THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 383 



of the Karluk crew. He formed the opinion that eight of them might ■ 

 still be alive and when he got home initiated the plan of a rescue ex- 

 pedition, having in view both the eight missing men of the Karluk 

 and our party of three. 



The connection of the eight with the rest of the Karluk party had 

 been severed near Wrangel Island. Captain Theodore Pedersen 

 had through the press advanced the view, concurred in by many, 

 that if we were alive we must be on the ice near the place where 

 the missing men of the Karluk had last been seen. Pedersen as- 

 sumed a strong westward drift of the ice north of Alaska and had in 

 mind the common report, doubtless reliable, that in the spring 

 after we left shore, especially in May and June, there had been 

 enough open water north of Alaska to prevent our landing there. 

 His argument was based like the rest on the same false assumption 

 that we had intended coming back to Alaska. I quite agree that 

 had we tried to do so we should either have lost our lives in a too 

 hazardous attempt to get ashore over rapidly moving ice made 

 treacherous by summer heat, or else, as he said, we should have 

 been swept west past Point Barrow. 



McConnell's rescue plan made use of similar reasoning. Air- 

 planes were to be employed. A ship would take the airplanes to the 

 north coast of Alaska and they would make reconnoitering flights 

 of seventy-five or a hundred miles from shore, then twenty-five or 

 fifty miles at right angles to the outward course and then back 

 to shore, landing twenty-five or fifty miles east or west of the 

 starting point. Each trip would be a non-stop flight resulting, he 

 considered, in the search of from two thousand to five thousand 

 square miles of ice and in our rescue if we were on this ice. All this 

 was to be done in July to September, 1915. 



The rescue plan met discouragement of several sorts. Most 

 people were sure of the death of all eleven of us and deprecated the 

 "further useless risk of life." Many who got their opinions from 

 airplane propaganda in the newspapers thought the flying part 

 feasible. But sober authorities knew the airplane was not then up 

 to the stories of the press agents. Orville Wright, while expressing 

 no opinion on the practicability of the rest of the plan and having 

 full sympathy with any attempt to rescue men in distress, em- 

 phasized the impracticability of the airplane part. 



But most decisive (and most pleasing to me when I learned it) 

 was the opposition of the Canadian Department of Naval Service. 



Before our sailing I had discussed with the Minister of Naval 

 Service, Mr. Hazen, now Sir Douglas Hazen, the question of rescue 



