Copy of a letter from Vilhjalmur Stefansson to Joseph-Fidèle Bernard, 07 April 1924
Date7 April, 1924
ms numberStefansson Mss-91: Harold Noice Papers, Box 1, Folder 2
abstractCorrespondence, newspaper articles, and other material related to the ill-fated 1921 expedition to Wrangel Island.
COPY.
In care of
BROADWAY AT 156th STREET
April 7, 1924.
Dear Captain Bernard:
I have recently seen a copy of a letter you are said to have written to the newspapers with regard to the
Wrangell Island situation. You are evidently under several misunderstandings, which is very unfortunate for both of us. Your chief trouble has been that you have not sufficiently discounted the misquotations and misrepresentations of newspapers. When a letter is written to the papers as in your own case, they sometimes print it exactly as you wrote it. But interviews are frequently made up
out of nothing, or else are very badly twisted.
The statement that evidently worried you was some newspaper report you saw about what I was said to have aaid about your having sailed too late for Wrangell Island in 1922. I cannot tell, of course, what form you may have seen the statement in, but the facts are as follows:
When Noice came back to Seattle from Nome
in September, 1923, he told Mr. Knight and others that you had not made a bona fide attempt to reach Wrangell Island in 1922. This worried Mr. Knight greatly and he wrote me a letter showing violent anger against you, his opinion at that time being that Noice
was telling the truth. I reassured him, however, explaining your long service in polar waters and my thorough confidence in you that you would do your best. Mr. Knight was still more reassured when some months later Mr. Carl Lomen arrived from Nome and told him the same thing, explaining there was every reason to believe that you used your
best judgment and did your best.
As you will remember, the arrangement was that you were to get twice as much money if you succeeded in reaching
Wrangell Island as if you failed to reach it. Both myself and Mr.
Lomen explained that to Mr. Knight, whereupon he ceased to worry on that score.
You have been misinformed if you think that the journey of Crawford, Galle and Maurer from Wrangell Island towards Siberia was made because they were out of food. The diary of
Lorne Knight shows this to have been untrue and Mr. Knight and all the relatives now understand that, except the Crawfords. For some reason, Mr. and Mrs. Crawford still seem to believe Noice's original story.
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It was true that I hired the Teddy Bear not as a rescue ship but as a supply ship. This has never been disputed and never will be. I thought at the time that the boys were in no danger and we know now that they were not. Of course, if you had reached the island some of them might have come out with you, although it is likely that most of them would have stayed. But the journey from Wrangell
Island to Siberia in January, 1923, would have been made by the three boys at the same date and in the same manner even if there had been a thousand tons of food on Wrangell Island.
I quite understand the misapprehensions you have been under and have no hard feelings in the matter. Everything you say is based on a misunderstanding. If we had been talking together you would have found that we differ on no point. It is entirely unnecessary for you to point out that I am no great authority on navigation around Wrangell Island. I have never claimed to be.
It is rather too bad that you should have taken as an attack upon yourself a statement I made when I was defending you against charges made by Mr. Noice. When I referred to your late sailing date, I made it clear that this was no fault of yours but was due wholly to my difficulty in raising money. When I finally got the money and sent it to Nome, ,you outfitted your ship and got
under way with remarkable speed. I have always said that and you will find nothing in any of my writings which is not friendly to yourself and which does not give you full credit for good intentions, great experience and adequate ability.
You will be glad to learn that Mr. Carl Lomen has finally succeeded in interesting New York capitalists so that they have given him all the money he heeds and more, for developing his reindeer business. He was trying to get $290,000. and three men have already given him $300,000. He also knows where he can get more. This will make his reindeer business very prosperous.
He will leave for Nome by the first steamer next spring and I am expecting him to make arrangements again on my behalf for the ship to sail to Wrangell Island. I wrote a week or more ago asking whether you are open to be chartered. I would like to discuss this with you before you sail north, although the immediate arrangements in Nome will
probably be in the hands of the Lomen Brothers this year as they were two years ago.
(Signed) V. Stefansson.
Captain Joseph Bernard,
The above copied by me this 24th day of December 1924, at Ketchikan, Alaska.
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N. C. James
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