Loss of The Karluk and Rescue of Survivors
Further information: Voyage of the KarlukStefansson organized and directed the Canadian Arctic Expedition 1913-1916 to explore the regions west of Parry Archipelago for the Government of Canada. Three ships, the Karluk, the Mary Sachs, and the Alaska were employed.
Stefansson left the main ship, the Karluk, when it became stuck in the ice in August/September 1913. Stefansson's explanation was that he and five other expedition members left to go hunting to provide fresh meat for the crew. However, William Laird McKinley and others left on the ship suspected that he left deliberately, anticipating that the ship would be carried off by moving ice, as indeed happened. The ship, with Captain Robert Bartlett of Newfoundland and 24 other expedition members aboard, drifted westward with the ice and was eventually crushed. It sank on January 11, 1914. Four men made their way to Herald Island, but died there, possibly from carbon monoxide poisoning, before they could be rescued. Four other men, including Alistair Mackay who had been part of the Sir Ernest Shackleton's British Antarctic Expedition, tried reaching Wrangel Island on their own but perished. The remaining members of the expedition, under command of Captain Bartlett, made their way to Wrangel Island where three died. Bartlett and his Inuk hunter Kataktovik made their way across sea ice to Siberia to get help. Remaining survivors were picked up by the Canadian fishing schooner King & Winge and the U.S. revenue cutter Bear.
Stefansson resumed his explorations by sledge over the Arctic Ocean, here known as the Beaufort Sea, leaving Collinson Point, Alaska in April, 1914. A supporting sledge turned back 75 mi (121 km) offshore, but he and two men continued onward on one sledge, living largely by his rifle on polar game for 96 days until his party reached the Mary Sachs in the autumn. Stefansson continued exploring until 1918.
Read more about this topic: Vilhjalmur Stefansson
Famous quotes containing the words loss of the, loss of, loss, rescue and/or survivors:
“When a man laughs at his troubles he loses a good many friends. They never forgive the loss of their prerogative.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“One writes of scars healed, a loose parallel to the pathology of the skin, but there is no such thing in the life of an individual. There are open wounds, shrunk sometimes to the size of a pin-prick but wounds still. The marks of suffering are more comparable to the loss of a finger, or the sight of an eye. We may not miss them, either, for one minute in a year, but if we should there is nothing to be done about it.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“Faster, faster with no loss of ritual
Stiff minions without banners, a steady guard ...”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“I positively like the sense, when I dine out, and stoop to rescue a falling handkerchief, that I am not going to rub my shoulder against a heart. What are hearts doing on sleeves?”
—Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1879–1944)
“I believe that all the survivors are mad. One time or another their madness will explode. You cannot absorb that much madness and not be influenced by it. That is why the children of survivors are so tragic. I see them in school. They don’t know how to handle their parents. They see that their parents are traumatized: they scream and don’t react normally.”
—Elie Wiesel (b. 1928)