Letter from Vilhjalmur Stefansson to Edward FitzGerald, 10 March 1922

I have just found out that one of the New York papers, the New York Times, has got hold of the main facts with regard to my Wrangel Island enterprise. They are going to publish the story because they feel sure that if they do not publish it some other paper soon will. Keeping the matter confidential further seems to be hopeless. The editor of the New York Times is a personal friend of mine and advises me that it is advantageous from every point of view to publish the story fully and truthfully at the start. Otherwise some garbled publication of it may appear, as, for instance, through the Hearst papers, in which it may be attempted to show that what we have done is specifically a hostile act against the United States, whearas you know the nation I had primarily in mind was Japan.

I shall give below a very brief recapitulation of the whole affair for your guidance in case newspaper men come to you in Winnipeg apropos of the handling of the story by the Associated Press.

You are familiar with the facts as to the discovery and exploration of Wrangel Island. Captain Kellett of the British Navy discovered it in 1849 and it was named Kellett Land on the charts. Under international law this gave the British a claim to Wrangel Island for five years but that claim lapsed in 1854 when up to that time the British had given no indication that they would follow up the discovery by occupation.

Wrangel Island was sighted by Captain Long of the American whaling fleet in 1869. This mere sighting of an island already discovered gave [: rise] under international law to no claims on behalf of any country. Captain Long's voyage is interesting chiefly through a slip he made in announcing that he had discovered a land which really was then known to exist. I think it was in this connection that he suggested the place should be called Wrangel Island, in honor of the Russian explorer, Baron Wrangel, who in the third decade of the 19th century had heard rumors of an undiscovered land to the north of Siberia but had failed to find it.

The summer of 1881 two American ships landed on Wrangel Island, the Corwin for a few hours, and the Rodgers for two or three weeks. The Rodgers made a map of the island which, although not correct, is the only one we have to date. In that connection arose an American claim to the island which like the previous British claim would have led to permanent ownership if followed up within five years. Like the British earlier, the Americans showed no sign of interest in Wrangel Island and, accordingly, that claim lapsed in 1886.

From this time on no one is known to have landed upon the island although whaling ships sailed within sight of it occasionally. The first landing subsequent to '81 was made by the officers and crew of the Canadian Government ship Karluk, of my 1915-1918 expedition. They landed in February, 1914, and remained until September. On July 1st, 1914, they formally raised the British flag and reasserted British rights to the island.

Our men left Wrangel Island in September, 1914, and the British claim based on that occupation and reassertion of possession lapsed according to the above cited principle of international law in September, 1919.

Meantime, I had been conducting in Canada a campaign to arouse Canadians to the idea that the most northerly possessions are valuable. In that connection I urged the Canadian Government to follow up our Wrangel Island work before some other nation stepped in and occupied the island. The nation I had particularly in mind was Japan. I have the greatest respect for the shrewdness of the Japanese and I had some private information in addition to what everyone possesses through the newspapers to show that they were extending their commercial and other operations steadily northward into Siberia. I took it to be likely that within a few years they would see the value of Wrangel Island. Probably no nation would have protested against such Japanese actions, for there would have been no legal or reasonable ground of protest. Furthermore, had there been such a protest and had the case been submitted either to impartial arbitration or to an international court, the decision would certainly have been in favor of the Japanese (or whoever had occupied the island subsequent to the lapse of British claims in 1919).

Together with several friends who had the same views, I succeeded in inducing the Government at Ottawa to agree to a series of arctic expeditions to reassert the Canadian sovereignty and to occupy unoccupied lands in the polar regions. Through circumstances into which I shall not go, these plans after being carried forward for several months and after a good deal of money had been spent, were postponed for a year.

Meantime, I had taken up with the Hudson's Bay Company the question of establishing a fur outpost on Wrangel Island. I urged this upon the Company for two reasons: (1) It would

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pay from the fur point of view; (2) it would be a service to the British Empire to confirm our rights to this island - a service which might not be generally appreciated for a decade or two but which would eventually be universally recognized. As you remember, your Company decided to place a post upon the island and I was notified that the Lady Kindersley had been instructed to land men and an outfit upon her return from Herschel Island the summer 1921.

Knowing the uncertainty of the Lady Kindersley's reaching the island upon her return from such a long voyage and knowing how unlikely it was that Wrangel Island would for another year remain unoccupied, I took into my confidence just one man, Mr. A.J. Taylor, a mining engineer of Vancouver. Mr. Taylor offered me his personal assistance, gave me office room in his offices in the Credit Foncier Building, Vancouver, and arranged that his attorney should incorporate the Stefansson Arctic Exploration and Development Company, Limited. I put into this company all the money I had saved. I borrowed to the full on my Victory loan certificates, and borrowed about five thousand dollars from personal friends. It has to date cost me about $20,000. to send a party of four men by passenger steamer to Nome and then by the chartered Silver Wave to Wrangel Island, where they landed in September.

As the matter was so highly confidential, I did not tell my own men the object of the enterprise until they were just leaving Seattle. They kept it so confidential that up to the very time of their leaving Nome no one knew where they were going and it was generally supposed that they were bound for the region of oil excitement just east of Point Barrow on the Alaska coast. When upon the return of the Silver Wave it was found that they had landed on Wrangel Island (I am informed) an attempt was made to organize several parties at Nome, but the season was too late. I had calculated upon this circumstance and had sent my men so late in the summer that I considered no one would care to try reaching the island after the return of our chartered ship to Nome. This calculation worked out correctly.

As you know the Lady Kindersley failed to reach Wrangel Island. It is, therefore, extremely fortunate that our men got there at the time they did.

Mr. Allan Crawford, the commander of the Wrangel Island party, carried out my instructions in every way to my thorough satisfaction except in one detail. I think I explained to him that taking formal possession of the island would have no legal value and that the continuation of British claim to the island would result not from any formal acts of us but from the occupation of the island. Either I did not explain my view fully or else he misunderstood, for it seems to have been his first act when he got to Wrangel Island to hoist the British flag and take possession while the schooner Silver Wave was still lying off the beach. The story of his doing so was brought back to Nome by Captain Hammar of the Silver Wave and was printed in the Nome Nugget, causing considerable local excitement It is this story which now has come to the attention of the American papers and of other Americans, so that the matter is well known and has even been specially presented to the State Department at Washington. It is but natural that several nations including the United States should now realize that they have let slip an opportunity by not moving into Wrangel Island immediately after the British claim lapsed in 1919.

What I am now afraid of is that some journals of the Hearst type may think it will make a good story to play up my Wrangel Island expedition as an anti-British ^American^ stroke. To do so would be untruthful but that would be the least of the worries of some of our modern journalists. It has been impressed upon me, therefore, that it is important to give the story out originally in its correct form, showing that what we have done is nothing but the continuation of British policy and a continued occupation of British territory. It should be made clear when the story is originally published that we realized it would not be many years until some country took advantage of the lapse of British claims and moved in. That that country would have been Japan, I have no doubt. If it had proved to be the Americans, it would never have been by any deliberate plan but merely through the accident of some American adventurer going to Wrangel Island for the excitement of wintering there or for the possible profits in furs.

As mentioned above, it has already cost me some $20,000. to send the party to Wrangel Island and I am paying into a bank every month the wages of the men who are there. It will also cost me something to get them out again. I am not expecting that any furs they catch will pay more than perhaps a quarter of what I have already spent, or more than a sixth or an eighth of the expenditures eventually necessary. However, I instructed my men to catch

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what furs they could to help defray the cost of the enterprise, and I instructed them to say, if they had to say something, that this was a fur trapping enterprise.