Hartley Burr Alexander

The Last Voyage of the Karluk, Flagship of Vilhjalmar Stefansson's Canadian Arctic Expedition of 1913-16 Hartley Burr Alexander

CHAPTER I THE EXPEDITION AND ITS OBJECTS We did not all come back. Fifteen months after the Karluk, flagship of Vilh j almar Stefanssons Canadian Arctic Expedi- tion, steamed out of the navy yard at Esquimault, British Columbia, the United States revenue cutter, Bear, that perennial Good Samaritan of the Arctic, which thirty years before had been one of the ships to rescue the survivors of the Greely Ex- pedition from Cape Sabine, brought nine of us back again to Esquimault-nine white men out of the twenty, who, with two Eskimo men, an Eskimo woman and her two little girls and a Hack cat comprised the ships company when she began her westward drift along the northesn coast of AIaska on the twenty-third of September, 1913. Years of sealing in the waters about Newfoundland and of Arctic voyaging and ice-travel with Peary had given me a variety of experience to fall back upon by way of comparison the events of those Gf- teen months, I must say, justified the prophecy that I made in a letter to a Boston hiend, just before we left Esquimault This will have the north Pole trip beaten to a frazzle...