The Cordova daily times., 1922-07-28
. FRIDAY, JULY 28, 1922
VICTORIA HAS POLAR ROLE IN DRAMA

VICTORIA HAS FoLAh no1II AIS DA'1AiifA ~, The history of all ships is more or less in teresting to most people ana vlat ol Vile SIeall,- ship Victoria is more so to the peotHe ol Al aska inasmuch as the ship has piled the N1s 49lts- kan waters for such long time. During the many wears of service in this great northland the s'Vic'', as it is familiarly called, has talk en many of our residents to and from the sta les, Those who have not actually travelled on the steamer know it equally as well as those who have. as it has called in every port many times The following narrative, taken from the Railway and Marine News of July will add more interest in the ship to all Alaskans:
 The famous Nome liner Victoria of the Alaska Steamship Co.,, left early in the month for Behring Sea, being as usual the first pas senoer and mail steamship to make Nome and St Michael The vessel had its customary full cargo of freight with its passenger ae= commodations taken. As has been the case dur ing the first week of June for twenty years mast an immense crowd assembled at Tier Z to witness the departure of the vessel and to wave good bye to the 500 passengers.
 This year the event was of unusual inter- est as Captain Roald Amundsen was among the passengers and many among those on tle dock were present to bid farewell to thls ln- teDrid explorer, who was setting out on hls seV- en vears' cruise in the Arctic. Only two days previously, at another dock in the city, cap tain Amundsen had personally dispatched to the North his power schooner Mauc all'' this event had been made civic celebration' The explorer himself wished to get to Nome ahead of his vessel so as to prevent any deiay in assembling stores and be ready to sail at once from Nome to Siberia upon the arflVal of the Maud. So it was that he became pas senper on the Victoria and this fact prompt ed John H. Bunch, general freight and pas sencer agent, of the company to recall ratner striking coincidence.
 If is well worth recording at this part'cu- lar timn when Amundsen has practically the same objective as De Long and others Wlo have sought to penetrate the Arctic Ice ana to discover the passage through that barreh waste between the Pacific an1 the Atlantc, and more particularly as carrier ln most oA the other, voyages of exploration by varlouS distinguished men.
 If will be remembered that Gordon Bennett, owner of the New York Herald orlg'nated me ::o o,,o ev,ooo;tion in ,0 and paid all tho exnenses of that notable trip. He purchased +he Pandora and rechrstened it the Jeannette' Lieut. De Long of the United States Navy was annointed to command and it was made nav al undertaking by special act of Congress the vessel being placed under martial law and officered from the navy. The Jeannette sailed from San Francisco, July 8, 1870, that port at the time being the headquarters for all Alas ka and Arctic traffic. The vessel was last seen steamino toward Wrangell Island on Septem- Der 3 of that year This need not be review of the voyage or the subsequent dreadful hardships encountered by De Long and hls companions It was De Longs idea, however to penetrate the Arctic ice, have the Jean nette frozen in and then slowly drift to the Atlantic It is recalled that the ,}e annette dlc become tied up in the Arctic ice and was drift ing for some months, but from relief exped1 tions and other sources it was officially as certained that the vessel was crushed ano sunk on June 12, 1881, and the officers
 men had dragged their boats over the ice II an attempt to get to open water so inst they could cross the mainland of Siberia. Just