Letter from Allan R. Crawford to Vilhjalmur Stefansson, 6 September 1921

An island off the coast of Siberia, Russia. This 2,900-square-mile expanse has been claimed at various times by Canada and Russia. Wrangel never supported an Indigenous human population, but it was a refuge for polar explorers awaiting rescue. Others attempting to settle the Island died, undone by their naiveté and Anglo-American hubris.

Vilhjalmur Stefansson was born on November 3, 1879, in Arnes, Manitoba, Canada to Icelandic immigrants. In 1881, the family moved to North Dakota. Without a formal primary education Stefansson entered the University of North Dakota's preparatory department in 1898, but was expelled in 1902, for allegedly inciting a protest within the student body. He then enrolled at the University of Iowa from which he graduated with a B.A. in 1903. After a year of studying theology at the Harvard Divinity School he joined the Anglo-American Polar Expedition, which was under the auspices of Harvard and the University of Toronto, in 1906. In 1908, he participated in the Stefansson-Anderson Expedition, which was financed by the American Museum of Natural History and the Canadian government. The expedition took him to northern Alaska where for four years he explored the area on his way to Victoria Island where he planned to study an isolated group of Inuit who still used primitive tools and had strong Caucasian features. In 1913, he set out again on the Canadian Arctic Expedition which explored sea and islands north of Alaska and the Canadian mainland. Even though the expedition discovered Brock, Borden, Meighen and Lougheed Islands, it was overshadowed by the tragic sinking of one of the expedition's ships, the "Karluk," in pack ice and the subsequent deaths of many of its crew. It was also the last expedition Stefansson physically participated in as he began to focus his energy on the lucrative lecture circle and the writing of books on arctic subjects including "My Life with the Eskimo." In 1921, he organized the ill-fated Wrangel Island Expedition, the failure of which caused the death of all but one of its participants. In 1922, he began what was to become a lifelong project; the creation of a comprehensive polar library. In 1927, he participated in the Bellevue "Meat-Diet" experiment which required him to live on an all meat diet for one year. Being convinced of the benefits of such a diet, based on his experience living among the Eskimos earlier in his life, he continued to endorse and live by this diet even after completion of the experiment. From 1932-1954, Stefansson became an advisor on northern operations for Pan American Airways. He also performed a variety of jobs for the United States Government such as advisory work for the Coordinator of Information, authoring guide books and manuals on the arctic, as well as serving as a consultant on diet, clothing and other fields related to living in the arctic.

From 1937-1939, Stefansson was the president of the Explorers Club and in 1941, he married Evelyn Schwartz Baird who became his assistant as well as his wife. In 1946, he was contracted by the United States Office of Naval Research to create a comprehensive work on the arctic entitled the 'Encyclopedia Arctica.' Stefansson and dozens of other writers worked on the project for five years. However, the US government abruptly canceled the contract in 1951. In 1947, the Stefansson's moved to Vermont and Stefansson became an Arctic Consultant at Dartmouth College. He also sold his extensive arctic library to the college, but he and his wife remained involved in its upkeep.

Stefansson died of a stroke in Hanover, New Hampshire on August 26, 1962.

E. Lorne Knight was a member of the failed Stefansson Arctic Exploration and Development Company expedition to Wrangel Island in 1921. The diaries of Lorne Knight were picked up on Wrangel Island after the author's death in 1923. Much controversy surrounded the diaries because certain pages were marked up and/or removed by Harold Noice after his rescue expedition to Wrangel Island.

Employee of Alfred J.T. Taylor. Secretary-Treasurer of the Stefansson Arctic Exploration & Development Company, and the Combustion Engineering Company Limited, Toronto, Ontario.

Vice President of the Stefansson Artic Exploration and Development Company.
Managing Director of the Taylor Engineering Company.
Prominent engineering contractor and entrepreneur in British Columbia, Canada. Most famous for the Lion's Gate Bridge.

Businessman and co-founder of Nome, Alaska.

Employee of The Miner's and Merchant's Bank of Nome, Alaska, circa 1920.

Fred Maurer was third-in-command on the 1921 Wrangel Island Expedition. From New Philadelphia, Ohio, he was 28 at the start of the expedition. Before the Wrangel Island expedition, he worked as a deckhand on the Belvedere, a whaling ship; in 1906, he met Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who came aboard as the captain’s honored guest at Herschel Island (off the northern coast of Canada). Later, Maurer was hired as a fireman for Stefansson’s disastrous 1913-14 Canadian Arctic Expedition. The ship Karluk became trapped in an ice floe and later sank, stranding (and eventually killing) many; Maurer spent six months on Wrangel Island before being rescued. Later, Stefansson suggested he join the 1921 spring Chautauqua circuit, and Maurer became the opening act for Stefansson. That year, Stefansson asked Maurer to be a member of his second Wrangel Island expedition; Maurer immediately said yes. The team arrived on Wrangel Island on September 15, 1921, and over the following years suffered immensely, facing harsh Arctic conditions as resources ran dangerously low. On January 28, 1923, Maurer, along with Milton and Crawford, tried to cross the frozen Chukchi Sea to Siberia and travel some 90 miles to get help; they were never seen again.

Manager of the Golovin Fishing Station, Nome, Alaska, 1921.

Attorney for the Pioneer Mining Company and resident of Nome, Alaska.

Manager of the Pioneer Mining Company in Nome, Alaska, in 1921.

Dentist in Nome, Alaska, in 1921.

Captain of the "Silver Wave", the boat that the Wrangel Island Expedition used in 1921.

Ninth prime minister of Canada from July 1920 to December 1921 and from June to September 1926

Ada Blackjack (née Delutuk) was the sole survivor of Vilhjalmur Stefansson’s 1921 Wrangel Island Expedition. Born May 10, 1898 on an Iñupiat settlement in Spruce Creek, Alaska, she was sent to a Methodist mission school in Nome as a young girl. At sixteen, she married Jack Blackjack and had three children with him. They divorced when she was twenty-two, leaving Ada destitute and forced to put her surviving son in an orphanage. She made a meager living doing sewing and housework for miners in Nome, where she was eventually hired to go on the Wrangel Island expedition. During the expedition, she suffered under the harsh conditions of the Arctic, loneliness and longing for her family, and mistreatment by the other expedition members. After two harrowing years on Wrangel Island, she was rescued in September 1923; she was 25. Upon her return, she moved to Seattle with her son Bennett and lived a quiet life, despite a media circus surrounding the men who had died on the expedition. She remarried and had another son, Billy. Eventually, she returned to the Arctic where she lived until her death in 1983; she died in Palmer, Alaska at the age of 85.

Born Allan Rudyard Crawford in Toronto, Crawford was aged 20 at the start of the 1921 Wrangel Island expedition. He was in official command of the expedition, partly because of his status as a Canadian citizen and British subject. At the time he was hired for the expedition, he was studying geology, paleontology, chemistry, and mineralogy at the University of Toronto. One of Crawford’s professors had given him a letter from Stefansson, who had written to the university present searching for another member for the expedition. Crawford wrote to Stefansson introducing himself in April 1921, and Stefansson eventually hired him for his strong background in the sciences. The team arrived on Wrangel Island on September 15, 1921, and over the following years suffered immensely, facing harsh Arctic conditions as resources ran dangerously low. On January 28, 1923, Crawford, along with Milton and Galle, tried to cross the frozen Chukchi Sea to Siberia and travel some 90 miles to get help. They were never seen again. Because he was a Canadian Citizen, Crawford was the only member of the expedition to be officially honored by the Canadian government.