flanders leading to Passchendaele, could blot out the memories of that year in the Arctic.”
Blame was aimed at Stefansson, citing poor planning. Of his distinguished group of international scientists, only two had significant polar experience, and the majority of crewmembers were inexperienced boys looking for adventure. There was no survival training, and the parkas provided to everybody were second-hand, diseased and too thin for the brutal weather conditions. Chief engineer John Munro said buying the 29-year-old Karluk was one of Stefansson’s biggest mistakes, saying its engine was no better than “an old coffee pot.”
Missing from the conversation was Stefansson’s need to stretch the very limited budget provided to the expedition.
Meanwhile, after one and half years with no word of Stefansson, he was presumed dead. Then, on this date in 1915, a power schooner called Ruby arrived in Nome with dispatches from him to the Canadian government. He was wintering at Bank Island and had managed to get a new power schooner for continuing his explorations. The Bismarck Tribune reported, “He seems to have been quite unaware of the anxiety his long silence aroused.”
Stefansson remained in the Arctic three more years, discovering Canada’s last unknown islands. When confronted with the Karluk controversy, he always maintained he did as he told the people aboard the Karluk he would – he went hunting and came back. But the ship had by then drifted away and disappeared.
Stefansson would later become an advisor the to Allied Forces during WWII on Arctic Survival and also to Pan American World Airways during their planning of Arctic routes.
Source: Cook, Maria. The Ottawa Citizen. 31 Dec 2000.
Bismarck Tribune. 1 Sep 1915; 2 Sep 1915; 18 Sep 1915.
Oakland Tribune. 17 Sep 1915.
Dakota Datebook written by Merry Helm