Copy of a letter from Vilhjalmur Stefansson to Joseph-Fidèle Bernard, 10 April 1924
Date10 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 10, 1924.
Dear Captain Bernard:
I received your letter of April 5th only an hour after I had mailed you a long letter which I would not have sent had I known what you were going to write. I always believe in trying to prevent misunderstandings and quarrels, but I do not believe in begging very hard if anyone seems determined to make trouble. My feeling then is to tell them to go ahead and do the most they can as soon as possible.
I hope you understand by now that what you are angry with me about was only my attempt to defend you. I have had no doubt and I have no doubt now that you did your best to reach Wrangell Island in 1922. But when Mr. Noice said to Mr. Knight, Lorne Knight's father, that you had not done so, I came to your defense
for two reasons. I believed you to be innocent of the charge and I also knew the pain it would cause Mr. Knight to be under the impression that you might have reached Wrangell Island had you wanted to. It was in that connection I issued a statement saying that your qualifications for the voyage to Wrangell Island were second to none
and that the late date at which you sailed was no fault of yours but was due to the trouble I had had in financing. If you now for the purpose of trying to get me in bad decide to claim that you could have reached Wrangell Island had you tried harder, you will find yourself in contradiction with the statements you made last year, you will be unable to convince people you then talked with that your
present position is right, and the one you took last year was wrong, and you will be in every way the loser. You will be causing pain to the relatives of the boys, you will be heaping discredit upon yourself, and all you will gain will be a little annoyance to me.
Of course, I understand why you are angry at me. You thought I had been attacking and misrepresenting you. I have never done that and I never shall.
When you issued last year the statement which the newspapers carried to the effect that you thought the boys in Wrangell Island were probably in great danger if not dead, you showed not only that you had every reason to try to reach Wrangell Island but you showed also your lack of information about the situation there. You
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gave, for instance, as one of your reasons for thinking they were in trouble that they had had no dog team. Of course, everyone who saw them outfit in Nome knew that they had a team of seven dogs that was considered a good team in Nome. I do not make a practice of replying to newspaper attacks in print, although I occasionally protest to those who make them through
private letters. But in conversation I have defended your statement of a year ago, saying that you had either been misinformed at Nome
by someone or else misquoted by the newspapers. I have usually said that I supposed the papers were to blame.
You have again been misinformed when you say that
Lorne Knight's diary says that a ship could have reached Wrangell Island
the fall of 1922. The diary does not say any such thing. There is a mention that the seas to the south of the island was open in the month of October, but it is equally clear from the diary that when the sea thus opened the boys had no expectation of a ship coming, for they knew that the season was already too late and also they knew that the mere fact of the ocean right by the island being open did not prove that it would be open near the coast
of Siberia and that a ship would be able to come if it tried. Of course, I realize you have not seen the diary. Since you have not seen it, it is all the more advisable for you not to make any statements as to what the diary contains.
In case you are relying on the quotations alleged to be from the diary published by Mr. Noice, I had better warn you that these quotations do not correspond to the diary itself. Mr. Noice tore out of the diary a number of pages and retained them for some time. We have now been able to frighten him into giving them up and it turns out that many of the things which he alleged were in
the diary are not actually in it.
You are also wrong in supposing that the diary said that Crawford, Galle and Maurer left Wrangell Island in a desperate attempt to try to secure food from Siberia. The diary does say plainly that when they left they had entirely other motives. They were going to
Nome for the purpose of sending me despatches according to which I could govern the outfitting of the ship that went out in 1923. They doubtless had also the motives of getting in touch with the Siberian traders, to get newspapers etc. The trip was planned seven months before it was made, at a time when they expected no shortage of food. Even the time of starting was settled then and they did
start within a week of the prearranged time. It is true that food was short when they started, but it is equally clear that they would have started with the same sort of outfit, at the same time of year, and with the same prospects of success if there had been a thousand tons of food on the island. Indeed, their most serious mistake in outfitting was that they made the first start with provisions for thirty days, which
was too heavy a load for the sledge, making travel slow and making them fearful of going into rough ice because they thought the sledge might break under the heavy load.
I know you have been depending on Noice's newspaper statement to the effect that the boys were weak with hunger when they started and that the dogs were also weak with hunger. The diary, however, shows the contrary. The only thing it says about any weakness either of the men or the dogs is that the dogs were soft from lack of exercise at the time Crawford and
Knight made their first start.
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Please don't infer from this letter that I am angry about what you have said in the newspapers. I am so often and unreasonably attacked by various people that I have long ago got over being angry. I am only trying to point out to you your unwisdom from your own point of viewin attacking people who are trying to defend you and in making statements which you could not prove if you were asked in a law court or otherwise to do so. Some of your
published statements are, of course, correct; but they are statements where you and I agree. You have thought we disagreed about them but you have been mistaken in thinking so. The statements where we disagree are those you make without knowledge, as, for instance, when you say that I have said certain things which I never have said, and when you say that Knight's diary contains certain
things which it does not contain.
Thinking you may possibly have left Loyola College
and thinking that you are in this case in need of good advice, I am sending a carbon copy of this letter to the President of the College with a short letter urging him to counsel you to be more cautious in future and to be sure you have been attacked before you again begin to defend yourself. A person may easily put himself in very bad light even when he is innocent when he is trying to defend himself against serious charges which he only
imagines someone has made.
(Signed) V. Stefansson.
Captain Joseph F. Bernard
P.S. I note in re-reading your letter of April 5th
that you ask why I now want a further statement from you. On examination also my letter to you of March 26th I find that I have there stated the reason clearly. I wanted to have from you, for the purpose of defending you, a statement to the effect that you had made a faithful attempt to reach Wrangell Island in 1922. I still think it
advisable for you to make such a statement both because I know it is true and because the truth will serve you best. Also, as I said above, I want to spare the relatives the pain of thinking that the tragedy of Wrangell Island was one which you could have prevented had you wanted to.
You must remember that the relatives are familiar with all the correspondence between you and me and with the various statements you have made both in the papers and in writing. They have also talked with Mr. Carl Lomen, with Aarnout Castel and others familiar with conditions in Alaska and Siberia.
If you now want to say that you could have reached
Wrangell Island in 1922 had you known the men were in danger, you will have to explain why you said a year ago that you thought the men were in danger but that reaching the island was impossible. I say again that we all know your statement last year was true. In that case, why try to change it now?
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You have only to think of the death by freezing of your own partner on the north coast of Alaska to remember that loss of life in the Arctic does not necessarily come from shortage of food.
The above copied by me this 24th day of December 1924, at Ketchikan, Alaska.
^
N. C. James.^
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