Will to Live: Dispatches from the Edge of Survival (24 page)

Clothing was a big concern for the crew. In Stefansson’s hurry to leave Nome, winter clothes were not evenly distributed between the three ships, so there was little of use on the
Karluk.
Luckily, Kuraluk’s wife—affectionately known as Auntie by the crew—was an excellent seamstress who worked tirelessly at making sealskin clothing from the supply of skins the hunters had provided. Unfortunately, the process was extremely labor intensive, and there was no way she would be able to outfit the entire crew before the
Karluk
was lost.

McKinlay and his mates did little to help her, as they thought the process too exacting to be properly undertaken by their untrained hands. That was a pathetic excuse. Here they were, staring squarely at spending a winter north of the Arctic Circle with inappropriate clothing, and they spent their time doing nothing in terms of long-term survival. The men were likely too old-fashioned in their thinking, and convinced themselves they
shouldn’t
do it. So they didn’t. All they needed to do was take the time to learn, and they had ample time on their hands. The captain should have assigned a group of men each week to the task. In fact, the only time they finally got their act together and started sewing was when the crack appeared at the side of the ship and they realized their days aboard the
Karluk
were numbered.

On January 10, a harsh, grating sound woke the crew and a shudder shook the ship. The cracks in the ice had widened and begun to move. Later that evening, the movement of the ice tore a hole in the side of the
Karluk
that nobody could repair.

With sinking inevitable, the crew mobilized quickly, removing every last useful item off the ship. By the afternoon of January 11, the
Karluk
was at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. The additional supplies taken off the ship were as follows:

Life at the so-called Shipwreck Camp proceeded much as it had on the ship, until January 25, when Captain Bartlett sent seven men with three sleds, eighteen dogs, and 1,200 pounds of supplies in search of Alaska’s Wrangel Island, which lay somewhere to the southeast. In the meantime, Bartlett also called for smaller parties of two and three men to travel behind the advance group, establishing a chain of supply caches toward Wrangel Island.

I think the captain’s decision to split the group up was a serious mistake. It’s one thing to leave people behind who are too sick or injured to travel, as in the case of Nando Parrado and his teammates in the Andes, but I think history has shown that, when you split up a large, healthy group, you are almost always asking for trouble. Why? You divide your reserves (even though they were convinced they had plenty), your strengths, and your expertise. Sure, you might cover more ground, but I believe that keeping a group together—whether it be in travel or in staying put—is the best thing to do unless you have no choice.

On February 3, three of the seven-man Wrangel Island party returned. The group had not yet reached its destination, but the trio believed the others were not too far off when they decided to return to Shipwreck Camp. The four others were never seen again. It was not until 1929 that a passing ship found the skeletons of the four men on a barren island known as Herald Island. What deprivations they suffered there can only be imagined.

The Arctic had begun to take its toll on the members of the
Karluk.
Shortly after the trio from the Wrangel Island party returned, four others decided to set out on their own. None from this group would survive.

Bartlett was very worried about the four Wrangel Island party members who had been left behind and sent a three-man team back in search of them. At the same time, he sent two other crew members on another caching trip. His various attempts at sending out small parties was unwise, and ultimately resulted in the needless loss of four men.

Yet it took a variety of failures for the captain to finally decide to move the whole group, which he did once the three-man team returned without having found the advance party. It helps illustrate that, as good a sea captain as Bartlett might have been, he had very little experience when it came to arctic survival. Was he the right man for the job? It’s something Stefansson should have considered.

The remaining seventeen survivors departed Shipwreck Camp on February 18, 1914, with four sleds, twenty-two dogs, and as many supplies as they could carry. They believed Wrangel Island to be some forty miles away, a distance they underestimated by at least half. I believe they would have been better off trying to determine exactly how far away the island was, then doubling that estimate and using that revised figure to be the true distance they would need to travel.

It wasn’t long before they realized that traveling over arctic sea ice is a hellish undertaking for inadequately outfitted people unaccustomed to the terrain. Yet through a combination of determination, luck, and the knowledge of their Inuit guides, the various parties made it to Icy Spit on Wrangel Island on March 12, two months after the
Karluk
originally sank. Their party of twenty-five had been reduced to seventeen and was showing the ill effects of the arduous journey they had undertaken from Shipwreck Camp.

To his credit, Bartlett immediately began making plans to go to the Siberian mainland, which he knew to be populated, to seek help. Although his original strategy had been for everyone to make the journey, the crossing from Shipwreck Camp to Wrangel Island had taken such a toll on them that he knew it was no longer viable. Bartlett decided to go alone, with one Inuit guide, Kataktovik. This was the first splitting of the group that actually made sense. It
was necessary, and it had to be a small, capable group that went.

But Bartlett made a huge mistake before he left: he failed to recognize the importance of strong leadership among the remaining survivors. To the contrary, he actually allowed them to split into four groups, each with an equal amount of provisions, to seek their own destiny. Although Bartlett appointed Chief Engineer John Munro to be in command after he left, he essentially left the group adrift and leaderless, which can be very dangerous in a survival situation. You can’t just arbitrarily make someone a leader and hope everyone else listens to him or her. Personality, strength of character, and actions in times of need must dictate the choice.

In retrospect, Bartlett was hot and cold as a leader. He made some good decisions and his fair share of bad ones as well. Prior to leaving, he had a long discussion with McKinlay, who, he hoped, would help ease the rising tensions among the survivors. It was a good choice, as McKinlay would prove to have the temperament for the job, but it vividly illustrates Bartlett’s lack of leadership acumen when it came to dealing with personalities, egos, and difficult circumstances.

Tensions began to rise almost immediately after Bartlett left. The camp was in disarray, many of the crew were sick and weak, and the survivors were beginning to realize that their stores of food were not as limitless as they had once imagined. Quarrels began to break out about the rationing of food; not surprisingly, Munro did little to help the situation.

In late March, assistant topographer Bjarne Mamen decided to move his group to a place called Rodger’s Harbor, on the south coast of the island, where Captain Bartlett had promised to meet the crew in mid-July. At around the same time, Munro took some men in search of the original advance party that had vanished after leaving Shipwreck Camp. The search proved fruitless.

The arctic days grew longer and longer, and the weather improved steadily. That didn’t stop a surprising number of the survivors from getting frostbite, which they continued to treat by rubbing snow on the affected area. It shouldn’t have happened as often as it did, especially given the large number of furs and other materials on hand. Again, this speaks to their lack of experience with the climate, as well as a general lack of care. I realize you can’t prevent all episodes of frostbite in this type of survival situation, and they would even have been prone to it in their state of poor nutrition, but they had both the materials (animal skins) and the expertise (their Inuit guides) at their disposal. They were simply not protecting themselves enough. At one point, a crew member’s big toe had to be amputated with a pair of tin shears—and no anesthetic!

McKinlay enjoyed the sunshine immensely, and was overjoyed on those days when he could leave his dark and squalid quarters and enjoy the fresh air. His sense of survival was reaching new heights, and while he may not have been the vocal leader of the survivors, he did his best to lead by action. He went to great pains to stave off monotony. Even when he was sick, he implemented a daily exercise routine. He also did his best to mend the rifts that sometimes grew between himself, an educated scientist and teacher, and the largely uncultivated crew. As he so aptly stated in his book, “When you’re sick, hungry, and freezing in the middle of the Arctic, it’s no time to put on airs.”

One thing that helped maintain the morale—and well-being—of the survivors were the fires they kept roaring on the shore of their camp. This helps illustrate one of the great misconceptions about the Arctic: that there is no wood. Quite to the contrary, I don’t know that I’ve ever set foot on an arctic shore where I haven’t found either driftwood—often from thousands of miles away—or old lumber from wrecked boats and Inuit hunting camps. You can actually get a great fire going in the middle of a treeless landscape.

Yet, as in many survival situations, the primary focus at Icy Spit was now food. The supplies they had brought from Shipwreck Camp had been almost continuously supplemented by the Inuit hunters, but game had grown scarce. In late April, Hadley had set out with Kuraluk in search of food.

Kuraluk returned in early May with one seal, and notified the others that Hadley was on a nearby ridge with three more in tow. When Hadley did not return, Munro did not immediately send anyone out to retrieve the remaining seals (which would likely have been eaten by polar bears anyway had they been left alone). Even when Hadley returned days later with only two-thirds of a seal remaining, Munro did nothing to address the fact that they all thought Hadley had simply gorged himself on seal. If lack of leadership is one of the greatest causes of poor group dynamics, then Icy Spit should be a case study. Consider Yossi Ghinsberg, who was smart enough to try to talk to his friends when tensions ran high during their Amazon trek. Munro, it seems, was afraid of confrontation.

What the group really needed was a Nando Parrado, someone willing to step up and take charge of the situation. Munro was not the one to do so, and nobody else filled the void. McKinlay was intelligent and motivated, but was viewed as an outsider by most of the rest of the seamen and was hampered by his meek disposition. Perhaps Stefansson’s decision to leave the group so many months before had taught them that it’s better to fend for yourself than worry about others.

Though the weather continued to improve, the condition of many of the survivors at Icy Spit worsened. Many were afflicted by an inexplicable swelling of their legs and arms, a condition we now know to be protein poisoning.

Interestingly, Stefansson would later point to the expedition’s vast stores of pemmican as the cause of the protein poisoning that afflicted so many of its members. Yet he never accepted any responsibility for the pemmican’s deficiencies. Clearly, he held a different view than did Admiral Robert Peary, who, in
Secrets of Polar Travel,
had this to say about pemmican: “Next to insistent, minute, personal attention to the building of his ship, the Polar explorer should give his personal, constant, and insistent attention to the making of his pemmican and should know that every batch of it packed for him is made of the proper material in the proper proportion and in accordance with his specification.”