September 1914

There were twenty¹ white men on board the ‘Karluk’ when she began drifting with the great ice pack north of Alaska. Nine survive to tell the story.

—ERNEST F. CHAFE, MESS ROOM BOY

McKinlay stood atop the lookout point, scanning the hori-zon for a sign—of moving ice, of open water, of a ship. September had begun with sunshine, which was quickly obliterated by heavy snow, thick fog, and chilling winds. Now hunger wasn’t their only problem. It was already turning bitterly cold and they weren’t prepared for it. Auntie worked at repairing their clothes and creating new ones out of what scant materials she had, and the men helped when they could. But there was little they could do to improve the state of their clothing, which was filthy, thin, and tattered. Still, all hands worked at sorting boots, stockings, and skins and doing the best they could to ready their clothes for winter.

It was too cold now to dig for roots. There was too much open water to go duck hunting; the ducks were now migrating to the bigger space of water, away from the island. The men saw seals out on the ice, but were unable to reach them as well. Hadley sat for hours by holes in the ice, waiting for a seal or an uguruk, but always returned to camp empty-handed. Kuraluk set fox traps, and Williamson wasted thirteen cartridges trying to shoot the crafty little devils, which watched him with what appeared to be great amusement before disappearing unharmed. The men prayed the fox traps would work; they couldn’t afford to waste any more ammunition.

Hadley, McKinlay, and the Eskimos were engaging in a healthy competition to see who could save the most food for winter. Kuraluk and his family seemed “bent on outdoing ²Hadley and I in the saving line,” wrote McKinlay, “but Hadley swears he won’t be beaten by a native, even when it comes to saving meat.”

On September 2, Hadley and McKinlay walked just outside of camp to survey the game and ice conditions, neither of which looked good, although there was some open water to be seen in the distance and the ice seemed to be drifting. It was too late in the season, however, for this to inspire hope in the men. After all, they had been disappointed for too long. For two months, they had waited for a ship, expecting one to arrive any day. Now they figured there was no ship coming for them.

The people in Hadley’s tent rose every morning before 8:00 to hunt, to chop and pile wood, to forage for scurvy grass, to brace themselves for another miserable winter. Even Auntie and the girls were hunting daily, fishing for tomcod in cracks along the beach. The men in Williamson’s tent meanwhile slept until the afternoon, showing their faces around 2:30 P.M. or so, and spending more and more of their time in the tent. They kept to themselves even more than usual and gave little help around camp. It was worrisome, but there was nothing McKinlay or Hadley could do to change their behavior.

On September 5, Kuraluk caught a young fox in one of his traps, and Hadley’s tent made a small meal of it for supper that night. The meat was tender and tasty, although Hadley told McKinlay that foxes were generally eaten only out of desperation, since the meat was so “rank.” But they were desperate, and the meat tasted wonderful.

By the next morning, that meal of fresh meat was already a distant memory. On September 6, Hadley, McKinlay, and the Eskimos were forced to eat breakfast from their winter stores. All of their food was gone now except for the scraps they had saved for the coming months. Miraculously, Hadley and Kuraluk returned from the day’s hunt with a seal. It was a glorious sight, and that evening they feasted on seal meat and blubber, gorging themselves on meat and blood soup. Tomorrow they would be back on short rations, trying to save every scrap of this seal for the winter. Who knew if or when they would find more meat?

They stayed up later than usual that night, discussing their situation, not that there was anything new to say. They had exhausted the game in this barren region. There was nothing left for them at Cape Waring, and no reason to stay. They decided the only thing to do was move up the north coast to a new winter site. They would build a hut out of driftwood and pray that there was still some wildlife left on the island. They would pack up camp and leave for the new location tomorrow. There, they would build their house and prepare for the winter they now thought they would have to face.

AT RODGER’S HARBOUR, Munro, Maurer, and Templeman could hear the walrus bellowing, the low, mournful cries thundering and booming like a series of foghorns. The sound was grim, disturbing, and continuous, the men helpless to do anything about the noise or the walrus.

There was heavy ice off the coast, but a cold wind had started blowing. They had been hoping for such a wind to buffet the ice and open the way for a ship to come. Still, they didn’t dare let themselves dream that a ship could reach them this late in the season.

They talked at night of pies and other foods they craved, and of their friends back home. On September 2, they ran out of the sealskins they had been living on, but later that day they were lucky enough to get three foxes. The next day, by some miracle, they were able to kill three more.

They rationed the food and trusted in the Lord, who, they knew, must be providing for them and who would not see them lost. They were counting the days, hoping that each one would bring a ship. They encouraged each other as much as they could, but it was little consolation. Their minds were strained past the breaking point and their bodies were wasting away.

But as Munro said, “Every cloud has ³a silver lining.” On September 6, he wrote in his diary, “The Lord had ⁴been good to us.”

THE BEAR WAS STILL LOADING coal on September 3 when Bartlett lunched with Japhet Linderberg, a millionaire mine owner and operator who had shown him so much kindness when the Karluk had stopped in Nome the previous July. Bartlett was on edge, after having been forced to turn back from Wrangel Island, and now having to wait five days already while they took on more coal. The wait was agonizing, and the strain showed in his face.

Linderberg was so moved by this that he announced to Bartlett that he would send the ship Corwin to Wrangel Island to fetch the men. A former revenue cutter, the Corwin had traveled to Wrangel in the 1880s, and now Linderberg was willing to put down twenty thousand dollars of his own money to outfit and crew her and send her up there. Bartlett was greatly touched by the offer. So many people from so many parts of the world had shown a fervent interest in his band of castaways, and he was grateful to be reminded that he wasn’t alone in the fight to save them.

He chanced upon Olaf Swenson, owner of the King and Winge, later that same day in a popular Nome meeting spot. Bartlett liked Swenson. He was a tall, personable man with a kind face. The King and Winge was about to embark on a walrus hunting and trading trip up the Siberian coast, and Bartlett asked Swenson—should he pass by the vicinity of Wrangel Island—to stop there if possible and search for the men of the Karluk. Swenson promised the captain he would.

Still, Bartlett’s mind did not rest easier. Before returning to the Bear, he sent a wire to Ottawa to keep the Canadian government officials apprised of the situation, and to let them know that both the Corwin and the King and Winge would be looking for his men.

On Friday, September 4, the Bear at last left Nome. Bartlett stood at her bow, transfixed, his eyes focused on the sprawling ocean before them. On September 7, the water was smooth and calm, almost unnervingly placid. Bartlett knew that meant ice up ahead. They should run across it before too long. Indeed, by 7:45 P.M., they saw the first signs of ice, and soon they could see it stretching before them, vast and tightly packed, the whiteness of it overpowering.

They had no choice. They would have to cut the engine and stop there, on the edge of the ice pack, until daylight came. They were just 131 miles from Rodger’s Harbour, but to Bartlett, they might as well have been on the other side of the world.

ON THE THIRD DAY AT SEA, the men of the King and Winge saw the mountains. The peaks rose up in the distance, out of the ice, sharp and malevolent. There was nothing beautiful or graceful about them. They were stark, jagged, colorless, and forbidding. It was the most isolated, barren land they had ever seen. Draped in mist, the mountains seemed encased by the mighty wind, which blew in white, translucent waves.

The most disturbing factor, though, was the ice. Immense, sprawling ice fields filled the horizon, shimmering with myriad hues of blue, green, and white. Some of the ice grew into massive pressure ridges, looming over the island, higher than the ship’s mast. One hundred, two hundred feet high—they were magnificent, and daunting. These ice mountains were intimidating, making each man suddenly aware of how small and insignificant he was.

In the middle of it all, protected and remote, sat Wrangel Island. It was a lonely, unreachable fortress. And somewhere, on her shores, were one woman, two children, and twenty men. Or sixteen men. Or twelve men. Or fewer. No one could be sure. They didn’t know what they would find if they ever made it through. They were almost afraid to know. Had any survived? What if no one was there to greet them when they reached the island? What if the ship broke through the ice, only to discover they had perished weeks ago waiting for help to come?

The ice pack was dense and forbidding, hugging the shoreline protectively for miles and miles. The ice was loose, the ice was thick, the ice shifted and grew around them. While that tough little schooner fought her way through the pack, there was time to reflect on what the men of the Karluk must have lived through these past several months.

The King and Winge crept along the coastline, Swenson, and the rest of the men straining their eyes for any sign of life. Swenson was a man of his word. He had promised Bartlett in Nome that he would look for his men, and that was exactly what he was doing. He had delayed his hunting and trading work and had purchased an umiak and hired fifteen Eskimos for the journey to Wrangel Island. He ordered his engineer to get as much speed out of the little schooner as he could, and then pointed her nose northward. Burt McConnell had been hitching a ride from Point Barrow to Nome on the schooner and, at the last minute, asked to join Swenson on his mission. Now they stood on deck, staring in the direction of Wrangel Island.

Between gaps in the ice cliffs, they could see the land beyond. It was barren and still. There seemed to be nothing living on its banks, neither man nor animal. All the while, the ship pulled closer to shore, and yet they still saw nothing. They tried not to be disheartened. Bartlett had said his men would be at Rodger’s Harbour, where he had instructed them to wait, but they could have been further inland, or at their original Shore Camp, on the other side of the island.

The ship pressed on. Swenson and McConnell took turns looking through the glasses. Stealthily, slowly, they drew closer to the island. Suddenly, the lookout in the crow’s nest shouted out. It was a tent. Barely standing, but it was a tent. They strained for a view of it, but they had trouble seeing past the great pressure ridges of ice.

Then a break, and there it was, dilapidated and torn, a flimsy summer tent that couldn’t have been sufficient shelter for anyone in this bitter cold and wind. They had hoped to find twenty-three people on this island, yet the only sign of life they saw was one four-man tent. There were no sleds, no dogs.

And then they caught sight of something jutting out of the island landscape, just beyond the tent, that made their hearts stop. A crude, wooden cross, plain and strong, was planted in the ground, and just behind it stood a flagpole. This was shocking proof of life—and death.

They were half a mile away from shore when Captain Jochimsen fired off rockets and started blowing the ship’s whistle. He blew it repeatedly, at intervals, pausing while the ship’s entire company watched; still, no one appeared. Their hearts sank.

Again, the captain blew the whistle, and again all waited. Finally, they saw the tent flap open and a man emerge, on his hands and knees.

They were just offshore now and Swenson dropped anchor. Aboard the King and Winge, they were elated. But on the island, the man showed no signs of joy or excitement. He didn’t wave his arms and shout, even though they could tell by the direction of his gaze that he saw them. He didn’t run up and down the beach to attract their attention. Instead, he crouched like an animal and watched. And then slowly he rose to his feet, straightening himself to his full height, and stood beside the tent, gazing in their direction. More than once, he brushed his hands across his eyes as if to clear away something that might be there, deceiving him, altering his vision.

They continued to sound the horn and all on deck began to wave to him. He did not respond and, suddenly, he turned and crawled back into the tent. His behavior was mystifying. The poor fellow was probably out of his mind.

But as quickly as he disappeared, the man returned, holding something in his hands. As they watched, he walked over to the flagpole, his gait slow and lumbering, and raised the British flag to half-mast.

The flag seemed to confirm what the cross had already suggested. Was it possible that this man was the only survivor, that there, at the foot of that cross, lay the rest of the Karluk’s company?

This question was quickly answered as two more men appeared from the tent. The three of them stood together and watched the ship. Still, no one waved, no one shouted, no one jumped for joy. They were clearly stunned and disbelieving. Swenson and the rest of his party expected more men to come then, but none did.

When the ship was two hundred yards from shore, the first mate and his crew launched the umiak. Swenson and McConnell climbed aboard.

When they were one hundred yards from shore, one of the men from the tent started toward them, carrying something. Finally, they thought, he knows he is saved. But their smiles disappeared as they saw the object the man was carrying. It was a rifle, and as he walked toward them, he loaded the magazine with cartridges.

The Eskimos in the umiak were terrified. One of them pointed to his forehead, shaking, and said in broken English, “That man long ⁵time not much eat. Him crazy.. . .”

In Inuit, Swenson spoke to their fears. His words and voice were soothing and the Eskimos quieted, continuing to paddle. But they were all puzzled and alarmed by the man’s behavior. What if this man was mad? What if he didn’t understand that they were there to help him?

They landed the umiak and stayed close together as they started toward the castaways. They passed over the most desolate of landscapes, the earth gray and dreary, with patches of ice and snow here and there covering the otherwise empty ground. It seemed impossible that anything could live in this cold, barren place.

Time, hardship, exposure, and famine had made each of the men unrecognizable. McConnell tried to glimpse a familiar mannerism or feature in each, anything that would help him identify them. They could have been any of the men he last saw aboard the Karluk, nearly one year ago. They could have been strangers.

The man with the rifle met them halfway to the tent. The others stood several feet behind, waiting. The man’s hair was wild and matted, and it streamed down over his eyes. His grimy face was streaked and furrowed with lines and wrinkles. He seemed to be about forty years old. His clothes, which he had lived in and slept in for the past six months, were in rags, begrimed and stinking with seal oil, blood, and dirt. His full, tangled beard hid the dark hollows of his cheeks, but his eyes shone through above, speaking of great suffering. He was ten feet from McConnell, and he was unrecognizable.

The man stepped forward to Swenson with outstretched hand. “I don’t know ⁶who you are,” he said, “but I’m mighty glad to see you all.”

It was only after hearing his voice that McConnell knew who he was. He never would have known him otherwise—chief engineer John Munro. He wasn’t yet forty, but he looked forty, and he had lost at least thirty pounds since McConnell had seen him last.

He lay down the rifle and hugged McConnell. “How did you ⁷get here and where is Mr. Stefansson? Did Captain Bartlett reach shore all right? How is he, and where?”

McConnell told him briefly that Bartlett had reached Siberia in May and that Stefansson was adrift on the ice somewhere north of the Canadian boundary.

Bartlett had won through. Munro smiled. His lips were cracked and white.

The other two men from the tent were approaching, slowly, cautiously. Munro leaned in toward Swenson. “Have you a ⁸doctor aboard?”

“You don’t need a doctor,” Swenson replied. “What you need is a cook, and we have a first-class one. Hurry and get your things together, and we will go aboard and have breakfast.”

“Breakfast,” Munro echoed. It had been such a long time.

Swenson and McConnell summoned up their courage then to ask Munro the question they were most afraid of asking, but the one they most needed to ask. How many of the expedition were left?

Twelve.

Swenson and McConnell sighed with relief that others were alive, and with grief that eleven were dead.

The remaining nine were camped at Cape Waring, about forty miles east of Rodger’s Harbour. Last Munro knew, they were all well.

He pointed then to the cross that marked the nearby grave. Mamen and Malloch had died in the spring.

One of the other two men approached the rescuers now while the third man hung back. The second man was weak and emaciated. He looked as if he might lose the ability to stand or walk at any moment. McConnell didn’t recognize him and it was only when Munro spoke his name that he knew who he was. Fred Maurer. Even after McConnell knew his identity, he couldn’t believe it. The strong, intense young man he had known a year ago, and the frail creature standing before him now could not be the same man. Maurer smiled, but it was obvious that to talk would have been a great exertion, so they didn’t press him.

The last man stepped forward then, gaunt and extremely pale. He was a little fellow, high-strung and jittery. He began babbling and it didn’t take long for them to realize that the man was speaking gibberish. He was clearly on the verge of a nervous breakdown, so the men kept their conversation light and general, avoiding any discussion of the pain these men had suffered or the tragedies they had endured. McConnell recognized Templeman without Munro’s guidance.

The crew from the King and Winge helped Munro, Maurer, and Templeman gather their few belongings. They left the tent standing as a beacon and McConnell sat inside and wrote a message for any vessel that might come after them. It was cold in the tent and dirty, and through the holes that riddled its sides, he could glimpse the pale Arctic sky. The remains of the food supply lay just outside, within reach, so that the men could crawl to it if they had to. It was a pitiful sight—empty pemmican cans; three or four arctic fox carcasses picked clean; and a few drops of seal oil.

They had only twelve cartridges of ammunition left, Munro had told him. After that, they did not know what they would do to sustain themselves. They had given up hope of ever being rescued.

McConnell left the tent hurriedly, tying the note to the tent pole and fastening the flap so snow would not drift in.

HE HAD BEEN AWAKENED by the steam whistle. At first, Maurer lay in his bed, listening for the sound, afraid to trust his ears. And then, clearly, the drone of a ship’s horn, and he was out of his bunk, crawling out of the tent on his hands and knees.

He had stood shakily and rubbed his eyes to clear them, not trusting them any more than he did his ears. Was it an illusion? Or was he really seeing a ship? It sat a quarter of a mile offshore, the American flag flying proudly from its deck.

It took a while to find his voice and then to find the words, but eventually he was able to call out to Munro and Templeman. “The ship is⁹ here.”

The ship is here.

Maurer had weighed 165 pounds when he joined the Canadian Arctic Expedition and sailed from Esquimalt in June of 1913. Now, in this September of 1914, he weighed only 125 pounds. The skin was taut over his cheekbones, his piercing eyes made more intense by the shadowed lines of his face. He was all angles and bones, his flesh thin and pale underneath the layers of dirt.

There came an umiak over the side of the ship, and the men with her, and there were the men rowing toward them now. The American flag was waving, her colors brilliant against the great whiteness of that northern world. It was the first time he had seen the flag in fourteen months, and he thought it could only be described as “transcendentally resplendent.”¹⁰

Maurer, Chafe, and Templeman had invited their rescuers to have tea with them, but Swenson and the others wouldn’t hear of it. “No, we want ¹¹you to come aboard,” they said, “we have better stuff than that aboard.”

They ran the Canadian flag down the flagpole and took it with them. The wooden cross was left standing over the grave of Mamen and Malloch, the only mark to signify forever the “resting place of¹² our brave comrades,” said Maurer.

Leaving their camp and the island was bittersweet. Maurer had been prepared for the elation, but not for the sadness and the great hollowness he felt as well. This was a joyous occasion—the most wonderful thing that could ever have happened—the thing they had been wishing for and praying for, for so many months.

Maurer carried the Bible his mother had given him and gave thanks to God as he turned his back forever on Rodger’s Harbour. But he couldn’t help feeling, as he was escorted to the umiak, and then as he set foot on the deck of the King and Winge, that a part of him was buried out there, too.

THEY HAD GIVEN UP HOPE of being rescued long ago, Munro told them again over a meal of soft-boiled eggs, toast, cereal, and coffee. They were now aboard ship, consuming quarts of coffee, with heaping spoonfuls of sugar and condensed milk in each cup. The King and Winge was on her way to Cape Waring to retrieve the rest of the Karluk’s men.

Swenson and McConnell sat with them while they ate their first meal, and afterward Munro, Maurer, and Templeman had their first baths in eight months. They were given a change of clothes, pulled from the shipboard “slop chest,” and when they were clean they barely recognized themselves or each other. They ate a second meal, barely an hour later. Ham, eggs, fried potatoes, cream of wheat, toast. “There was nothing ¹³we wanted but we got,” said Munro. Swenson and the rest of his men saw to it.

“Mr. Swenson, I ¹⁴want to ask a great favor of you,” Munro finally got up the courage to say. He looked sheepish. The words came, falteringly, softly. “For several months I have been dreaming of eating a whole can of condensed milk with a spoon.”

Maurer and Templeman then confessed to having the same craving. After all this time and all their suffering, the only thing they could think to ask for was a can of condensed milk.

Immediately, three cans and three spoons were brought out, one for each of the men. They ate eagerly and with great delight, relishing each mouthful, and devouring the condensed milk as if it were ice cream. Munro was barely able to finish his, it was so rich and he was so overcome.

AT FIRST LIGHT on September 7, McKinlay, Hadley, and the Eskimos started packing up camp in preparation for their move to the winter site. It was truly amazing how little it took to survive in their world.

Around 10:00 in the morning, Kuraluk slipped outside to find a piece of driftwood so that he could make for Hadley the spear he’d been promising him for weeks. Hadley was inside the tent, busy making fox traps, and McKinlay was trying to repair their stove, which had stopped working properly. It was only minutes later that McKinlay heard an excited cry. He knew it was the Eskimo, but couldn’t make out what he was saying.

Hadley had heard it, too. They stopped what they were doing and listened.

“Umiakpik kunno!” It was faint, but unmistakable. And again, “Umiakpik kunno!”¹⁵

Maybe a ship.

Hadley and McKinlay stumbled over each other out of the tent. “How we got ¹⁶out of our tent we do not yet know,” said McKinlay. Kuraluk was standing there, pointing to the east. McKinlay strained, but he didn’t see anything. He ducked back into the tent and came back with the field glasses. He trained them out to sea.

A ship. Their ship. A two-masted gasoline schooner, just four or five miles off to the east, at the edge of the ice that surrounded the island. From what he could tell, she was steaming northwest.

Hadley, McKinlay, and Kuraluk “raised a shout ¹⁷that must have scared all the seals in the Arctic Ocean,” wrote McKinlay. And then McKinlay raced over to Williamson’s tent. “The ship, Charlie, the ship!” he shouted, and Chafe quickly bandaged his lame foot and pulled on his boots so that he could hobble outside and join the others. Clam and Williamson had been down the beach collecting wood, but at the sound of the shouting, they rushed back to see what was happening.

They all stood there, shoulder to shoulder. It was too much to imagine that this ship was there to take them home. They had already resigned themselves to the fact that they would never be rescued, and it was easier for McKinlay to believe that she had gotten off course or been chasing walruses.

Suddenly, their hearts sank. She was hoisting her sails and seemed to be going past without stopping. Perhaps she was not a rescue ship. Instead, she might very well be up there walrus hunting. She might not even know they were there at all.

Frantically they ran toward the ship, shouting as loudly as they could. Hadley grabbed his revolver and started blazing away the precious ammunition. He aimed the gun into the air, firing at the sky, and quickly emptied the entire magazine. Kuraluk ran faster than any of them as they tried to head off the ship.

McKinlay had never run so hard in his life. He used every last ounce of his strength to run and shout. He screamed himself hoarse. The ground at Cape Waring was as thick with snow and ice as Rodger’s Harbour was barren, and he stumbled over his boots, but still kept going.

Then she lowered her sail and McKinlay stopped running. He stood transfixed. Around him, his fellow castaways did the same. As they watched, a party of men disembarked from the ship and began the long walk across the ice toward their beach.

The survivors shook hands with one another and then began to dance deliriously. These were the happiest moments of their lives, said Chafe. Auntie was there by now with the little girls, having just returned from up the beach with a pot of fish.

As much as they’d dreamed of rescue, none of them was prepared for that moment. It was so much like a dream that, not knowing what to do with themselves, they went back to their tents, cooked their catch, and had a feast. For so long, they had lived on instinct, and instinct now told them to eat and to not waste the food they had been lucky enough to find. Hadley’s tent traded some of the fish with Williamson’s tent in exchange for tea, and soon the entire population of Cape Waring was gathered around the fire, eating.

Their rescuers arrived in the middle of the meal, having traversed the nearly five-mile stretch of ice that had kept them from sailing any closer. They must have thought everyone there crazy to be sitting down to a lunch of fish when a ship filled with provisions awaited them.

They invited their rescuers to join them in the meal, but Swenson and the others politely declined. “No, thank you ¹⁸. . . we have dinner waiting for you aboard, so you had better not eat any of that truck.”

“Truck!” replied McKinlay, Hadley, Chafe, and the rest of them. “Why, if we could have had as good as that every day since we have come here, we would not have cared so much.”

The campsite was now chaos, as everyone rushed about, collecting their few possessions. There were two motion picture photographers who asked if the survivors would mind posing for their cameras. “Now that we¹⁹ know we are safe,” they said, “you can keep us here and take movies of us for a whole week.”

At the request of the photographers, the survivors paraded up and down the snow-covered ground and posed for them. They held up the puppies and the black kitten, who did not like being wakened from her morning nap, even to be rescued. Auntie and her two little girls stared stoically into the camera, and Kuraluk tried to avoid it altogether. McKinlay knew how pitiful all of them must have looked, with their hollow cheeks and sunken faces and their wild hair, not to mention their miserable clothing. But he paused and smiled for the camera, unable to hold back his joy. Finally, the cameramen gathered all of the survivors together and photographed the group of them. The men were beaming, their grubby faces shining with exhilaration. Hadley puffed away contentedly on a cigarette, savoring every drag of tobacco, while beside him McKinlay grinned from ear to ear. Clam stood next to him, his reserve melting at last, unable to hold back his smile or his tears. Auntie and Helen hung back, heads bowed, while Kuraluk clutched Mugpi as the tears streamed down his cheeks. Unashamedly, he wiped his eyes with open and obvious gratitude. “We’re alive now,²⁰ aren’t we?” Mugpi had said to him repeatedly, when he had doubted the most.

Afterward, McKinlay cleaned out his bunk, taking the few personal items that had survived shipwreck and ice and theft and hardships. He abandoned the rest, including his old clothing and furs.

They left the tents standing, and McConnell and McKinlay fixed notes to the poles in case anyone else should arrive, looking for the survivors. One by one, they did a last, thorough going-over of the tent and the camp. They were patient, calm, and meticulous. And then it was time to leave.

They were frail, but there was no reason they couldn’t walk the five miles to the ship unaided. It made for better pictures, though, if each one of the survivors had assistance, so each was supported by two men from the King and Winge. McKinlay walked across the ice for the last time, in a daze.

He talked with Olaf Swenson as he walked, his boots crunching in the snow. He used a walking stick and stopped every now and again to point out landmarks to Swenson.

From a distance, the abandoned tents seemed particularly forlorn. It was back to civilization now and all things familiar. Yet, at 1:30 P.M. on September 7, as they ascended the wooden ladder to the ship, McKinlay knew that his life would never be the same again. He was shaking as he climbed to the deck of the King and Winge. His feet didn’t know what it was to walk on something other than ice. He climbed, rung by rung, and someone was waiting at the top, extending a hand to pull him on board.

They were reunited with Munro and Maurer and Templeman, and McKinlay was glad to see them. The men of the King and Winge were euphoric. They crowded around the rescued party and slapped them on the backs and shook their hands and then wiped their own eyes. McKinlay and his comrades were taken aback. They had been so isolated from everything that was happening that they didn’t understand why these strangers exhibited such emotion, such joy and elation at their rescue. They didn’t know the world had been talking about them, and following their doomed journey, or that so many people cared. They had no idea that many had long ago given them up for dead.

They were told that almost all of Europe was at war: Germany, Russia, France, Belgium, Austria, Britain. This stunning news barely made an impact. As McKinlay said, “it didn’t mean ²¹a thing.” Compared to their rescue, war seemed to the people of the Karluk a small matter. Chafe wrote, “I don’t think ²²we would have cared if the whole world had been involved in war, now that we were saved from starving to death on that desolate Island.”

The starving men were offered food—real food—the kind they had dreamed of and talked about for months. Time and again, they had all imagined those first mouthfuls and how they would savor them. They had talked and dreamed of little else.

They sat down together and ate. McKinlay barely tasted anything. He ate mechanically—they all did—as if they had lost the ability to taste. The first thing McKinlay ate was bread and butter. It was toast—just plain, simple toast, slathered with butter. He consumed it without tasting it. After that, he devoured cereal and soft-boiled eggs and coffee with heaping spoonfuls of sugar and condensed milk. He barely tasted those either. He ate till he was full and then he stopped. And then he could hardly remember what he had just eaten.

That first day, when the castaways were not eating, they were smoking. There was an endless supply of tobacco and they feasted on it. Afterward, McKinlay soaked in a tub, washing as much of the months of grime off his body as he could. The water was black when he was finished, and he still wasn’t rid of the dirt.

Next, he had his first shave in eight months. He was startled as he looked at his reflection. He hadn’t seen himself since the Karluk went down. His hair was wild and long and his beard was full. The bath and shave gave him the first semblance of normalcy that he had felt in a long time.

As his beard fell away, exposing the sunken flesh beneath it, he could see the toll the months of hunger and sickness had taken. His cheeks were hollow and the circles under his eyes were dark.

Early that evening, he walked up on deck and watched the Arctic wasteland disappear into the dark horizon. One of the ship’s hands was standing at the rail with a pile of their sodden, tattered clothing, which he flung overboard. McKinlay watched as the threadbare shirts and trousers hit the ice and the water, and drifted away.

THEY ENJOYED ANOTHER hearty meal before going to bed and were told that the table would be left set and ready, should any of them feel like eating during the night. McKinlay and the others turned in, lying down on beds of skins, and tried to sleep, but sleep was impossible. After an hour or so, they returned to the table and spent the rest of the night drinking tea and coffee—as much as they could stand—and eating. They talked about Wrangel Island and all that had happened there, and then they began to talk about the present.

Later, it was almost impossible for any of them to remember what they talked about that night, or what they did, or what they ate, because, as McKinlay said, “my head was ²³not my own. Everything was unreal.” McKinlay lay down in the warm, clean bed again at 10:00, but was still unable to sleep. He rose once more and smoked the first pipe he had smoked in months. He lay down again, but quickly got up and smoked two cigarettes. He lay down again, but was soon back on his feet. In this way, he spent his first night aboard the rescue ship, back and forth between the chart house and the saloon, drinking coffee, eating “all sorts of ²⁴indigestibles until we could hardly move,” trying to sleep at intervals, but wide awake until breakfast time. And then he ate again, as much as he could.

“God bless the ²⁵7th of September!” wrote McKinlay in his journal. “God bless the King & Winge, her skipper & her crew!!!”

ON THE MORNING OF SEPTEMBER 8, the King and Winge headed toward Herald Island. After all, eight men were still unaccounted for: first mate Sandy Anderson; second mate Charles Barker; seamen John Brady, Edmund Golightly, and Stanley Morris; Dr. Alister Forbes Mackay; oceanographer James Murray; and anthropologist Henri Beuchat.

At last, the craggy mountain peaks of Herald Island could be seen through the field glasses, and then the giant ice cliffs, which circled her. All leads surrounding the island had closed, however, sealed with solid, forbidding ice. They traveled forty miles along the edge of the pack without finding a lead. There were no openings. Not even the adroit, determined King and Winge could subdue this ice. It formed a perfect prison around the land.

They circled the area for a good part of the morning, but the closest they could get was within forty miles. It was hard to imagine anyone breaking through to land, as vigorously protected as it was. McKinlay was horrified at the sight of that churning ice, the solid shelf behind it, the cliffs beyond that, and the rugged mountain peaks. Had Sandy and the others ever been able to reach land?

Reluctantly, Swenson gave the order, and the schooner turned to the southeast and headed for Nome. The men stood on deck, watching the jagged edges and white points of Herald Island disappear.

AT DAWN ON SEPTEMBER 8, the Bear steamed full speed ahead again. The ice around the ship was loose and maneuverable, although some distance away, on her port bow, they could see it was thicker and close-packed. They made fifty miles by afternoon, just seventy-five miles total from Wrangel Island. Bartlett was determined, this time, to make it through.

He had been working all morning in the chart room, and after lunch he returned to it. He was standing there looking out to sea when he saw a schooner dead ahead, running before the wind.

Bartlett grabbed a pair of field glasses and adjusted them to his eyes. It was the King and Winge. It was too soon for her to be coming back from her walrus trading. There could be only one of two explanations. Either she had broken her propeller and was taking advantage of the favoring wind to put for Alaska—or she had reached Wrangel Island.

After all this time, he could hardly dare to think the latter. He had tried again and again, and so had many others, but no one had been able to break through the ice mass to the island. Now, so late in the season, he could not imagine there was a chance in hell they had steamed through.

Bartlett stood, transfixed, as the little schooner drew closer. A number of men lined the deck, but it was impossible to see who they were. Finally, she hove to and he peered at the men aboard, hoping to spot a familiar face. There were one or two who looked vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t recognize them as any of his men.

Then he spotted McKinlay. He was emaciated and looking like the wild man of Borneo, but it was unmistakably McKinlay.

The rest of them fell in now—Munro and Chafe, and he thought he recognized Hadley as well. They were haggard, but he could identify them. There, too, were the Eskimos, and Helen was holding the cat—who was looking more fat and fit than the day they picked her up from the Esquimalt Naval Yard.

As the Bear pulled up alongside the King and Winge at 69 degrees 55'' north longitude, latitude 175 degrees 35'', Bartlett could read the emotion in the faces of his men. Nothing had prepared him for that moment—not the anguish he had suffered ever since leaving them on the island, not his fierce determination to reach them, not the months spent struggling to rescue them.

They gave Bartlett three hearty cheers when they saw him, and unable to contain their excitement, they began to shout their news to him. A boat was lowered from the Bear, and Bartlett was soon clambering over the side of the King and Winge, standing face to face with these men he had not seen since March.

In the six months since he had seen them last, there were many times when he had feared he would never lay eyes on them again. Now, as he stared at their ghastly, wasted faces, he was hit with emotion. None of these men had been given any survival training before joining this Arctic expedition. And none of them had had any experience with the Arctic. Most of them had never even been far from home.

Now here they stood, barely alive, survivors, all of them. They had endured, and it was a miracle.

As Bartlett stepped onto the deck of the tiny schooner, McKinlay, Munro, Hadley, and the rest of them rushed forward to greet him, eager to shake his hand and tell him their story. His great, horselike face was full of emotion as he shook their hands “as heartily as ²⁶ever men did,” according to McKinlay.

“All of you ²⁷here?” were the first words out of his mouth.

McKinlay stepped forward. “No, sir,²⁸” he answered. Bartlett studied the group, surveying each gaunt face. He did not see Dr. Mackay, Murray, Beuchat, or Morris. Nor did he see Sandy, Barker, Brady, and Golightly. He had prayed that they would somehow make it to the island. He had told both the Canadian government and the papers that he was confident of it. Now he wondered if he had only convinced himself because he wanted to believe it.

McKinlay took a breath and continued, “Malloch and Mamen and Breddy died on the island.”

This was a bitter and unexpected blow. Bartlett fell silent. There was nothing to say when three of the men he had seen to safety on Wrangel Island “had thus reached ²⁹safety only to die.” It was incomprehensible, and the most brutal, tragic loss he could imagine.

AFTERWARD, BARTLETT TRANSFERRED the survivors to the Bear, even though they were reluctant to leave the ship that had saved their lives. But Bartlett said the move was for their own good. The Bear had a doctor aboard, as well as clothing and other provisions Bartlett had on hand just for them.

Aboard the Bear, they lived in “luxury unqualified,”³⁰ according to McKinlay. They were treated to bunks made up with the finest sheets, the first they had slept in for over a year.

Williamson’s craggy face was permanently lined with grief, the signs of which would not fade, no matter how much distance he put between himself and the Arctic. Clam would be forever crippled. Chafe had lost his youthful spirit, and his young face, hanging above his bony neck and collarbone, had aged alarmingly. Munro’s eyes were troubled, his jaw clenched, the lines of his face revealing turmoil. Templeman’s stare was haunted and vacant.

The ship’s doctor examined and questioned each of them extensively. The mystery illness, he said, was nephritis, an inflammatory disease of the kidneys caused by too much protein and fat in the diet. The very pemmican that had been keeping them alive had also been killing them. As long as they had had biscuits, they were fine, but without the carbohydrates in the biscuits to balance their intake of protein, they were doomed. The fresh meat had been much better for them than the pemmican, but there had not been enough of it. The pemmican, when eaten by someone suffering from hypothermia, was even quicker to damage the kidneys. It was the pure pemmican diet that had killed Mamen and Malloch, and it was the pemmican that had made the rest of them so desperately ill. Before the expedition began, Stefansson had damned the purity tests and purchased the pemmican without having it analyzed. There was no way of knowing if the outcome would have been any different if he had. Years later, in a letter to Mamen’s family, McKinlay wrote, “I have clear ³¹evidence that it was he who was responsible for the faulty pemmican that was the cause of the tragedy.”

It was the first any of them had heard of the disease. They were lucky to have survived it, and the doctor pronounced them all in remarkably sound condition, considering all they had endured.

ON THE MORNING OF SEPTEMBER 9, the Bear sailed within ten miles of the northeast point of Herald Island. As far as they could see, there was no life onshore—no sign of Sandy and his men, no sign of Dr. Mackay and his party. The Bear carried no dogs, umiaks, or sleds, but even with these, they knew a trek to the island would be impossible, given the wretched condition of the ice. They had no choice but to accept that Sandy and the others were dead.

“It was as ³²certain as anything could be that both parties had long since perished,” said Bartlett, “but it was very hard for me to give them up, men with whom I had spent so many months, men with the future still before them.”

The Bear turned about, just as the King and Winge had been forced to turn around, and headed south toward home. On deck, they stood together, side by side—the first and second engineers, the mess room boy, the cook, the fireman, the seaman, the passenger, the Eskimos, and the scientist—and said good-bye to the Arctic.

ON SEPTEMBER 14, 1914, amid its coverage of the first major battles of World War I, the New York Times devoted an entire page to the news of the rescue. The men of the Karluk had been presumed dead long ago. Almost everyone, it seemed, had given up hope, quick to write it off as yet another Arctic tragedy. Even with the obvious prominence given to coverage of the war, international press attention was riveted on the rescue of the survivors of the twenty-five people who had sailed out of British Columbia on June 17, 1913, in search of an undiscovered Arctic continent.

When they reached Nome on September 13, Bartlett wanted to protect his men from the throng of people who had gathered to welcome them home. The banks were crowded with well-wishers, newspapermen, camera teams, and everyone else who had heard of their arrival. The whole of Nome seemed to have turned out to catch a glimpse of the men of the lost ship Karluk and their captain who had led them to safety.

Because of their weakened immune systems, Bartlett didn’t want to risk their going ashore after months of surviving on Wrangel Island; he feared they would catch the latest germ and be stricken with an illness from which they might not be strong enough to recover. Chafe and Clam were both under the doctor’s care for frostbite, and Templeman was slowly being nursed back to health. Some of the other men—McKinlay, among them—were still suffering from swollen legs and feet, for which the doctor had prescribed powders and ointments that would treat the men both internally and externally. McKinlay, Munro, and Hadley also were being troubled by badly swollen throats.

They were learning to wear shoes again, after all those months of wearing mukluks, and it was a painful and awkward adjustment. Bartlett would let them leave the ship in a few days, as soon as they had the chance to gain some strength back. In the meantime, he allowed Japhet Linderberg, photographer Ralph Lomen, the editor of the Nome Daily Nugget, and other Nome dignitaries to board the ship and shake the hands of the twelve survivors. Bartlett appointed McKinlay spokesman of the group, so it fell to him to tell their story. “We were questioned,³³” wrote McKinlay, “we were photographed a thousand & one times, we were offered the freedom of the town, we were invited to this, that, & the other thing; in short, we were made lions of.”

In June of 1913, a similar fuss had been made over the celebrated men of the Canadian Arctic Expedition as they embarked on their journey. Then, they were heroes because of all they promised and aspired to. Now, they were heroes for simply having survived.

From the moment the castaways had set foot on the King and Winge, Burt McConnell had been pressing them for an interview, anxious to write the story for the press. McConnell was already trying to take credit for a rescue that he had nothing to do with, and to sell the story of it to one of the newspapers with which Stefansson had a contract. Bartlett refused to let any of his men speak with McConnell, who quickly grew miffed. There were official reports to be made first, and private words for faraway loved ones. Besides, in Bartlett’s opinion, Burt McConnell only wanted to exploit these men for his own personal gain. McConnell followed them aboard the Bear, eager to telegraph the news of the rescue to Stefansson’s newspapers. But Bartlett beat him to it, sending his wire out the night before. McConnell was livid, but Bartlett didn’t care. The story belonged to his men, not to Stefansson, and certainly not to Stefansson’s former secretary.

WHILE THE BEAR LAY IN THE HARBOR at Nome, the fields of Europe exploded in battle. While the men of the Karluk had struggled to stay alive in the middle of the Arctic Ocean up at the top of the globe, the rest of the world had gone to war.

Somewhere, Dr. Mackay, Murray, Beuchat, and Morris were lying, frozen or dead, lost forever. And Sandy. His letter to Bartlett on February 1 was the last his comrades had ever heard of him. He and Barker and Brady and Golightly were never seen again. They were four young sailors simply trying to follow orders, just like the rest of the men whom Stefansson chose for his grand expedition and then left behind.

But McKinlay was among the living.

“I do not ³⁴know how or where to begin; indeed I know nothing just now,” began his letter home to his family. “My mind is so full and active that the result of its working is precisely the same as if it were empty. I am not going to tell you my story now, for you could only get scraps of it, and that would spoil things when I get home. You see I wish to have you all sit round me with staring eyes and mouths like to devour me, listening to my tale—how we lived, the feeds we had, and—more tragic!—those we did not have, the escapes I had, and so on, and so forth. I tell you, it’s a tale in a million! The one thing I wish this letter to do for me is to show you I am alive, and how much I am alive.”

He had joined the expedition with only a few weeks of meteorological training and a cursory knowledge of how to categorize Antarctic specimens. He did not know what the world held for him now. Perhaps he would go back to his job at Shawlands Academy, teaching mathematics and science, or perhaps he would join his native Scotsmen in the battle of World War I. The only thing he knew for certain was that the worst was over.

He continued his letter home in a firm, clear hand. “Just think of ³⁵it all of you—I am alive. And more than alive—I am living. None of you know what life is, nor will you ever know until you come as near losing it as we were. Think of it again; I am alive, and not lying on the pitiless Arctic floes or buried beneath the unfriendly soil of Wrangel Island. Think again, and know that of six scientists aboard the ‘Karluk,’ I alone remain. Think of it all, and thank God as I do that your son and brother has won through and will soon be among you to tell you a story the world has never heard.”