Arizona state miner., 1925-01-24
Arctic Adventures Defy Death and Hardships
to Explore Wrangell Island.

Wrangell Island, rife in story of
tragedy and of unfinished projects,
has attained the status of Russian
possession, according to dispatches
which the Soviet government has al
lowed to reach the western world.
The first white man to sight Wran-
gell Island, so far as recorded, was
Captain Kellet of the British ship
Herald in 1849. He didn't land He
thought the island, which is rs miles
| long and So miles wide and which
| lies 110 miles north of Siberia and
800 west of the latitude of Bering
Strait, was part of an Arctic CONT
nent that has been proved non
existent.
| A small island in that vicinity was
named after his vessel On Herald
Island the Stars and Stripes recently
were hoisted by Captain Louis Lane
master of the gasoline schooner Her
man. after he had made a vain at
tempt to reach Wrangell Island.
Interest in Wrangell Island appar
emily dates back to 1923, when ma
tives reported such an island to Adj
miral Baron Ferdinand Petrovich
Won Wrangell Russian governor Of
Alaska. Baron Wrangell tried vain
ly to reach the island.
From Kellet's time the island was
called Kellet until Capt, Thomas
Long of the whaling bark Nile. out of
New London, Conn. happened around
there in August, 1867. He also failed
to land, but he clearly saw and de-
lineated the shores, which for the
most part are banked by masses of
ice that come and go. He called it
Wrangell Island, after the baron,
whose cognomen is scattered around
southeastern Alaska, and the name
stuck
The first recorded landing on the
island was by party from the Uni
ted States revenue cutter Corwin,
: August IS, 1881. This party was
searching for jeanette, an American
vessel in which Admiral Melville had
tried to reach the North Pole and
which was lost in the delta of the
Lena river Siberia, all of her COM
plement but one officer perishing.
The next year party from the
Rodgers of the United States Navy,
an expedition fitted out in San Fran
cisco to hunt the jeanette, spent 10
days on Wrangell Island The Rod
gers, trying to get back to the United
States, burned in st. Lawrence Bay
on the eastern coast of Siberia. Her
people were rescued by the cutter
| CorWin.
In 1913 Vilhjalmur Stefansson.
heading an expedition for Canada to
explore lands and waters of North
America, went from Seattle via Nome
into the Arctic ocean in the Karluk,
250-ton steamer. The master of the
Karluk was Capt. Robert A. Bartlett,
master of the steamer Roosevelt in
which Robert A Peary went north
to reach the pole in 1909.
The Karluk was caught in the ice
near Point Barrow, Alaska, and on
September 20 Stefansson led a hunt
ing party ashore over the frozen
ocean. He never saw the Karluk
again. She was carried westward in
the ice. John Hadley, British nav
igator, one of the crew, is among
those who had told her story When
the ice began to squeeze and crack
the vessel, the captain gave orders
to abandon her. This was so miles
north of Herald Island The crew
made camp on the ice. The next day,
as Hadley described it, the Karluk
suddenly Strengthened out on level
keel and slowly sank with the Union
Jack flying"
Ten days later Captain Bartlett
sent the first and second mates and
two seamen to Wrangell Island to
cache provisions taken from Ship
wreck Camp. This party camped on
the ice near the island, waiting for