Will to Live: Dispatches from the Edge of Survival (22 page)

Chapter 11 - Top of the World

IN
1913
, ONLY WEEKS INTO A HIGHLY TOUTED ARCTIC EXPEDITION,
THE KARLUK
BECAME CEMENTED IN THE UNYIELDING GRIP OF A
MASSIVE ICE FLOE.
FOR MONTHS, THE
KARLUK
AND HER CREW FLOATED HELPLESSLY THROUGH FRIGID WATERS, WAITING FOR THE INEVITABLE FORCE OF THE ICE TO
CRUSH
THE OVERMATCHED VESSEL AND SET THEM ADRIFT IN ONE OF THE MOST
INHOSPITABLE
PLACES ON EARTH. ONLY FOURTEEN WOULD LIVE TO TELL THE
HORRIFIC TALE
OF WHAT HAPPENED IN THE MONTHS TO COME.

Vilhjalmur Stefansson, a Canadian born of Icelandic parents, is often considered one of the towering figures in the annals of arctic exploration. By 1913, he had already made two wildly successful ventures to the north. He lived off the land with Inuit people during the winter of 1906–07, and in 1910 discovered a group of Inuit—then called the “blond Eskimos”—who had never before encountered a white man. His latest venture, the Canadian Arctic Expedition, which was charged with exploring the area west of the Parry Archipelago on behalf of the Canadian government, was supposed to be his crowning achievement. It was anything but.

The trip seemed doomed from the start. As Magnus Magnusson so brilliantly states in the foreword to William Laird McKinlay’s book,
Karluk: The Great Untold Story of Arctic Exploration and Survival,
the expedition was “ill-conceived, carelessly planned, badly organized, haphazardly manned, and almost totally lacking in leadership.” Of all the survival stories I’ve come to know, from the smallest solo journey to grand expeditions, this one is the king of the hill when it comes to unorganized, poorly planned, misguided adventures.

McKinlay’s first hint of impending doom should have come when he was asked to be part of the
Karluk
’s scientific team without ever having met the leader of the expedition, Stefansson. In the world of polar exploration, this would be a huge red flag. Invariably, crew members would have had to endure a series of interviews to determine their suitability for the hardships ahead. McKinlay, a twenty-four-year-old Scottish math teacher who had never been to sea, received his appointment via telegram.

But McKinlay was young and adventurous, and despite the fact that he was given a mere seventeen hours to outfit himself for a journey to the top of the world—a monumental task by today’s standards, let alone in 1913—he soon found himself on a ship bound for Canada.

McKinlay’s rushed journey across the Atlantic was indicative of the entire expedition. From the minute he arrived in Victoria, British Columbia, the departure point of the expedition, McKinlay noted the uneasy, frenzied air that seemed to envelop the preparations for the voyage. Even the captain of the
Karluk,
a Newfoundlander named Bob Bartlett, was uncomfortable with the ship he was meant to command.

The
Karluk
was an old and largely underpowered ship that had started its life as an Aleutian fishing ship and been converted into a whaler in the 1890s. Although the
Karluk
had been reinforced prior to the journey north, Bartlett only accepted the mission under the assumption that he would not spend the winter in arctic waters. Stefansson did not seem as concerned: he did not arrive in Victoria until a mere three days before the
Karluk
and the expedition’s other two ships—the
Mary Sachs
and the
Alaska
—were scheduled to sail.

Perhaps Stefansson was comfortable enough in his choice of crew that he knew he could rely on them. Perhaps he was just so confident in his own famous skill level that he had grown complacent, or at least too casual about the organizational process. I’ve done this when putting together various adventures: life becomes too stressful, and the time to properly examine your team seems to run out. And besides, when you’ve done something so many times, it’s easy to believe you can fix problems as you go along. Such thinking can lead to fatal consequences when dealing with high adventures.

Equally critical to an expedition of such enthusiastic proportions is a strong, competent, and
available
leader. This was even more important as Stefansson’s crew prepared for what might have been several years in the Arctic, where life and death hang in delicate balance at the best of times. Yet Stefansson was hardly there.

Most of the people he had chosen for the expedition—crew members and scientific staff alike—had no ice experience whatsoever. Yet there was one characteristic that Stefansson could not seem to resist: they were available on short notice and would work cheaply for the chance at adventure.

Stefansson was the product of his own fame and had grown dangerously overconfident. In the years to come, he would go on to publish a book called
The Friendly Arctic,
where he essentially espoused the notion that survival north of the Arctic Circle was relatively easy. Yet, as the crew of the
Karluk
would learn, surviving the arctic winter—no matter how many supplies you may have with you—is never easy, and far from friendly.

Stefansson had a rather unique view of the importance of his expedition. He seemed to consider its scientific achievements—and perhaps the fame they would heap upon his shoulders—more important than the well-being of his men. Indeed, McKinlay and the others were well on their way north when Stefansson began sending telegrams proclaiming messages such as this one to the outside world:

. . . the attainment of the purposes of the expedition is more important than the bringing-back safe of the ship in which it sails. This means that while every reasonable precaution will be taken to safeguard the lives of the party, it is realised both by the backers of the expedition and the members of it, that even the lives of the party are secondary to the
accomplishment of the work!

I wonder how many would have signed on had they read that
before
they left. But they never got the chance. The
Karluk
departed Victoria on June 17, 1913. Three weeks later, the ships arrived in Nome, Alaska, where tons of supplies needed to be sorted and redistributed between the three ships before the journey north and east into Canadian waters.

The crew’s activity level in Nome reached a fevered pitch. But there was little rhyme or reason to their method of packing. No one seemed to be in charge. Crew members ended up on the wrong ships, separated from their scientific gear, unable to perform the tasks that had brought them there in the first place. Some ships carried excessive amounts of one vital supply, only to have none of another. With little organizational leadership from Stefansson, the crew began to sing a familiar tune: they would sort things out on Herschel Island. But Herschel Island was more than a thousand miles away, around the northern coast of North America. The
Karluk
would never make it.

Stefansson seemed to consider Herschel Island the beginning of the expedition, when in reality it was the halfway point. I have found myself in similar situations at the start of an expedition (while still at home, where supplies are easily found and organized), saying things like “We can pick it up at the little store by the put-in” or “We can get it on the way” or “We can lay things out by the lake and pack there.” What usually happens, though, is that you run out of time and never manage to stop to pick up whatever “it” is, and your packing by the lake becomes a mishmash of throwing things together. This is exactly what the members of the Stefansson expedition were experiencing, though on a much larger scale.

McKinlay wasn’t the only one to doubt Stefansson’s leadership. Several crew members sought a private meeting with their leader, during which they questioned his plans. Stefansson was not happy with their audacity, yet another indication that his ego had grown too large for comfort. It seems to me that Stefansson considered himself a turn-of-the-century rock star, and they had no right to question his methods.

Yet this type of arrogant attitude, combined with Stefansson’s haphazard approach to organizing, is a common refrain when it comes to disaster stories. The problem is that all too often you can’t find the time or the things you need once the adventure gets underway. Sorting things out and getting the proper supplies and equipment needs to be handled before you leave home. If not, there must be absolute certainty that you can get what you need later. It may not be a big deal when you are only missing a few spoons and forks; it’s a different story altogether when it’s gear that your life may depend upon.

Not surprisingly, the expedition was in complete disarray after Nome. Cargo was strewn everywhere and nothing could be found. Everything was hinging on Stefansson’s firm belief that it would all be sorted out on Herschel Island. The voyage was a disaster waiting to happen.

Early August saw the
Karluk
pass Point Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost point of the United States, and steam steadily toward Herschel Island. Yet travel in arctic waters is a fickle proposition at the best of times, and the ice pack the wooden-hulled ship had been weaving through for the past ten days began to close in. Captain Bartlett tried valiantly to steer her into open water—he was successful on a few brief occasions—but the power of the ice was too much. By August 12, the
Karluk
was stuck for good, about two hundred miles from her destination. The
Mary Sachs
and the
Alaska
suffered similar fates, becoming permanently locked in ice near the Alaska–Yukon boundary. Unlike the
Karluk,
however, these ships were built to make it through the winter unscathed.

The
Karluk
spent weeks stuck in the unmoving ice pack, which stretched from the ship to the mainland. The crew members were hobbled by boredom, but did their best to pass the time. They often ventured out onto the jumbled mass of ice to hunt birds and seals, fish through cracks in the ice, or simply admire the strange shapes and hues of the eerie landscape.

By mid-September, Stefansson announced that there was no way the expedition would be able to proceed any farther that year, and should prepare for winter on the ship. Apparently feigning concern about the amount of fresh meat on board, Stefansson also said that he had decided to walk across the ice to the mainland, where he could hunt caribou. Stefansson, along with a team of five, set out. They never returned to the ship.

Two days later, a vicious gale whipped up, breaking apart the massive floe that imprisoned the
Karluk.
The ship was still trapped, but in a smaller floe no longer attached to land, and was being swept away at a rate of thirty miles per day. McKinlay watched in horror as an ever-widening expanse of black arctic water separated the ship from its so-called leader. There were now twenty-five people on the
Karluk:
thirteen crew members, six scientists, John Hadley (an employee of the Cape Smythe Trading Company, whom Stefansson had recruited shortly after leaving Nome), and five Inuit guides (including two children).

For decades, people have questioned Stefansson’s decision to go ashore. Some say he knew the ship would eventually break away and he figured that to be stuck on the
Karluk
was to be stuck in a coffin. I’m not sure. He might simply have been trying to alleviate the intense boredom that characterized his life at the time. Either way, his excuse that the ship was running out of meat was transparently false: the
Karluk
’s
Inuit guides had killed plenty of seals and there was a substantial store of fresh meat on board.

With the
Karluk
gone, Stefansson modified his plans, though they were no less ambitious. After meeting up with the
Mary Sachs
and
Alaska,
he designated a southern party to spend the next three years in an arduous program of scientific discovery. For his own part, Stefansson led a northern party that would roam the Arctic for five years.

Before setting out, though, Stefansson did the right thing and informed Canadian government officials about the loss of the
Karluk.
Word soon spread around the globe, and newspapers near and far had a field day with Stefansson’s decision to continue with his own agenda after what they saw as a monumental tragedy. How could he carry on when twenty-five lives had seemingly been lost?

Well, we know Stefansson’s feelings on the topic: in the grand scheme of things, the acquisition of new scientific knowledge was worth the sacrifice of a couple dozen lives. Stefansson was even quoted as saying, “I could never see how any one can extol the sacrifice of a million lives for political progress, who condemns the sacrifice of a few dozen lives for scientific progress.” This was certainly Stefansson’s dark side, and one he had the responsibility to share with his crew before he signed them up. But he didn’t. As far as he was concerned, the
Karluk
was a part of history.

Consider the difference between Stefansson and a true leader of men, Ernest Shackleton, who is said to have placed the following newspaper advertisement before his legendary travels at the bottom of the world:

Men wanted for hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful, honor and recognition in case of success. Ernest Shackleton

Shackleton certainly wasn’t holding anything back from
his
men!

My good friend Gord Laco, a naval history expert, had this to say about the difference between Stefansson and Shackleton: “Stefansson was most certainly a different sort of leader. Shackleton made a practice of keeping the weakest, and sometimes the most troublesome, member of his crew as a tent-mate while on his incredible ice and sea journey. He also made a practice of bringing morning cocoa to his men personally and chatting a moment with each and every one of them. He wasn’t just being nice. . . .
With the choice of tent-mates he was keeping personal touch with his people’s condition and getting negative gossip first hand. With the morning cocoa routine he was doing the same thing but also making each and every man in the company feel he had a personal connection with their leader. And Shackleton knew very well how important his men’s perception of his own morale was to the strength and will to live of the whole crew.”