August 1913

The Chief of¹ the Expedition will be careful not to endanger the lives of the party, and while neglecting no opportunity of furthering the aim of the Government, he will bear in mind the necessity of always providing for the safe return of the party. The safety of the ship itself is not so important.

—OFFICIAL JOURNAL,
CANADIAN ARCTIC EXPEDITION 1913–1918
(NORTHERN PARTY 1914–1918)

Captain Bob Bartlett stood in the crow’s nest of the HMCS Karluk and damned the ship. She was stuck hard and fast and there was nothing he could do but narrow his eyes against the blinding white that surrounded them and survey the horizon, searching for any sign of passage through the thickening ice field.

Everyone had counted on another month of clear seas, not expecting traces of winter until September. But early on the evening of August 1, 1913, the drifting rafts of white were glimpsed just off the port bow. A few hours later, the ice was seen to starboard. In the distance, sweeping across the horizon, was a blinding band of unbroken white. Here and there, a loose floe of ice caught the sunlight and gleamed like a prism, a shimmering blue.

At first glance, Bartlett had condemned the Karluk. She was too slow and her hull was too weak. She would never have the power or strength to break through the ice they would inevitably face on their journey into the great, frozen Arctic. It was foolish to head north in such an ill-equipped, heavily loaded vessel, but expedition leader Vilhjalmur Stefansson had been impatient to be on his way.

They were going north in search of an undiscovered continent, which Stefansson wrongly suspected lay beneath the vast polar ice cap. They had set sail on June 17, 1913, a week later than planned. It was late in the season to be heading so far north, and they could do nothing but hope for clear seas and good weather.

This was to be the grandest and most elaborate Arctic expedition in history. It was also to be the most comprehensive scientific attack on the Arctic of all time, widely advertised as having the largest scientific staff ever taken on an expedition. Stefansson, the man who had dreamed it up, was well known for his unrelenting ambition and his grand ideas.

Yet the vessel Stefansson had chosen to take them north was a twenty-nine-year-old wooden whaler, which had been retired for years and which he had picked up for a bargain. At thirty-nine meters long and 251 tons, she was clearly an old ship whose day had passed. Originally built for the fishing industry in California—the word “karluk” means “fish”—the ship was not naturally equipped for ice breaking or sailing in the polar seas. In fact, before² the purchase of the ship by the naval service, she had been condemned by a naval expert who stated that he did not find her a safe ship for freight carriage, much less ice breaking.

It was no matter to Stefansson, who purchased her for the irresistibly low price of ten thousand dollars. Also, he felt he knew the ship, having sailed on her briefly in 1908 and 1909. At the H.M.C. Dockyard in Esquimalt, British Columbia, the vessel underwent the first of many overhauls to prepare her for the voyage. On March 29, a lengthy list of repairs was submitted, including a new stern post, new water tanks, new sails, and a complete overhauling of the engines. Additional work was ordered in April, and again in May.

All the crucial decisions of the expedition had been made by the time Bartlett arrived in Esquimalt in June 1913. The Karluk had undergone extensive overhauling, but he immediately ordered four thousand dollars worth of additional repairs.

Her decks were cluttered and soiled, piled high with drums of coal oil and cartons of supplies and ropes and bags and large skin boats. Large, bulky sacks of supplies had been thrown onto random boxes and tools. Underneath this wild disorganization, the ship’s wood was stained, weathered, and warped in places, and the decks creaked when the men walked about.

Below deck was just as bad. The cabins were unpainted and crowded with junk and debris from previous trips, and cockroaches swarmed everywhere. The ship stank throughout of whale oil. She was far from the powerful Arctic ice vessel many of the men had expected. As chief engineer John Munro noted, her engine was nothing but “an old coffee³ pot.”

The night before the Karluk was to sail from the Esquimalt Naval Yard, Bartlett sent a message to the deputy minister of the naval service, telling him that the ship would never be able to make the voyage. As far as he was concerned, the ship was “absolutely unsuitable to⁴ remain in winter ice.”

But there was⁵ no other vessel to replace the Karluk. She was the cheapest and the readiest ship available, and as far as Vilhjalmur Stefansson was concerned, she would do just fine.

BEFORE THE TELEGRAM from Stefansson had arrived, Captain Bartlett had been trying to raise money and interest in an Antarctic expedition. His last true adventure had been the quest for the North Pole with Admiral Robert Peary in 1909, and Bartlett was restless to head either north or south to one of the polar regions. He missed the sea, the ice, the life aboard a ship. He was a man who never felt at home on land.

He had spent the spring of 1913 with the sealing fleet off Brigus Harbor, Newfoundland. It had been an unsuccessful run. Too many ships, too few seals. And the old itch had started: he badly wanted to go exploring again. So badly, in fact, that he would continue with the Stefansson trip despite his grave doubts about the Karluk.

Robert Abram Bartlett was born into a seafaring family in 1875. His mother wanted him to become a clergyman; at the age of fifteen he headed to the Methodist College in Saint John’s, Newfoundland. He stuck it out for two years, but was utterly miserable and knew without a doubt that there was only one place where he belonged.

Bartlett was thirty-six years old when he was asked to be master of the Karluk. He had grown into a deep-chested, strongly built man with a ruddy complexion, a long, horselike face, and a distinct seaman’s lurch. He seemed taller than five feet ten inches; his reddish hair was fading and unkempt and his blue eyes had a constant twinkle, as if he was always privately laughing at something.

Everything about him was powerful—his voice, his figure, his presence. He was famous for spouting profanities, both at his crew and in everyday conversation. He was the same on the ship and off, always, unfailingly, himself.

For all his rough appearance, Bartlett had a soft spot for beauty. He loved women, although he was a confirmed bachelor, and his heart truly belonged to his mother, whom he wrote every day, no matter where he was. He also loved music, and on ships he kept Shakespeare close at hand, as well as George Palmer’s translation of the Odyssey, which he would quote from frequently. His constant companion, though, was Edward Fitzgerald’s translation of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. Its pages were now frayed, and it was held together by surgeon’s plaster to keep it from falling to pieces. That little book had gone with him on voyages to foreign ports while he was serving his years of apprenticeship to get his British master’s certificate in 1905. The book had also been with him on both his trips with Peary aboard the Roosevelt, and to Europe after Peary’s attempt at the North Pole. It had accompanied him on a hunting trip in the Arctic in 1910, and on numerous sealing trips.

From the beginning, he knew he was Stefansson’s second choice for skipper. Whaling captain C. Theodore Pedersen had been the one hired first to pilot the Karluk, engage the crew, and see to the outfitting of the ship. But Pedersen resigned at the last minute, disgusted with Stefansson’s questionable methods.

When Pedersen dropped out, it was Admiral Peary who recommended Bartlett. With a reputation as the world’s greatest living ice master, Bartlett was a good second choice, and Stefansson was lucky to have him.

Bartlett had been at the helm of the ship Roosevelt in 1909, from which Peary launched his expedition to the North Pole. Peary had let Bartlett blaze the trail, but when it had come time to make the run for the Pole, the admiral had taken Bartlett aside, thanked him for his contribution, and asked the captain to see his team back to the ship. Peary took a photograph of Bartlett, against a blast of Arctic wind, standing the farthest north of any British citizen in history. Then Bartlett turned back at eighty-eight degrees north.

Bartlett took his leave with his usual staunch good cheer and watched his commander forge on toward the coveted North Pole. “Our parting was⁶ simple. He wished me good luck, told me to be careful of the new ice, and I told him I was sure he would make it.”

Bartlett was gracious and uncomplaining, but it had been a bitter blow. For five years he had accompanied Peary on his quest for the Pole and they had never before gotten so close. Publicly, Bartlett later supported Peary’s decision to take his manservant Matthew Henson to the Pole instead of Bartlett. The captain maintained, with apparent conviction, that Henson was the only choice to have gone, because Henson was a better dog driver than Bartlett.

The captain respected Peary above all men and would stand by him in the controversy surrounding his Pole discovery, including suggestions that Peary had never reached the Pole at all, and that he had chosen the African-American Henson so that he himself could be the only white man to reach the world’s highest point. Bartlett had not been at Peary’s side to witness his true and actual attainment of the Pole, but Peary’s word was good enough for him. He was convinced the admiral had reached his goal, although today it is generally accepted that he did not.

Later, Bartlett said of him: “I thought Peary⁷ then—and I think him yet—the most wonderful man, the greatest, bravest, noblest man that ever lived.”

STEFANSSON WAS A DIFFERENT animal altogether, and Bartlett knew he could never respect him as he did Peary. Stefansson arrived three days before the Karluk was scheduled to sail, in a flurry of flashbulbs and newspaper reporters. The first thing he did, before introducing himself to his crew and staff, was to hold a five-hour conference for the benefit of the press and the public. Elegant and intense, he had a way with people. His energy was contagious, so fiercely did he believe in what he was setting out to accomplish.

Stefansson’s Nordic roots showed in his looks. He had commanding blue eyes; a high, impressive brow; and, at times, a formidable expression. He was not an imposing man or a man of great height or physical stature. To look at him, it was hard to believe he was the fierce Arctic explorer who boasted about living with the Eskimo and surviving in the Arctic wilderness. Yet he possessed extraordinary stamina, fueled by his great confidence in himself and in his work.

When he set out to organize the Canadian Arctic Expedition in the spring of 1913, thirty-three-year-old Stefansson was already famous, celebrated for his contributions to the world of anthropology and ethnology, particularly his studies of Eskimo life. He believed the Arctic was a “friendly” place where anyone with good sense could thrive. With this latest expedition, he would head into the northern regions above Canada. Stefansson was determined to be the one to discover the last, unknown continent by exploring the vast, unexplored region that lay beneath the ice between Alaska and the North Pole.

By 1913, the Northeast and Northwest Passages had long been found, and so had the Bering Strait. The Greenland ice cap had been crossed, and the North Pole was claimed for America by Peary. But the Arctic remained much of a mystery, and the majority of its highest frozen regions were still unexplored.

The American Museum of Natural History and the National Geographic Society had allotted $45,000 to the expedition. This sum was too little to carry out Stefansson’s ambitious plans, so he traveled to Ottawa in February 1913 to seek additional assistance from the Canadian government, which offered to take over the operation completely. Without consulting the⁸ American Museum, the National Geographic Society, or his partner Dr. Rudolph Martin Anderson, Stefansson accepted the offer.

By orders of the Canadian government, the goals of the expedition were expanded, and two ships instead of one were to be employed, the Karluk and the Alaska. The expedition was also divided in two—a land-based Southern Party, functioning under the leadership of Dr. Anderson and sailing aboard the Alaska, and an ocean-based Northern Party, led by Stefansson on the Karluk. The scientists of the Southern Party would pursue anthropological studies and geographical surveys in the area around Coronation Gulf and the islands off the Canadian north coast. The staff of the Northern Party would search for the undiscovered, hidden continent in the great unknown high above Canada while also undertaking geographical, oceanographical, marine biological, geological, magnetical, anthropological, and terrestrial biological exploration.

In relinquishing its obligation to back the expedition, the National Geographic Society was emphatic on one point: the exploration, as financed by the Canadian government, must begin in May or June of 1913, otherwise the Society would once again have claim over the expedition and would send them north the following year. The Canadian government did not want to lose this grand venture, nor did Stefansson want to lose their generous backing. Thus, in April of 1913, Stefansson found himself short of time. He and his men would need to leave no later than June if they were to have a chance of safely traversing the ice-covered waters and beating the brutal Arctic winter. The plan was to head up the coast of Alaska to remote Herschel Island, where both Northern and Southern Parties would reconvene to sort out equipment and staff before continuing on into the far reaches of Canada. They hoped to reach Herschel Island by early August.

The need for haste governed every preparation, from refitting the ship to hiring the crew to provisioning the Karluk with enough supplies to sustain both the Northern and Southern Parties. Stefansson even damned and dismissed the required purity tests for pemmican, that standard of all polar diets, calling them suicidal delays. The important thing, above everything else, was to make that deadline.

In an early and ambitious statement, Stefansson boasted that he would hire only British subjects for his expedition. But in the end, the scientific staff would be an international one, some of the most distinguished men in their respective fields, gathered from New Zealand, Norway, Australia, France, Canada, Denmark, the United States, and Scotland. Of these, there were only two scientists of international renown who had polar experience.

Edinburgh native James Murray was a distinguished oceanographer and had served as biologist under Ernest Shackleton. He was a stout, dignified man of forty-six, robust and graying, with a well-trimmed mustache and a crisp way of speaking. He was authoritative, brilliant, and highly respected. He was also, as one of his colleagues observed, “exceedingly over-confident⁹,” due to his experience with the Shackleton expedition.

Upon signing on with Stefansson, Murray, in turn, put his leader in touch with a comrade from the Shackleton expedition, Alister Forbes Mackay. The hiring of Mackay was actually a favor to Shackleton, who was concerned about the doctor’s reckless behavior and overindulgence in alcohol. Stefansson agreed to engage Dr. Mackay as surgeon to get him away from “the evil influences¹⁰ of civilization.”

At thirty-five, Dr. Mackay was a legend, a veteran of Antarctica, having traveled with Shackleton on his famed Nimrod expedition of 1908-1909 and having made a name for himself on the seventh continent by being one of the first three men to locate the South Magnetic Pole, as well as a member of the first party to scale Mount Erebus, the world’s southernmost volcano. In recognition of all he had accomplished on that expedition, he had been awarded the Polar Medal. They had even named an Antarctic glacier for him—Cape Mackay.

A darkly intense man, Dr. Mackay was, at times, impatient, surly, wry, and forthright. He had a mouth that wilted into a perpetual frown and the years melted away when he broke into one of his rare smiles. One of his colleagues once summed him up as a man who “looked¹¹ . . . as if he had been having a bad weekend.” And he described himself, in typical dry humor, as “a man of¹². . . striking appearance. His keen, deep-set, hazel eyes peer out from shaggy brows, at times accentuating both a brooding calm and a boyish smile.”

THEY SAILED AT SUNSET, 7:30 P.M., Tuesday, June 17. The ship was not—nor would it ever be—seaworthy, Bartlett argued, but Stefansson was unconcerned. On the evening of the second day out, the ship ran into driftwood and Bartlett ordered the engines stopped, cursing the ship up and down. On June 23, the steering gear gave out. It would break again and again. And then the engines stopped working.

Aside from Bartlett, the twenty-four men aboard ship were still high from weeks of living as the toast of Victoria, British Columbia. They had been given the keys to the city, had been celebrated and applauded for the great work they were setting out to do. As the culmination of a series of fetes, Stefansson, Bartlett, and Dr. Anderson had been the guests of honor at a special luncheon held at the impressive Empress Hotel. Dozens of dignitaries turned out to celebrate the three noted explorers.

From Esquimalt, the Karluk made her way north along the coast of Alaska, cruising through the famed Inside Passage from June 18 through June 23. The mood aboard ship was festive and frivolous as the men settled into shipboard life. While the crew worked, the scientists, for the most part, lay around deck and loafed. “And to think¹³,” one of them commented as they sprawled contentedly among the coal sacks, “that we get all this for nothing—the trip to Nome, tobacco, good grub and all the comforts of home. Not only that, but we are getting paid for all the time spent on board.”

On July 2, they had entered the Bering Sea, where they were enveloped in fog and mist. A cautious Bartlett called for half-speed ahead. They were, at least, treated to endless sunlight, as murky as it appeared through the fog. There were only two or three hours of darkness now, and the sun rose every morning around 3:00. In spite of this, the temperature dipped to thirty-eight degrees Fahrenheit, and the men felt the cold acutely. It grew colder, the farther north they traveled, and they could no longer sit out on deck at night for very long.

On July 8, they dropped anchor off the shore of Nome where the Karluk’s engine and steering gear were repaired, and she took on water, coal, and provisions. At 4:00 on the morning of July 27, the Karluk crossed the Arctic Circle. Bartlett claimed, with a twinkle in his eye, that he could feel the bump. They had passed through the Bering Strait and were now entering the vast Arctic Ocean. They celebrated that night with a bottle of wine. Even the teetotalers—Bartlett, among them—celebrated the momentous event, although they abstained from anything stronger than lime juice.

The next morning had brought a thick fog and an unsettling wind from the northwest. The wind picked up rapidly and soon the Karluk was bucking the waves and taking on water. She was in the open, vulnerable and susceptible to each blast of wind and each swell of water. Her nose had dipped dangerously from time to time, and the forecastle deck was drenched. In no time, some of the cabins were badly flooded and most of the men fell terribly ill with seasickness. Many of the scientists retreated to their bunks, where they lay groaning and praying for it to end. Even Stefansson suffered from it, and disappeared into his cabin for some time.

Now, on August 1, a month and a half after her wildly celebrated departure from Esquimalt, the Karluk circled the edge of the ice pack, nosing her way sluggishly through the thickening fields of white. This ice was permanent, the enormous, free-floating rafts a fixed part of the Arctic horizon, yet always shifting and drifting. Each September as temperatures began to drop and winds increased, the ice would inevitably merge into a solid, impenetrable force. Toward the end of the season, the ice would grow violent, crashing and raftering, floe against floe, as they crushed everything that lay in their path, sometimes pushing one another into great ridges, which were as insurmountable and as high as mountains.

The Karluk could do only seven knots when pressed, under the best of conditions, and now she struggled to hold her own power against the growing pack. When it was obvious there was no way through, Captain Bob turned the ship around and headed south, damning her once more.

THE FIRST DAY OF AUGUST was a cold one, and the air had a distinctly different feel to it now—as if winter had already arrived. The snow fell, heavily, steadily, and for the men on deck it was the first taste of Arctic chill. William Laird McKinlay, dressed in his sheepskin corduroy coat and oilskins, spent an hour on the bridge helping to steer. He wore rubber boots, but these were painfully thin and of no use against the cold. He turned inside to his cabin and traded his regular clothes for a suit of fur. At last, he felt warm.

“Snow on the¹⁴ 1st of August!” he wrote with excitement. No one could believe the earliness of the season, but the dawning of an early winter made McKinlay’s Arctic experience all the more real and thrilling. This kind of adventure was, after all, what he had come seeking.

He came from Clydebank, Scotland, a slightly impoverished, salt-of-the-earth neighborhood, inhabited by Glasgow’s sturdy middle class. In April of 1913, young schoolmaster McKinlay had finished yet another workday, instructing students in mathematics and science at Shawlands Academy. After the daily lessons, he left the sandstone walls of Shawlands for the evening and headed home to number 69 Montrose Street, where he lived with his parents, grandmother, brother, and three sisters.

He was the oldest at twenty-four, a true gentleman by nature, freshly handsome, slight and fair, standing only five feet four inches. But he had¹⁵ a great determination, a firm, tenacious spirit, and was regarded a gracious young man who didn’t give up easily and who liked getting his own way. “Wee Mac” was, as friends would later remark, a small man with an enormous personality.

Before joining the faculty of Shawlands, McKinlay had completed his course work at the University of Glasgow. While there, he¹⁶ was recommended to the founder of the Scottish Oceanographical Laboratory to help calculate and catalog the sums and figures that had been taken on board the Scotia on a 1902–1904 Antarctic expedition.

While no explorer himself, McKinlay was intrigued by polar exploration and avidly followed the exploits and accomplishments of the heroes of the day. Despite the fact that news of fatal shipwrecks and lost exploring parties was disturbingly common and that in 1913, nearly two years after they had reached the South Pole, reports were still coming in about the tragic fate of Captain Robert Falcon Scott and his team, the world was swept up in the fervor of exploration.

In 1911, explorer Fridtjof Nansen observed: “Nowhere else have¹⁷ we won our way more slowly, nowhere else has every new step caused so much trouble, so many privations and sufferings, and certainly nowhere have the resulting discoveries promised fewer material advantages.”

McKinlay, like other boys his age, had read with awe about these true-life adventure stories from his comfortable house in Clydebank. Of course, he knew the dangers of Arctic travel. He knew it hadn’t been much improved or advanced since Leif Ericksson sailed his ship from Greenland to North America a thousand years ago. He knew the ice could trap or crush a ship until it sank without a trace. He knew a man could freeze to death or be attacked by a polar bear. He knew there were no radio transmissions or air travel over that part of the world. He knew if a ship was lost, it was lost.

But on an April evening in 1913 his doorbell had rung, announcing the arrival of a telegram. William McKinlay was not in the habit of receiving telegrams. With a curious and disbelieving eye he read: WOULD YOU BE WILLING TO JOIN AN ARCTIC EXPEDITION FOR THE NEXT FOUR YEARS?

It was signed Stefansson.

It was not a name he recognized. Indeed, McKinlay had never heard of Stefansson, but on the spur of the moment, without hesitation, he made up his mind. At last, he would be an explorer.

All of McKinlay’s friends and family turned out to wish him well before he set sail for Canada from the docks of Glasgow. Just before he boarded, his local minister presented him with a Bible. Inside the flap, “Best wishes” was¹⁸ written, and the words “Psalms 121.”

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth. The Lord is thy keeper: The Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand. The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul. The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.

ON AUGUST 2, the Karluk made another pass at the ice pack, but it was hopeless. She was not built for breaking the ice, and she hovered on the edge, in what appeared to be the only remaining open water, before Bartlett turned her again to the southwest.

Everyone gathered on deck to view with great excitement the first sighting of walrus and seals. The walrus were tremendous creatures, and massed together they gave, from a distance, the impression of a large, dirty ice cake.

The men also glimpsed their first polar bear, loping five hundred yards or so away from them on the ice. Bartlett called scientist Bjarne Mamen up to the crow’s nest to get a better view of the animal. Together, they stood high above the ship and the ice, watching the magnificent creature as it lumbered along, so beautiful and unsuspecting. Mamen climbed back down to fetch Bartlett’s rifle, then crouched in one of the whale boats on deck and aimed the gun.

“Shoot now,” Bartlett¹⁹ called to him, but his first two shots were misses. The third, however, was a hit, and the bear dropped before rising to its feet and disappearing across the horizon. Mamen caught his breath from the thrill of it. His first polar bear, and although it wasn’t a kill, he had at least made a hit.

Mamen was the last of the thirteen scientists hired for the expedition and the youngest. Stefansson was the only one who thought him qualified to be there, but Mamen was desperate to be taken on. Standing six feet two inches, with broad shoulders and a boyish face, the strapping young man was a ski champion in his native Christiania, Norway. The son of Christiania’s leading funeral director, Mamen possessed all of the idealism and impatience of youth, tempered with a penetrating insight and sensitivity. But he had very little scientific experience.

He had heard about the expedition while working in the forests of Vancouver, and afterward he would not rest until he was hired. It meant he would be kept away from home for the next four years and also away from his sweetheart. They were recently engaged and Mamen loved her passionately; but he desperately wanted this job, so he fought for it. Unfortunately, his meager experience consisted only of a summer of photo topography on the Danish Spitzbergen Expedition. At the prospect of hiring him, one of Stefansson’s colleagues remarked, “He appealed to²⁰ me as a woeful scrub assistant but not worth burdening a party with. . .. I told Stefansson that his experience was of little value, that he could not do any responsible work and I did not think it worth while to take him.”

Stefansson answered, “Poor boy he wants to go so much that I hate to turn him down.” And that was that.

All but Stefansson were worried that Mamen would be a hindrance to the man he had been hired to assist, thirty-three-year-old George Malloch, who had a reputation as one of the most respected geologists in Canada. Malloch had been finishing a postgraduate course in geology at Yale when he received Stefansson’s invitation. A ruggedly handsome man with a long-legged athlete’s physique; a broad, striking face; and a sensuous mouth, Malloch was vain and temperamental, charming and good-natured. Before the ship was scheduled to sail, alarmed by the disorganization and poor leadership of Stefansson, Malloch was urged by his superiors to resign from the expedition. He refused, making it clear that, through thick or thin, he was going to stick it out.

Malloch was promised at the outset that he would be provided with an experienced geological and topographical assistant. Instead, Stefansson hired Mamen just two days before the Karluk sailed.

Mamen’s hero was fellow Norwegian Roald Amundsen, and he longed to one day lead an expedition of his own, following in his hero’s footsteps. It was the reason he so desperately wanted the job as Stefansson’s assistant topographer. “I hope to²¹ get so much experience on this trip,” he wrote in his diary, “that I can qualify as leader of a small Norwegian expedition.”

Stefansson had chosen several other members of his staff quickly and at the last minute, not so much for their experience or qualifications, but because they were eager to go.

Physically, at least²², Mamen was better qualified than anthropologist M. Henri Beuchat, a sophisticated French gentleman with effeminate manners, who had spent most of his career safely inside the offices of the Revue de Paris, a prominent French magazine, and at the Laboratory of Anthropology of the Museum of Natural History in Paris. Just thirty-four, his retiring, affected manner made him appear much older, and although scholarly and brilliant, he had absolutely no experience in field work.

Stefansson’s secretary, twenty-four-year-old American Burt McConnell, also lacked practical experience and was the only member of the scientific staff without a college or university degree. A good-looking young man with plenty of ambition, he had hopped around from profession to profession, alternately trying his hand at railroad surveying, cashiering, clerking, and mining, before being hired as Stefansson’s personal secretary, stenographer, publicity agent, and assistant.

BARTLETT WAS JUST as unhappy with the choice of the crew as he was with the choice of the ship. Selected out of desperation from along the western coast of Canada, one of the crewmen had only a pair of canvas trousers to his name before signing on, two of the sailors were traveling under aliases, two men smuggled liquor aboard even though it was forbidden, and the cook, twenty-year-old Scotsman Robert “Bob” Templeman, was a confirmed drug addict. He made no²³ secret of it, carrying around a pocket-sized case that held his vials of drugs and hypodermic syringes. He was a nervous man to begin with, anxious, high-strung, and rail thin, and the drug abuse had added years to him. A pair of narrow, beady eyes darted above the thick mustache that hung from his gaunt face, and he chain-smoked feverishly.

There hadn’t been time enough to search out the best candidates. Besides, the pay—ten British pounds per month—was meager. So the crew of the Karluk was, for the most part, made up of boys without any real experience or practical trade, attracted by the adventure the expedition promised and whatever money they could get.

Bartlett worried about their inexperience, their backgrounds, and their character. None, as far as he knew, had ever set foot on Arctic ice or snow. Not one of them had ever been trained in surviving the elements, and Stefansson, in a perpetual rush to accommodate the swift deadline of the Canadian government—disgracefully—had offered no such training.

One of the first things Bartlett did upon his arrival in Esquimalt was to fire the first officer for incompetence. Finding himself suddenly without a first mate, Bartlett promoted the second officer, in spite of his lack of experience and youth. He was a young Scot admired by staff and crew alike. Indeed, he was one of the only crewmen who seemed to stand apart, head and shoulders above the rest.

Alexander “Sandy” Anderson had barely earned his second mate’s papers by the time he joined the Karluk. He was a slender young man, just twenty-two years old, with a sweet, boyish face, and a graceful manner, which won him friends easily. He had a beautiful singing voice, played the violin, and had a fondness for floppy, wide-brimmed hats. There wasn’t anyone who didn’t like Sandy.

His father’s weekly income as a railway signalman was a meager thirty shillings a week, and young Sandy learned at an early age how to be enterprising and resourceful. The youngest of three boys, Sandy did not share his brothers’ interest in formal education, and instead fixed his sights on taking an engineering apprenticeship.

In 1908, plagued by illness, he was instead led to an “open-air life” to cure his poor health. And so he took to the sea. He wasn’t the only member of his family to have done so. Sandy’s maternal grandfather had sailed on a whaling expedition to the Arctic and died there.

Apprenticed as a merchant seaman, Sandy later paid for his second mate’s examination out of his own pocket in early 1913. He joined the SS Lord Derby as third mate, but when he arrived in Vancouver to join her company, he discovered she was in dry dock at the Esquimalt Naval Yard, undergoing repairs. Sandy hung about the shipyard, living on the Lord Derby, waiting for her to become seaworthy again. All repairs ceased, however, when the dock workers went on strike, and Sandy found himself stranded in Esquimalt without a ship or a job. He could continue to wait indefinitely for the Lord Derby, he could go ashore and try his luck, he could join the Dollar Line as some of his friends had done, or he could take a job as second mate on the ship Karluk.

Bartlett knew Sandy was young, but he had to follow maritime protocol by promoting the next in line. “I came here²⁴ as 2nd mate at $80 a month & had only signed on for a couple of days when the skipper & mate had a row & the mate was discharged,” Sandy wrote excitedly. “The old man appointed me chief officer on the spot . . . although I have only a seconds ticket & haven’t had that any time yet. At present . . . the whole responsibility of getting her ready for sea [is] on my head & as we are booked to sail on Tuesday & . . . behind in many ways I have my work cut out.”

Bartlett had dismissed another member of the crew, this time one of the firemen who was put ashore when he refused to work. They had nicknamed him “the Suffragette” because he had stopped eating and working some weeks prior, and everyone agreed he should not have been hired to begin with. He was replaced by the youngest of the sailors, Fred Maurer.

Maurer had a quiet intensity about him, which came from his eyes. They were clear blue, penetrating, and piercing. Yet there was kindness in the gaze, and wisdom for such a young man. The rest of his features seemed to be a series of afterthoughts. He was husky and blond, with a firm, rugged jawline and an almost sheepish smile, as if he were perpetually trying to hold himself back and maintain a sense of control.

Just twenty years old, Maurer was a reserved, conscientious, church-going boy from New Philadelphia, Ohio, with “a thirst for²⁵ excitement, plenty of determination, a saving sense of humor and a few cents in cash.” As a teenager, he had worked as many odd jobs as possible to save enough money to put himself through business college in Akron at the age of sixteen. Unfortunately, he had an intense dislike for school, and two years later, in 1911, Maurer and a boyhood friend headed to California. Arriving in San Francisco, the boys began looking for work and came across an advertisement in a newspaper: GREEN HANDS WANTED²⁶ ON THE BELVEDERE.

The boys enlisted immediately, Maurer as deckhand, and it was while the expedition was wintering at Herschel Island that Maurer met Vilhjalmur Stefansson. The famed explorer made quite an impression on Maurer as he came aboard the Belvedere and regaled the crewmen with stories of his adventures.

When Maurer had finished his contract with the whaling ship at the end of 1912 and was once again on land, he stumbled across a newspaper article about Stefansson and his forthcoming Canadian Arctic Expedition. As soon as he returned to Ohio, Maurer lost no time in writing to Stefansson to volunteer his services.

Maurer’s friends strongly advised him against going to the Arctic. His family, too, did not want him to go. Before he had left Ohio to join this new expedition, before he ventured far away from his loved ones and everything familiar, he decided to ask the fates if he was doing the right thing. “It was heads²⁷, I go; tails, I stay at home. I tossed the coin thrice, and twice the head turned up, and the fates decreed that I should go.”

A SECOND BEAR was sighted on August 2, half an hour after the first was wounded, and this time each of the scientists was armed with a rifle, firing blindly away. Mamen watched as Bartlett stood at the bow and, in just two shots, brought the bear to its knees. It was a beautiful animal—seven feet, ten inches, from head to tail. The Eskimo hunters Stefansson had hired skinned the creature, and the skins were scraped and hung out on the rigging to dry, to be used later for clothing; the meat would be kept to feed both the men and the forty-some dogs on board, the pick of the finest dog breeder in Alaska.

That night, the Karluk forced her way into the heavy ice pack and bucked the ice until she was ground to a stop at midnight, surrounded by a solid field of white. There was nothing else to do but fill their tanks with fresh water from the nearby pools that had formed on the surface of the ice, and wait to be freed.

FOR THE NEXT SEVERAL DAYS, the Karluk sat trapped, just twenty-five miles from Point Barrow, Alaska. The staff and crew were restless and impatient to be on their way. No one knew what it meant, whether they would be stuck for the rest of the season, or whether it was only a minor setback. No one was more restless than Stefansson, and on August 3, he headed by dog sled to the Point Barrow trading station, Cape Smythe, where he hoped to hire more Eskimos and purchase more supplies.

That same day, the staff began amusing themselves by exploring the surrounding ice pack, going for long walks, playing European-style football, or trying their luck on skis. Mamen, who excelled in all sports, particularly skiing, was especially entertained by Beuchat’s antics. The Frenchman was anything but athletic, and, his colleagues soon discovered, was quite clumsy. Beuchat raced about on the slippery ice, tumbling feet over ears, picking himself up and running on. Mamen warned him to be careful, told him he couldn’t walk on ice as he did on the floor of a ship or on the ground, but the dignified anthropologist ignored his advice and promptly landed on his tail between two ice cakes, soaking himself to the bone.

McKinlay had dreamed of the moment when he would first set foot on the polar ice pack, and he was shaking with excitement as he stepped off the ship. He ran and danced with the rest of the men, leaping from one floe to another, scrambling to the tops of the ice hills, slipping and falling and sliding everywhere. It was exhilarating and liberating to be off the ship and running, momentarily free.

By August 5, however, the men of the Karluk were beginning to feel trapped and restless. Frolicking on the ice pack had lost its novelty. They had explored the ice, had reveled in their first taste of Arctic winter, but now they were ready to push forward. There was plenty of scientific and preparatory work to be done, but it was not enough to keep them from feeling claustrophobic. McKinlay made an attempt to retrieve his thermometers from the hold, but was unable to dig his way through the mountain of boxes to reach the instruments. He was anxious to begin working, but now it seemed he would have to wait until the stores could be rearranged and organized.

Later, young Mamen wrote in his diary, “. . . it begins to²⁸ be monotonous and tedious to stay here, and I long to proceed north, but when? Who knows.”

Then, miraculously, the ice drifted out on the sixth, and the Karluk broke free and steamed toward Cape Smythe. Their coveted freedom was short-lived, however. Suddenly, the tiller smashed and the steering gear broke; and they had to stop once again for repairs. It was maddening, this stopping and starting, and no matter how many times they fixed it, the steering gear never worked for long.

On one occasion, it had nearly led them to disaster, steering them toward a narrow passage between two enormous, treacherous reefs. The first mate, fortunately, saw the danger just in time and was able to alter her course, but otherwise the ship and all aboard would have been crushed against the rocks.

The engine, too, needed a good tightening up, because the rough seas had damaged it extensively. Bartlett was as vocal as ever about his displeasure at Stefansson’s choice of vessel. “Our skipper has²⁹ some strong things to say about the ship and her shortcomings,” McKinlay observed. “It is unfortunate that he himself was not asked to buy the ship, as he might have made a better job of it.”

Repairs made, they were on their way again two hours later, steaming within a mile of the beach of Cape Smythe before running up against more ice. Knocked about by the immense, churning floes, the ship took a beating.

ON THE EVENING of August 6, as the Karluk waited offshore of Cape Smythe, an Eskimo family came aboard. The father, Kuraluk, was rumored to be one of the greatest hunters in Alaska. He had been hired to hunt for the expedition while his wife, Kiruk, was commissioned by Stefansson as seamstress. She was a stout young woman, raw-boned and strong, and would sew the winter clothes and skin boots for the staff and crew. It was Eskimo tradition that when a married man was hired, his family came with him, so they had brought their two young children, eight-year-old Helen, and three-year-old Mugpi. Helen was a solemn child, serious and quiet, and Mugpi seemed a cheery little girl, all adorable curiosity and wide brown eyes.

Another Eskimo also came aboard that day. He was nineteen-year-old Claude Kataktovik, a widower with a baby daughter. He had left his daughter with his family when Stefansson invited him to join the expedition as a hunter, an opportunity he felt he could not refuse. After all, Stefansson had promised him a great deal of money for his services—twenty thousand dollars, according to Kataktovik, for a year’s work. Stefansson also gave him twenty dollars and a rifle.

Signs of unrest stirred in the crew, who had not been outfitted with winter clothing, even though their orders had promised that they would be. Bring nothing, their orders had dictated. You will be taken care of. But they were still waiting and, it seemed, winter had already arrived. Meanwhile, the Eskimos were fitted out immediately and extensively by Stefansson, with mukluks—or boots made of animal skins—parkas, and sheepskin coats. Now some members of the crew were threatening mutiny if they weren’t taken care of accordingly.

There had been trouble already between the crew and the first Eskimos hired by Stefansson—Pauyuraq and Asecaq, who went by “Jerry” and “Jimmy,” respectively. In their early twenties, they spoke good English and had been assigned to bunk with the crew in the fo’c’sle. But the crew kicked them out and went together to Bartlett to voice their grievances. They were not going to room with any Eskimos, they said. In the end, of course, Bartlett got his way, and—in his presence, at least—not another word was said.

On the evening of August 6, Stefansson arrived shortly after the Eskimo family and Kataktovik with fifty-seven-year-old John “Jack” Hadley. He was an irascible-looking old salt, grizzled and weathered, with a trim white beard. His narrow eyes peered from a taut, finely lined face, burned by years in the sun and wind. He was an Englishman, from Canterbury, who had lived as a trapper, trader, and whaler in the far American north for over twenty years. No one on the staff or crew had any idea what his position was to be in the expedition, or what he had been hired to do, and Stefansson did not enlighten them on this matter. But Hadley immediately moved his belongings into Stefansson’s cabin, which he was to share. Molly, his pet dog and traveling companion, moved in with the other dogs.

As the days wore on, the staff and crew received clues to the mystery of Hadley. He had a sharp tongue and he didn’t mince words. He was forthright and ornery and growled when he talked.

He was on his way to a new trading post and seemed, from what they could tell, to be merely hitching a ride with the Karluk. He was an old friend of Stefansson’s and had recently lost his Eskimo wife. In search of new surroundings, and a way to forget, he had decided to move on.

Hadley had a lifetime of experience, and he treated his shipmates to tales of being adrift on an ice floe for fifty-three days with only fourteen days provisions. When these ran out, he had survived by chewing his mukluks and sealskin coat. He had been a tramp in Australia, an officer in the Chilean Navy, and a soldier on a Chinese ship in the Chinese-Japanese War. He was also aboard the first United States revenue cutter to sail to the Arctic in 1889. Ernest Shackleton had three polar winters to his credit, Bartlett had spent four, Peary had endured nine, and Stefansson ten in all. But Hadley had survived at least twenty, and he was a good man to have around.

Later that night, after Hadley and the Eskimos had settled in, Stefansson stood by and watched as the staff and crew cleared the deck on the port side of the lab to make a house for the Eskimo family. Sandy gave the orders; the coal, lumber, and casks of goods were removed from the alleyway beside the lab, and the alleyway turned into a shelter. The work took hours, and the scientists were irritated by the way their leader stood on the sidelines and refused to help. Tempers flared. There weren’t enough men to do the job, and they felt that the least Stefansson could have done was lend a hand.

Beuchat hated doing any kind of physical labor and snapped at Mamen, who called him a “pup.” Mamen was not one to let things pass, and he would always speak his mind when he felt the need to defend himself or set someone straight. Now, he set Beuchat straight, calling him the “laziest man I³⁰ have ever seen in all my life.”

STEFANSSON HAD MADE his scientific staff pose for one last picture before they climbed aboard ship on June 17. The docks were lined with strangers, gathered to send the adventurers off. The entire Canadian Pacific Fleet had come to cheer them onward. Men of the fleet sounded their sirens, blew their whistles, dipped their flags, and hoisted good luck signals while the crowds of strangers—thousands of them—cheered and applauded.

For days, the scientists and crewmen had searched the docks for a cat to bring aboard as their mascot. According to maritime superstition, a feline presence aboard ship would bring them luck, but Stefansson put his foot down, saying that as soon as he hired sled dogs in Nome, the dogs would kill the cat. Just before pulling away from the dock, one of the engineers smuggled aboard a thin black kitten, which lived in the shipyard. They dubbed her Nigeraurak, or “Little Black One.” Fireman Fred Maurer quickly came to think of her as his own.

On their first night at sea, geologist George Malloch had organized the members of the staff as lots were drawn for their quarters. Photographer George Wilkins and Chief Engineer John Munro would share the engineer’s cabin; the decidedly unsociable Dr. Mackay ended up with a cabin to himself next door to Bartlett’s cabin; and the remaining scientists drew the Cabin DeLuxe, as they called it, so named for its great size, at least four to five times larger than any of the other cabins. This cabin was to be shared by Malloch, Scottish school teacher McKinlay, the youthful and athletic Mamen, anthropologist Diamond Jenness, Stefansson’s secretary Burt McConnell, and Beuchat, the well-mannered Frenchman.

From the beginning, the Karluk’s crew and staff were divided. “Bloody scientists” was what the crew took to calling their more educated colleagues, with nothing but the most adamant disgust. Scientists and crew would live separately but in close quarters at the outset of the voyage, because the Karluk alone had to convey all men, equipment, and supplies as far as Nome, Alaska, where a second ship would be added to the Northern Party’s expedition.

The crew’s quarters were located in the bow of the ship. Fred Maurer’s fellow fireman, or stoker, was a freckled, outspoken, cheeky Welshman named George Breddy. The A.B., or able-bodied, seamen were just as colorful, but the one who stood out most—and fit in least—was Hugh Williams, also from Wales. He was a tall, dark, sturdy fellow with a rough, handsome face; hooded eyes; a quiet humor; and a disarming smile. He had long ago earned the nickname “Clam” because he rarely spoke. While his comrades sat around and swore and cursed and bantered with one another, he would sit back quietly and observe them. He didn’t swear and he didn’t talk when he had nothing to say. When he did speak, it was with none of the profanity of his fellow crewmen.

Cook Robert Templeman and Ernest F. Chafe, the mess room boy and assistant steward, roomed in the steward’s cabin, just next to the galley. Chafe, or “Charlie,” as he was called, was the youngest crewman. Impressionable and athletic, he had a love of the outdoors and was an expert marksman. To prove it, he brought aboard the Karluk his most cherished possessions, two armloads of trophies and prizes he had won for marksmanship in his native Canada.

Second engineer Robert Williamson bunked with Sandy and the second mate, a Victoria, British Columbia, native who had been promoted when Sandy was made first officer. Meanwhile, the diminutive McKinlay took the upper bunk on the inside wall of the impressive Cabin DeLuxe, continually bumping his head against the berth or missing his footing and landing directly on the broad-shouldered, long-legged Malloch, who had the misfortune of sleeping below him. There were eight berths and the cabin itself was stacked full of boxes, books, magazines, and other paraphernalia. A major cleanup had to be performed before the men could sleep, and they spent a good while reorganizing and throwing things away.

The Karluk had soon left the Southern Party’s Alaska behind, loaded with twice as many provisions as she could carry, and not long afterward, Stefansson purchased the Mary Sachs, a forty-one-ton gasoline schooner, to take the overflow of supplies. Not only was the expedition racking up more expenses than either the government or Stefansson had originally anticipated, it was beginning to look as impressive as it sounded. One of the scientists wrote, “The Canadian Arctic³¹ Expedition Navy now consists of the Karluk, Alaska, Mary Sachs, five whale boats (one with power), two other motor boats, three canoes, two dories, one dinghy and several skin boats.”

ON AUGUST 8, Bartlett gave orders to push through the ice. They were expected to rendezvous with the Southern Party at Herschel Island in less than a week, and they hoped to reach the island in two or three days. Slivers of water, called “leads,” occasionally opened in the ice around the ship, and the captain, navigating from the crow’s nest, scanned the approaching ice for the farthest and most open of these, “at the same³² time trying to keep the ship on its course as straight as possible,” observed mess room boy Chafe. The ice had loosened a bit, and the ship took advantage, steaming through to the east.

At times, the Karluk would pass between two mountainous ice floes that would scrape her on either side, creating such a violent shiver throughout the ship that the men expected her to be crushed. The lookout in the crow’s nest—most often Bartlett, who was always on duty and never seemed to sleep—would send out continuous updates and commands: “Starboard—steady—Port³³—steady—go astern—go ahead.” The commands were repeated by the officer on the bridge, and then from the man at the wheel, to confirm the path he was to follow.

Because of the perilous and unpredictable ice conditions, the ship could not rely upon her compass and traveled in a haphazard, vagabond path. When a floe crossed her bow, the men would direct her astern and ahead, in an attempt to break up the ice. Because she was forced to follow the spidery veins of open leads, the ship waltzed in a zigzag, moving two or three miles for every one advanced in the desired direction. The result was that the Karluk’s route was continually changing and the ship often went round in circles.

As the ice began to crush around the ship, the fine white cakes dissolving into powder, the men forgot their previous irritations. McKinlay, Mamen, and the others were drawn by the sight of it—the ice, alive and grinding against the ship, floes crashing against floes. The sound of it was a grisly, bone-chilling roar, continuous and deafening. The men were terrified, but fascinated. Afterward, when the din had faded to a distant rumble, there were signs of open water to the east of Point Barrow.

Stefansson immediately wanted to send members of the Southern Party ashore to await the Mary Sachs and the Alaska, which had traveled a separate route and had hopefully avoided the encroaching ice. McKinlay, James Murray, Wilkins, Jenness, and Beuchat should join their party as soon as possible, but it would be quite an undertaking. The equipment they would need for the journey would be cumbersome and the ice conditions were precarious at best. Bartlett and Hadley at once denounced the plan as “absurd & suicidal³⁴.” Furthermore, they said, the Karluk would probably work her way free in a few days, and then she would be on her way again.

MCKINLAY, AS A MEMBER of the Southern Party, wasn’t even supposed to sail on the Karluk. In fact, in the haste of their departure, hardly anyone wound up on the ship where he was supposed to be stationed. The idea was that they would sort it all out at Herschel Island, where the Karluk was to rendezvous with the Alaska and the Mary Sachs. This confused, arbitrary strategy was symptomatic of how the whole expedition was run.

Because the Karluk had more passenger room, Beuchat, Jenness, Wilkins, Murray, and McKinlay sailed on her when they should have been on the Alaska with the rest of their party. Most of their scientific equipment, meanwhile, sailed aboard the Alaska.

For two weeks, they waited in Port Clarence while Stefansson remained in Nome, supervising the outfitting of the Alaska, the Mary Sachs, and his latest purchase, the thirteen-ton North Star.

The scientists had demanded a conference with Stefansson on July 10. They were alarmed by the disorganization of the supplies and their equipment. They could find guns, but could not find the ammunition. Several boxes of provisions were packed badly, and some of them were half empty. The men were provided with only one towel each, and the smaller members of the company—including McKinlay—had to make do with drawers and shirts that were too big for them. Stefansson had also purchased some secondhand parkas in Nome, which were horrible to look at, diseased and thin. He handed them to Dr. Mackay to disinfect, but the doctor pronounced the job impossible; so the men had to make do.

Stefansson seemed unconcerned about the chaos of the Karluk’s decks and the confused order of the supplies. “We’ll sort it out at Herschel Island,” became his favorite response.

The staff of his expedition was also astounded to learn that their private diaries would be property of the Canadian government and that their rights to grant interviews or supply news to the outside world had been signed away, without their knowledge, by Stefansson.

Stefansson, meanwhile, had drawn up contracts with three international newspapers, planning to send exclusive reports and articles for publication. He also sold³⁵ all the newspaper, magazine, book, and photographic rights to the story of the expedition to the London Chronicle and the New York Times. In addition, he planned to write a book about the expedition and wanted to control all communications about the upcoming adventure, thus protecting his contracts.

At the conference, spokesman James Murray demanded to know the plans of the Northern Party, which had never been officially presented to any of the scientists. Stefansson bristled at their questions and, according to McKinlay, “seemed to resent³⁶ our attitude in endeavouring to obtain details as to provisions for food, clothing, facilities for work, etc., & he went the length of telling Murray, when he asked what provision was being made for fur clothing, that the question was impertinent.” Furthermore, Stefansson “told us that he thought our whole conduct in calling for a meeting seemed to imply a lack of confidence in our leader, and altogether failed to recognise that we all had an undeniable right to assure ourselves that every regard was being had for our protection.”

It was only then that the men learned that Stefansson planned for the Karluk to proceed along the 141st meridian to search for new land. If no land was discovered, the Northern Party would form a base at Prince Patrick Island, which would leave the men free to explore the area from there. The ship and her crew would then return to Nome immediately for provisions.

Stefansson had said far more about his plans in press conferences than he had communicated to the men themselves. He also made a frightening prophecy—that the Karluk would no doubt be frozen in at some point and afterward would “certainly be crushed³⁷ & sink.”

Kenneth Chipman, botanist for the Southern Party, recorded an equally ominous fact in his diary: “V.S. in a³⁸ signed statement has said that lives are secondary to attainment of objects and on several occasions has strongly intimated that he expected to put the Karluk into the ice. It is certain that if she goes into the ice she’ll not come out.. . .”

What’s more, Stefansson claimed that not only were the lives secondary to the work, but that his men recognized this fact and agreed with it. This was untrue and stood in direct opposition to the instructions given to him by the Canadian government.

After the conference, several of the expedition members talked of resigning. Exasperated with Stefansson’s tactics, they had no confidence in their leader and no enthusiasm for the prospect of working for him. Indeed, many of them were so disillusioned that they harbored little hope of getting any valuable work accomplished. Murray was so agitated that he threatened and intended to quit, and Dr. Anderson, of the Southern Party, even went so far as to hand in his resignation.

The following morning, Murray called a meeting of the Northern Party to discuss this possible loss of the Karluk. If Stefansson was to be believed, and if the Karluk really did have a chance of being crushed in the ice, Murray and the others felt they should plan ahead and know what was in store for them.

Murray and Dr. Mackay wrote a letter to Stefansson requesting the absolute assurance that there would be a base onshore, but their leader’s reply to them was indefinite and vague.

After the disturbing and disheartening meeting with their leader, several of the men began to call him “His Lordship” behind his back. Chipman wrote: “Capt. Bartlett says³⁹ he ‘gave his best to Peary.’ That is the spirit for Arctic work and to be able to give it to any man is inspiring. I wonder to what extent Stefansson is the man to whom I want to give mine.”

THE KARLUK RAN AGROUND on August 10 in seventeen feet of water. McKinlay was in his cabin, typing some letters, when he heard a commotion from above and felt the Karluk lurch. He ran up to the deck to find her stalled, her engines still going full speed. They were about ten miles from the mouth of the Colville River, the bottom of which was covered in a glutinous mud. Twice she ran aground, and each time Bartlett reversed and re-reversed the engines until he managed to free her. But the ice thickened about her in the meantime, and once free from the shallows, she was trapped by the pack. For some time, she pushed the ice ahead of her, but was unable to break it. She would need more momentum than she was capable of to break through. As Mamen observed, the Karluk was a “poor ice breaker⁴⁰,” and the ice was a “bad enemy.”

Bartlett stood in the barrel for the entire day and cursed Stefansson and the ship. Mamen, as usual, kept him company. The two had become fast friends, despite the difference in their ages and backgrounds. In Mamen, Bartlett recognized a young man with great ambition and strength—bold, honest, and seemingly unafraid of anything.

Mamen, in return, admired the captain and his brilliant career, as well as his robust character. He was, thought Mamen, the only real man on board, unlike all of the crewmen, who were crass, and the scientists, who were lazy and useless. Beuchat did nothing but sleep all day. McConnell seemed capable of doing nothing but typing. According to Mamen, most of his colleagues “do indeed not⁴¹ know how to sew a button on their pants, much less how to darn a sock. It is disgusting to see such ignorant persons who can do only what they have been trained to do.. . . It is maddening to see people who always must have other people do everything for them.”

It was rare for Bartlett to confide his frustrations or feelings in anyone, but as he cursed a blue streak, damning the broken-down ship that carried them and the leader who had purchased her and gotten them into this mess, Mamen was there to hear it. And he had to agree with him. Stefansson, for all his past glory and honors, was a rotten leader, from what he could see, and one needed look no further than his choice of vessel for proof. The Karluk was an old, weak ship. She should never have been made to do the work she was doing.

THE STAFF AND OFFICERS gathered nightly in the saloon for Victrola concerts. Each mess room—that of the scientists and of the crewmen—had a gramophone and there were over two hundred records aboard. They were mostly classical with some ragtime thrown in for variety. The Prologue from Pagliacci and Bach’s “Air for G String” were special favorites with everyone, but they soon discovered that Bartlett had no patience for ragtime.

The members of the staff very quickly discovered that Mackay got an enormous kick out of singer Harry Lauder’s recording of the comic song “I’ve Something in the Bottle for the Morning.” The doctor would rock with laughter as he listened to it and was such a hilarious sight that soon his shipmates played the record over and over again just to watch him. Second mate Charles Barker was the only one who had any objections to this ritual. Personally, he found Harry Lauder to be quite “coarse and vulgar⁴²” and did not at all approve of the nightly attention he was receiving in the saloon. Dr. Mackay silenced him in typical Mackay fashion, with caustic remarks, so that Barker, time and again, had no choice but to leave the room while Mackay enjoyed his favorite song.

The men began to run nightly bridge tournaments in the smoking room and, determined to find some diversion, cleared the amidships deck and set their sights on boxing. Mackay, thinking himself something of an expert—as he always did—taught them all they needed to know about the sport.

Many of the matches ended in draws, and none of them lasted for more than two two-minute rounds. It was Dr. Mackay versus Southern Party geologist J. J. O’Neill, however, who brought about “the trial.” “Sheriff” Chipman, assisted by Burt McConnell, served the summons on O’Neill, charging him with assault and battery. The charges were simple—Mackay claimed that his thumb was sprained as a result of O’Neill hitting it repeatedly with his head. Mackay would not rest until O’Neill paid for his crime.

It was, of course, all in fun. As expected, O’Neill pled “not guilty,” and the trial was soon under way. McKinlay, speaking for the doctor, stated that the defendant had “swung his head⁴³ three times against his thumb, inflicting thereby grievous bodily injury.” It was an absurd image, but even so, most of the witnesses called took the case extremely seriously, and defense counsel Burt McConnell, in particular, got so carried away by his newfound position of power that he forgot to see the humor in it. Instead, he conducted himself as if he were in a real courtroom.

When court was adjourned an hour later, Mackay consulted with the prosecution and suggested they drop the charges. Only a few seemed to possess a sense of humor great enough to recognize that it was a farce, and they did indeed end the trial; for the rest of the day, McKinlay regretted not being able to deliver his character assassinations of each witness, something that had taken him hours to prepare.

Bartlett often entertained the men with vivid stories. He also spent a notable amount of time cutting pictures from the illustrated papers and magazines they had on board, an activity that quite naturally piqued the interest of his shipmates. The editors of the ship’s newsletter, the Karluk Chronicle, voiced the intense shipwide curiosity as to just where it was Bartlett was putting these clippings.

The ever-private Bartlett hated personal questions of any kind. “At the earnest⁴⁴ request of the Editor, however,” the Chronicle reported, “Capt. Bartlett will unbend just this once, and confess that he has the artists’ love of the beautiful, and that the picture he clipped from the paper strongly reminded him of a young lady of whom he is very fond. He further states that it is nobody’s d. . . business what pictures he cuts out, or what he does with them afterward.”

Crew and staff had not yet learned to live in perfect harmony and their existences were quite separate—they lived, ate, worked, and relaxed at opposite ends of the ship. A few of the scientists—usually McKinlay, Mamen, and Malloch—did roll up their sleeves and pitch in now and then to help the crew tie up coal sacks, divide up boxes of provisions, and tidy and rearrange the deck.

Each day, the men rose early for breakfast, which ended promptly at 8:00, except on Sundays when they were allowed more flexibility. (Otherwise, it was breakfast at 7:30 A.M., dinner at 11:30 A.M., and tea at 5:30 P.M.) McKinlay, Mamen, Mackay, and the rest of them only wanted to sleep as long as possible. “Eat when you⁴⁵ feel like it; sleep when you feel like it,” Captain Bartlett had told them early on. “And have plenty of both for you never know how soon you will have neither.”

They ate so much that Templeman attempted to close off his galley to the bloody scientists, some of whom—Beuchat being one of the prime suspects—were rude enough to devour everything in sight, without any consideration for the crewmen, who were forced to eat at sporadic hours, depending on their individual work schedules. Templeman was going to put a stop to it, if it was the last thing he did. McKinlay, because he often kept Sandy company on watch, was an exception and was thus permitted to eat whatever he wanted to. But as McKinlay noted in his journal, “From now on⁴⁶, ‘scientists’ has become a ‘dirty word’ with the crew!”

Mamen exercised religiously, and then would retreat to his bunk to pour over his books on polar exploration. Murray made depth soundings, and Malloch took latitude and longitudinal observations. McKinlay charted the daily temperature and studied navigation and nautical astronomy. Because he regularly joined Sandy on watch, the two had become friends and would often spend hours side by side, looking out onto the spectacular sea. There was usually nothing but gray mist and darkness and water to the far horizon.

One day in July, Sandy and McKinlay had fought to keep their balance as the waves climbed higher, until they loomed over their heads. Everything movable was being thrown about the deck and slamming into everything else. Later that night, McKinlay recorded in his journal how the salt of the sea had burned his lips and tongue, and how the bitter chill of the water stung his skin. Still, he was as exhilarated as he had ever been in his life. Because of the storm’s violence, Sandy had lashed his friend to a stanchion to ride out the peak of it. The wind increased and the waves rose twenty feet high, slamming against the ship and dashing her sides and deck, immersing the engine room, and throwing the ship back the way she had come. It was cold on the bridge, and windy, but McKinlay found himself glowing all over.

McKinlay, like the others, had signed onto this voyage seeking the chance to do good work, to see more of the world, to aid in the furthering of science, and to find a bit of adventure. Like most of them, he was inexperienced in exploration. But the worries he might have had about his clumsiness and his naiveté were disappearing. He felt good and strong and healthy. The Arctic seemed to agree with him.

STEFANSSON WANTED to press onward at any cost. He was anxious about the signs of an early winter, impatient to be on his way. Bartlett, to the contrary, wanted to give the ship a rest, turn her back toward the coast, away from the ice, or simply let her drift for the winter. He knew they would not be able to make it much farther, even if the surrounding ice let up. It would be only a temporary reprieve, and soon after, he knew, there would be more ice waiting for them.

But Stefansson urged him forward, past the peak of Point Barrow, eastward along the northern Alaskan coast toward Herschel Island. He directed Bartlett to hug the shore so they could keep sight of land. They would be safe from the drifting ice as long as they did so, but the Karluk was so heavily loaded that she sat terribly low in the water and ran aground repeatedly.

Bartlett was, as Mamen observed, “a man who⁴⁷ utilizes all chances to get ahead.. . .” Stefansson demanded forward movement, and they could make no progress running aground. The Karluk’s bow was too thin to forge through the ice, so finally Bartlett did what he had done in the past with Peary’s ships—on August 12, he headed northward, following the open leads in the ice, all the while keeping her as much on course to Herschel Island as possible. “We steamed along⁴⁸ through the open water,” he wrote, “and because the ice near the shore was closely packed, we were driven farther off shore than I liked. We had to follow the open lanes, however, and go where they led.” Apparently, Stefansson was⁴⁹ sleeping when the decision was made to take the ship out into the pack.

Bartlett had good reasons for following the lanes of open water—aside from running aground, the ship was at risk from crushing ice pressure, which was always greater and more dangerous near land. But it turned out to be a controversial decision, which would alter their course irrevocably. They quickly lost sight of land. Every now and then, a lead would bring them back toward the coast, but then, once again, they would be led away from it.

It was a no-win situation. To stay close to land meant to sacrifice the chance to move forward, which Stefansson insisted upon doing. But to follow the open leads meant to separate the ship from the relative safety of the nearby land mass, and to risk being carried off course.

Both Stefansson and Bartlett were strong personalities who harbored their own strong opinions about what to do. Stefansson did not seem to understand—or care about—the deficiencies of his ship or the risks involved with pressing onward. A frustrated Bartlett, tired of running aground, steered the ship into the open water and ignored Stefansson’s warnings.

Later on, looking back, Bartlett felt he had done what was best at the time, navigating the ship as he had done with the ships under Peary’s command. Stefansson had demanded they keep going, and Bartlett had complied the only way he could. Whether he would have done it over again, or whether or not it was the best decision is harder to say. It was a chance call based on his desire to get Stefansson where he wanted to go.

On August 11, Bartlett took a nap, his first sleep in two days. Afterward, he returned to the crow’s nest to keep watch and continue his search for a passageway through the ice.

MAMEN SPENT THE MORNING of August 11 writing a letter to his beloved fiancée, Ellen, and then climbed up to the barrel to keep the captain company. They were treated to sunshine and snow that day, and in the afternoon the ship was able to buck the ice for several miles. The Karluk jumped and twisted as she rammed through the pack, and the crow’s nest was shaking so violently that Mamen was sure they would be catapulted to the deck.

Finally, the Karluk rammed against the edge of a field of old, thick ice and was brought to a sudden halt. The young, or newer, ice was relatively easy to break, but the old ice was solid and impenetrable, especially for a ship like the Karluk.

The following day, Murray and Wilkins took out the umiak—a large, open wooden boat covered with walrus skins—and dropped Murray’s dredge into a patch of open water, five fathoms deep. One of Murray’s primary concerns as oceanographer was to study and document the sea life in different regions. The result from this dredging was a variety of interesting specimens, which Murray promptly spirited away to his makeshift laboratory, where he spent the rest of the day, cigarette dangling from his hand, studying them through his microscope.

Meanwhile, Mamen taught members of the staff and crew how to ski, and noted that most of his pupils were stiff as matches. Dr. Mackay and McKinlay were good students, but Beuchat, as expected, was awkward and extremely comical. Afterward, they held a football match on the ice, and although Mamen’s team won, he injured his knee, the same one he had injured long ago in a skiing accident back home. Ever since that initial injury, it had been a little tender, and now it hurt like the devil. He turned in earlier than usual, worn out from the day and discouraged by the pain. He hated physical weakness of any kind, especially in himself.

ON AUGUST 13, with the mountains of Flaxman Island appearing off the ship’s beam, the Karluk was listing to starboard at a worrisome degree, due to the overloading of coal in her starboard bunker. To protect the port bilges, which could easily be harmed, Bartlett had the men transfer a large part of the deck cargo to the port side to balance her out.

The following day was a wholly cheerless one for everyone on board. The only exception was the irascible old trapper Hadley, who was “playing guitar and⁵⁰ singing so that we cannot hear ourselves think,” wrote a disgusted Mamen. Mamen was already in a foul mood that day, his knee aching, the monotony of the ice draining him. The worst of it, though, was that August 14 was Ellen’s birthday and the anniversary of their engagement. Mamen could not believe he was stuck in the ice, so very far way from her, going nowhere.

The following day dawned brighter, as it was Bartlett’s thirty-seventh birthday. Freshly barbered and in a splendid humor, the captain was treated to a real celebration that evening. Templeman laid the mess room table with a white linen cloth, which alone created quite a sensation, and everyone gathered at 9:30 P.M. Templeman was an unambitious, rotten cook. But now everyone congratulated him on the feast he had prepared—cold roast beef; tongue; salads; and a variety of cakes, tarts, and fruit desserts. There was so much good food that he was unable to find room for all of it on the table.

There was lemonade and lime juice for the teetotalers—Bartlett, McKinlay, and Malloch—and whiskey for the rest. They raised their glasses and toasted the health of their captain, and afterward Stefansson gave him a box of cigars. These were passed around the table until all were puffing on them “as if we⁵¹ had been in the most fashionable restaurant in London or New York,” wrote McKinlay.

After dinner Dr. Mackay sang a variety of Scottish songs, followed by Murray, and then McKinlay and Wilkins, who performed a duet. Hadley, of course, played the guitar and sang, Stefansson regaled them with stories, and secretary Burt McConnell gave a concert on the Victrola. Everyone’s spirits seemed brighter, even the typically surly doctor’s, whose mood was magically improved, as usual, by several drinks of whiskey. They turned in that night, close to 3:00 A.M., weary but refreshed, the celebration having given them a much-needed lift.

FOR DAYS AFTERWARD, they sat frozen into the ice pack, pelted by rain and wind. An oppressive, stifling fog rolled in, covering the ship in a blanket of mist, and Bartlett expected winter in full force at any time.

“The nights are⁵² beginning to show a little darkness which carries a warning of approaching winter,” McKinlay worried. “Each morning now we rise, asking ‘How is the weather today?’; each evening we lie down asking ‘Will it come tomorrow?’ It is here one learns what discipline means; the North is a hard school. What worries us most is that we may get no farther & may thus be deprived of opportunity to work; it is not prospect of danger, for there is none.”

And then the rain changed to snow, which froze everything it fell upon, creating thick layers of frost. The temperature dropped and the pools of water on the nearby ice froze solid.

There were breathtaking evenings when the haloed moon shone silver in the dark blue sky and the stars burned brightly. McKinlay wanted to linger on deck; but there was a dangerous chill in the air, and it was too cold to stand for very long. But he gazed with wonder at the frost-covered rigging, the bejeweled mast and railings. The ship rose from the icy depths like a magical, majestic statue, her edges softened and blurred by the shimmering white and the starry frost that covered her. She looked, he decided, as if she were enchanted.

ALL ON BOARD WERE RESTLESS, especially their leader. Stefansson knew now that the chances of the Karluk breaking free and being able to continue on her journey were slim. “It is distressing⁵³ to think that the winter already has come, and here we are, unable to go either back or forth, in the poorest part of the Arctic regions,” wrote Mamen. “I am beginning to get restless and only long to go further north and then home, but . . . the chances are small, yes, infinitely small.”

The outlook was black, and at Flaxman Island, the Southern Party began to wonder where their Karluk comrades were. They knew all too well the Karluk’s shortcomings and feared she would not be able to make it through the ice. Chipman wrote about Stefansson, “He may be⁵⁴ good ‘copy’ but I wish he had paid more attention to the Expedition itself both publicly and personally.”

THE KARLUK WAS DRIFTING now without power. She was trapped in a floe of old ice, easily half a mile wide, and suddenly found herself being carried with the current. Bartlett would not leave the crow’s nest and thought that he could see in the distance signs that the ice was loosening. But he couldn’t be sure anymore, and they were held fast in the viselike grip of the shifting ice pack.

Murray had never gotten over his dislike or distrust of Stefansson and had maintained a guarded distance from the leader ever since the July showdown in Nome where the scientists had confronted their leader. Now they were all stranded in the ice, and as far as Murray was concerned, it was Stefansson’s fault. Stefansson was, in Murray’s opinion, nothing more than “a self-seeking adventurer⁵⁵ who deliberately intended to put the ‘Karluk’ into the pack ice for the sake of notoriety and personal glorification.” It would be the surest way for Stefansson to get his name in the papers, to be known as the gallant leader of a lost expedition.

DAY AFTER DAY, there was no change in the ice. The ship remained a prisoner, helpless to dictate her own course or break free. Bartlett noted Stefansson’s restlessness, as did the members of the crew and staff. Stefansson was a man who hated sitting still. On August 22 he suddenly called the scientists who were supposed to be part of the Southern Party into his cabin and announced again that he intended to send them ashore. Murray, though, was quickly eliminated from the group, because his equipment was too heavy to make the trip. Then it was decided that McKinlay could just as well do his work on the Karluk, and Wilkins would also remain for similar reasons. That left Jenness and Beuchat, who had no equipment and no purpose for being on the ship, since their work was to live with and study the Eskimos.

The plan was for Jenness and Beuchat to head over the ice to Flaxman Island to seek word of the Mary Sachs and the Alaska, and then continue over the now solid ice by foot and dogsled to Herschel Island, if it turned out the Southern Party had gone ahead. Everyone pitched in to ready the expedition, but it was impossible to locate the equipment and stores they needed for travel because nothing was where it was supposed to be.

Even though the scientists had tried to establish some sense of order, the Karluk’s stores were still a mess, without any sense of organization or supervision. Templeman always helped himself to whatever he needed from the food supplies and never bothered to document it. The expedition clothing worked in much the same way. It had never been officially issued to the men, as it should have been, upon their arrival to the ship. Instead, it had been handed out sporadically, first to some, then to others at a much later time, and anyone overlooked had to put in a request or help himself.

It was, thought McKinlay, indicative of the way the expedition was being run. The only clothing he had been issued thus far was a pair of mukluks and some slippers. His government-issued clothing was aboard the Alaska, as was the trunk containing his own clothing and personal items, which he had brought from home. “That was all⁵⁶ right,” he said, “in the ordinary course of affairs; but no thought has so far been taken of the change in prospects. I do not intend to ask for anything until I need it & then I shall demand it.”

AUGUST 24 was the most promising morning they had seen for a long time. The ice showed signs of breaking, there was a sprawling open lead to the east, and the ship was abuzz with nervous excitement. The men were hopeful of getting free, but by the end of the day, the wind shifted to the west and killed all possibility of escape.

By the next morning, the ice had completely closed up again, and there was no sign of open water anywhere. Dr. Mackay had crafted an instrument that determined the speed and direction of the drift, and now they knew that the Karluk was drifting west at one mile per hour.

If they had been closer to shore, their prospects might have been better for breaking free. As it was, the snow was falling again, land was sighted far in the distance, and adverse winds blew in from the north. The Karluk’s drift shifted daily, and by August 28, she was drifting southeast at a rate of twelve miles a day.

Meanwhile, unrest was brewing in the engine room over more than just the boiler tanks. Before being recommended for his post on the Karluk, Chief Engineer John Munro had been a junior officer on the British warship Rainbow. A Scot, he had emigrated to Canada and become a Canadian citizen. He was a towering man with a wide puttyish face, a rather soft chin, deep-set eyes, and a high forehead often in a crease when his brows were particularly furrowed, as they usually were.

Second Engineer Robert Williamson begrudged Munro his position as chief engineer. Munro was fond of shirking his work and putting much of it on Williamson, and Williamson soured at being ordered about by this man, whom he regarded as his inferior. Williamson was thirty-six years old, already weathered from over a decade of a seaman’s life. Tall, brawny, and as sharply angled as a hawk, he had served in the North Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and the Baltic. On June 16, the day before the Karluk had sailed from Esquimalt, he introduced himself to Bartlett aboard a local streetcar and by the time the streetcar reached Esquimalt, he had a job as second engineer. Even with the last-minute hiring, he had hoped to join Karluk as chief engineer himself and had been bitterly disappointed over being given the second post.

STEFANSSON GAVE JENNESS and Beuchat final instructions for their journey, along with a check for two hundred dollars and a letter that gave them full authority to act independently of the expedition should the need arise. They were to attach themselves to the Southern Party as soon as possible, and Jenness was to telegraph any pertinent news to the New York Times on Stefansson’s behalf.

Kataktovik broke the trail ahead of the two sleds, which were loaded with a large umiak, skins, and provisions for thirty days. Each sled was pulled by a team of seven dogs. The ice was still covered with snow, which made it difficult to pick out a good trail, and they hadn’t gone far when the sleds became immersed in water and the umiak was damaged.

After dinner aboard the ship, Stefansson and Hadley set out to reach the party, to take a batch of letters to them to mail. When they overtook Jenness and the others, Stefansson was dismayed at their miserable and wet condition. They were soaked to the skin, the provisions were damaged from the rough journey, and the ice was in a treacherous state. Immediately, he ordered their return to the Karluk. They cached the stores on the ice to lighten the sleds and brought back only the most valuable of the equipment. It took twenty minutes to retrace what had taken them two hours to travel on the way out. Somewhere along the way, Beuchat took a tumble into the water and had to be carried back in the umiak.

BY LATE AUGUST it was clear that the men of the Karluk were trapped. The seventeen-degree-Fahrenheit temperature seemed even more bitterly cold. The imprisoned ship was drowning in snow. The wind blasted them from all directions, forever shifting and changing course. Inside the Karluk, they were warm, but the air was close and stale. The world around them was vast and wide—open sky, ice as far as the eye could see in all directions, nothing to obstruct their view of that boundless, frozen wonderland. But they began to feel claustrophobic. They felt smothered by the ice, as if it were not only compressing the sides of their ship, but constricting their throats, and the breath in their lungs.

“How long will⁵⁷ this continue?” wrote McKinlay. “This . . . inactivity is becoming unbearable. The ice even reflects the general state of affairs; there is not the slightest sign of movement in it. The small patches of open water have frozen up & all is as still & quiet as death. In the minds of all is the unuttered question, ‘When will things change?’ Will the change come soon? If not, ours will be a tame start; hard luck to be stuck thus early. But hope springs—.”

THE WEATHER AND THE ICE conditions were growing worse every day. It was too late in the season, too late in the year to hope for a clear passage. Even Stefansson had to acknowledge this. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind now that they would be imprisoned by the ice for the winter.

Everyone was aware of the hopelessness of the situation, but no one knew exactly what it meant for them or for the expedition, nor did they know what they could expect. They were not afraid, but the wait and the uncertainty were unsettling. On August 31, Bartlett and Mamen had a quiet talk on the ice about it all, just the two of them. Everyone else remained confined to the ship. The sky lit up briefly that night with the first auroral display they had seen. But it was very faint, just an ephemeral glimpse of color in all of that whiteness.

THE ESKIMOS UNDERSTOOD the gravity of their situation in a way that the scientists and crew did not. Borrowing a piece of writing paper from McKinlay, Kataktovik wrote a letter to a friend in Point Barrow, even though he had no idea if it would ever be mailed. He missed his home, and more than that, he was frightened. He asked his friend to pray for him, that he might get out of this safely.

“When will you⁵⁸ prayer’s to God & Jesus help to me,” he said. “Please you tell my daughter’s good her, & like to my daughter very much. Sometime I sorry & sometime happy to God & Jesus if you like to believe to God & Jesus. I like to believe to God & Jesus very much.”