Prisoners of the North (14 page)

The Southern Party of experts, who often clashed with Stefansson over scientific matters (Stefansson in foreground in bowler hat)
.

Stefansson and the scientists on the cluttered deck of
Karluk,
just before it set off from Esquimalt, B.C. They had no idea what they were in for
.

The gap between the two parties—created by the scientists’ ignorance of the Arctic on one side and Stefansson’s long polar experience on the other—is illustrated by the continual concern about drinking water. The scientists were worried because the tanks aboard the
Karluk
were much too small to handle enough fresh water for an expedition of this size. But Stefansson had long ago learned from the Inuit that fresh water always forms in pools on old ice and is easily available to Arctic travellers. He could not get that across to them, even when he appealed to Bartlett, who explained that in Newfoundland there was always plenty of fresh water available on the icecaps.

At Nome there was much sorting, repacking, and reorganizing, but with the Arctic summer ending (it was now August) there was no time to tarry. Stefansson reassured the party with the words “we’ll sort it all out when we get to Herschel.” But the
Karluk
would never reach that island, and its struggles with the ice pack would touch off one of the great Arctic tragedies of that time.

The
Karluk
rounded Point Barrow and moved eastward along the Arctic coast, leaving the Southern Party’s
Alaska
behind as well as the
Mary Sachs
, a forty-one-ton ship carrying much of the equipment. Besides the three larger vessels, the Canadian Arctic Expedition eventually consisted of five whaleboats, two motorboats, three canoes, two dories, a dinghy, and several skin boats—a small but costly navy.

Stefansson advised Bartlett to hug the shore in order to stay in sight of land and safe from drifting ice. As Stefansson was to point out, there were two main theories of ice navigation: the bold Atlantic policy of keeping away from the land to face the ice and take one’s chances, and the cautious western Arctic policy of playing it safe, hugging the coast, and “if you don’t get there this year you may have another chance next.” Bartlett, who belonged to the Atlantic school and had never navigated in the western Arctic, followed Stefansson’s advice but became frustrated when the ship went aground several times in the shallow coastal waters. He was as bold as he was stubborn, and what had been good enough for Robert Peary, whom he worshipped, was good enough for him. Stefansson himself had been urging him forward, emphasizing the need for haste before the winter set in.

The overloaded
Karluk
forcing a path through the ice pack
.

Finally on August 12, while Stefansson was asleep, Captain Bartlett turned the
Karluk
’s prow north, hoping to find a lane of open water in the ice. That was a foolhardy decision. Soon the ship was out of sight of land and having followed one open lead north now found itself entering another that led south again. She was moving east, pushed by the shifting ice that imprisoned her. Those on board felt trapped. The white world stretched out bleakly in every direction, hazy with falling snow, and with no sign of land. By the end of August, the inactivity began to tell as it became clear to the old Arctic hands on board that there was no escape. They could now expect to be cooped up here for the winter. Even the Inuit on board were frightened.

As the moving ice continued to force the ship eastward, it became obvious that there was no chance of finding an open lead of water and nothing could be done about it. “How long will this continue?” McKinlay, the meteorologist, asked in his diary. “This … inactivity is becoming unbearable,” he wrote. “In the minds of all is the unuttered question: When will things change?” Things did not change: the snow continued; the temperature plunged.

The frustration and inactivity began to grate on Stefansson, whose desire to press forward at any cost was thwarted by the vagaries of the ice pack. The ship, which had been carried east of Point Barrow, was still some distance from Herschel Island, where presumably it would meet
Alaska
and
Mary Sachs
.

Now Stefansson realized that his hope of exploring the Beaufort Sea would have to be postponed for another year. And what if somebody else beat him to what would be his greatest discovery—Crocker Land?

He was also concerned about the need for more fresh meat, without which scurvy would incapacitate all on board, as it had on the ill-fated Franklin expedition. He felt himself helpless, unable to sleep. Day by day his restlessness increased until, on September 19, he told his crew that he intended to leave for a week or ten days to hunt in the Colville River area. The following morning he left, taking with him several dogs, two Inuit hunters, Asatsiak (“Jim”) and Pauyurak (“Jerry”), together with his secretary, Burt McConnell, the anthropologist Diamond Jenness, and the expedition’s photographer, George Wilkins, who as Sir Hubert Wilkins later explored the Antarctic by air.

This decision was to haunt Stefansson for most of his life. His detractors would attack him as a leader who left his post when he was most needed. Some, indeed, would suggest that he did it on purpose, believing that the
Karluk
was doomed. That was nonsense; there is no doubt that for the rest of his years, Stefansson bitterly regretted the move and underwent a great deal of soul-searching because of it.

To be fair, he had no reason to believe that the
Karluk
could escape the iron grip of the ice pack, and he was right to be concerned about the need for fresh meat. Despite the several rivalries that existed on board, a week or so of absence would not make much difference. Or so he thought.

But when the hunting party returned some days later, the ship had vanished, carried away to the westward by the ice after a dreadful two-day gale that tore at the pack and opened leads down which the
Karluk
was driven by the storm. Of the ship and her passengers there was no trace except a vague report that her masts had been seen in the distance twenty miles east of Fort Smyth, Alaska. Missing were twenty-two men, one Inuit woman and her children, sixteen dogs, and the ship’s cat. Of that beleaguered company, eleven would not survive the horrifying aftermath. The story of the
Karluk
is one of the bitterest of all the Arctic tales of struggle and survival. No fewer than four published books have dealt with the question of Stefansson’s judgment and the fate of those he left behind.

Stefansson leaving the
Karluk,
September 20, 1913, with a hunting party. The ship was never seen again, and the explorer was criticized for his actions
.

The loss of the ship dealt a staggering blow to the projected work of the Northern Party. All their essential equipment including the oceano-graphical tools designed to test the depth of the Beaufort Sea was gone. And there was only one Inuit woman aboard the ill-fated vessel to make and repair clothing for the entire company, “an impossible task” in McKinlay’s words. Here was further evidence of the unseemly haste and lack of organization that had marked the expedition’s planning. Surely Stefansson with his long experience of the Inuit should have known that the expedition required more than one seamstress.

Now the key persons and equipment of the Northern Party were missing, along with the ship. Nobody knew where it was in that limitless ocean, and Stefansson realized that any search would be futile. He would have to shoulder full responsibility for any mishap it suffered. He had chosen the vessel. He had been in charge when Bartlett made his fateful decision. He had left it, albeit temporarily. All that would return to haunt him. McKinlay would never forget or forgive Stefansson’s declaration, in one of his early dispatches, that the “attainment of the purposes of the expedition is more important than the bringing-back safe of the ship in which it sails.” Understandably, that attitude nettled the scientists, who could not comprehend their leader’s single-minded credo that an explorer must be prepared to risk his life for the sake of discovery. Stefansson had already flirted with disaster more than once and was prepared to flirt with it again. For the time being he remained, as usual, optimistic. He did not consider that the
Karluk
was in any great danger. If it were crushed in the ice, the people aboard could reach shore by using the skin boats that were available for that purpose. That may have been wishful thinking, but Stefansson, obsessed by the need to find new land somewhere beneath the ice of the Beaufort Sea, put aside such concerns and determined to press on.

By late November he had reached Collinson Point on the Alaskan coast, after a six-hundred-mile sledge journey from Barrow to hook up with the Southern Party and the schooners
Mary Sachs
and
Alaska
. He informed Ottawa that he would leave Jenness to study the Inuit in the Colville River area while others explored the Mackenzie Delta. Anderson demurred, pointing out that the government had ordered a study of Coronation Gulf. Stefansson was irked and highly critical of what he considered the scientists’ sloth. The Southern Party had intended to sit idle for the winter and had made “a picnic-like attempt at hunting with no success.” The gap between the lean, rugged explorer and the “soft” scientists was widening.