THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 69 



gram of the expedition was necessarily curtailed, I did not consider 

 that the lives of any of the crew were in danger,* for if the ship were 

 crushed during the winter the breaking would be so slow that they 

 would have plenty of time to put off on the ice all stores and equip- 

 ment necessary for a journey ashore. I placed special faith in the 

 skin-boat and pointed out that the greatest difficulty of the men 

 of the crushed Jeannette in getting ashore was due to the fact that 

 the boats they had to haul over the ice were very heavy and very 

 fragile,** while our skin-boat was less than one-quarter as heavy 

 and many times as strong, and in every way better adapted to the 

 use of men retreating towards land from a ship broken in the pack. 

 If the ship were lost in the dead of winter it would probably be 

 safe to leave without the skin-boat. In other words, there were 

 two safe methods of retreat: one carrying the boat along, and the 

 other abandoning it and going directly ashore with sledges, provid- 

 ing the break-up came when frost was severe enough for temporary 

 breaks in the thick old ice to be quickly mended by the formation 

 of young ice. Should the ship survive the winter and be broken up 

 the following summer, the danger to the lives of the crew would be 

 considerably increased. The ice then is more mobile, stores placed 

 upon it are more likely to be lost, and the journey ashore would 

 involve frequent launchings of the boat into water and pulling it 

 out again for crossing ice floes to the next stretch of open water. 



Regarding the prospects of the Karluk in general, then, I gave 

 it as my opinion that she might or might not survive, but that the 

 crew would be certain to get safely ashore if the wreck took place 

 in winter, and would have a good chance of getting ashore even if 

 it took place the coming summer. I mentioned that the eastern 

 part of the north coast of Asia is well supplied with food, for it is 

 a settled country with hospitable and well-provisioned reindeer- 

 herding or walrus-hunting natives and white traders scattered every- 

 where. If the Karluk were broken to the west of Barrow her crew 

 had this hospitable coast for retreat. 



As a prospectus of the coming season I reported the safety of 

 the Alaska and Mary Sachs at Collinson Point. After outfitting at 

 Cape Smythe I would proceed eastward by sledge along the coast. 

 Alfred Hopson, a boy of sixteen or seventeen brought up at Cape 



* Bartlett, aboard the Karluk, had the same feeling. "I felt sure, come 

 what might, we would get back in safety to civilization," he wrote two 

 years later, in recording his feelings while drifting in the ice. ("Last Voyage 

 of the Karluk," p. 50.) 



** "Voyage of the Jeannette," by Emma de Long, Boston, 1883. See 

 numerous references. 



