Karluk

The Vessel

The Karluk was a Canadian wooden-hulled brigantine auxiliary steamer, built at the Matthew Turner shipyard at Benicia, California in 1884 for the North Pacific whaling trade. She was 39 metres long, 247 gross tons, and powered by a combination of full brigantine sail rig (two-masted) and a 150-horsepower single-cylinder steam engine. Her hull construction reflected the specific demands of the North Pacific whaling trade: heavily reinforced oak timbers, iron sheathing at the waterline, and a hull form optimised for short-haul whaling operations in the confined waters of the Bering Sea.

By 1912 she had been retired from the whaling trade due to the declining economic viability of North Pacific whaling in the early twentieth century. She was purchased by the Canadian government in 1913 for the Canadian Arctic Expedition of 1913-1918, a scientific and territorial expedition intended to survey and establish Canadian sovereignty over the western Canadian Arctic islands.

Her suitability for Arctic operations was substantially disputed. Karluk had been built for temperate and sub-Arctic whaling, not for extended Arctic ice operations. Her hull was not specifically designed for ice pressure; her steam engine was underpowered for sustained ice-breaking operations; and her provisioning capacity was limited for long-duration Arctic expeditions. The expedition's scientific leader, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, had expressed reservations about Karluk's suitability but had been overruled by the Canadian government's budget constraints.

Her master on the expedition was Captain Robert Bartlett, 37, a Newfoundland-born ice-navigation specialist who had commanded the ice-expedition ships Roosevelt (Peary's 1908-1909 North Pole expedition) and SS Bloodhound. Bartlett was among the most experienced ice-navigation masters of his generation; his operational assessment of Karluk was that the ship was adequate for preliminary Arctic reconnaissance but not for extended over-winter operations in the pack ice.

The Voyage

The Canadian Arctic Expedition of 1913 departed Esquimalt, British Columbia on 17 June 1913 under the overall scientific command of Vilhjalmur Stefansson. The expedition comprised three ships: Karluk (the main expedition ship, under Captain Bartlett), the schooner Alaska (under Captain Peter Bernard), and the schooner Mary Sachs (under Captain Peter Bernard). Karluk carried the primary expedition complement: 25 scientists, officers, and seamen, plus 2 Inupiat guides and their families (a total of 4 additional persons), and approximately 13 tonnes of scientific and expedition supplies.

The expedition's planned route was north-northwestward along the coast of Alaska and then into the Beaufort Sea, where the expedition was to establish a winter base on the Canadian Arctic coast and conduct systematic survey work. The ice conditions in the Bering Strait and Chukchi Sea in summer 1913, however, were substantially heavier than expected: pack-ice extent was greater than any summer on record for the preceding decade, and the ice conditions were progressively worsening through July and August 1913.

On 13 August 1913, Karluk entered the pack ice approximately 60 kilometres northeast of Point Barrow, Alaska. The specific location was Herschel Island's offshore waters, approximately 700 kilometres east of the Bering Strait. Within approximately 48 hours, Karluk was substantially beset by the pack ice: her hull was gripped by the ice; her forward progress had stopped; her retreat was blocked by the closing pack ice astern.

On 20 September 1913, Stefansson departed Karluk with five expedition members (including the expedition photographer and one of the Inupiat guides) and a dog-sled team to conduct a reconnaissance of the pack-ice conditions to the north. Stefansson's stated intention was to return to Karluk within approximately 10 days. Within 72 hours of Stefansson's departure, a substantial easterly gale had driven the pack ice and Karluk westward along the Alaska coast, substantially beyond the range of Stefansson's return track. Stefansson was unable to rejoin Karluk; he subsequently reached the Alaskan coast by dog sled and continued his reconnaissance work without the main expedition's participation.

The Disaster

From 20 September 1913 through January 1914, Karluk drifted westward in the pack ice along the Alaska and Chukotka coasts, transported approximately 900 kilometres west of her initial beset position. Captain Bartlett, now effectively commander of the beset expedition's main body (Stefansson being permanently separated), conducted systematic ice operations: daily soundings of the pack ice depth and movement, meteorological observations, and continued provisioning of the expedition complement against the possibility of extended over-winter beset conditions.

On 11 January 1914, Karluk was approximately 150 kilometres north of the Siberian coast, at approximately 73 degrees north latitude. The pack ice in which she was beset had been progressively compressing through December 1913 and early January 1914; the specific ice pressure on her hull had been systematically increasing.

At approximately 18:00 on 10 January 1914, the ice pressure on Karluk's port side exceeded the structural capacity of her hull timbers. The hull began to crush inward; the pressure continued overnight; by 06:00 on 11 January 1914, the ship was substantially holed along her port side and was beginning to flood as the ice pressure eventually released her.

Bartlett's response was systematic. The ship's boats were unloaded, the expedition supplies were transferred to the adjacent pack ice, and an emergency camp was established on a substantial ice floe approximately 80 metres from the foundering ship. Karluk sank through the ice at approximately 20:00 on 11 January 1914, in approximately 150 metres of water.

The 25-person party now faced a survival situation of extreme difficulty: they were approximately 150 kilometres north of the Siberian coast, in the January Arctic night, with limited supplies and no external support. Bartlett's plan was to march across the pack ice to Wrangel Island (approximately 130 kilometres south of the current position), establish a survival camp on the island, and from there send a rescue party across the ice to the Siberian coast for eventual relief.

The subsequent march and survival operations, conducted through February and March 1914, involved the progressive deterioration of the expedition complement. Eight members of the party attempted independent escapes and were lost in the ice; two men were murdered by an unstable member of the expedition (the murders were only confirmed in 1924 when the perpetrator's confession was published). The survivors reached Wrangel Island in late March 1914 and established a survival camp.

The Legacy

Bartlett's subsequent journey from Wrangel Island to Siberia and thence to Alaska for relief, conducted in April and May 1914, was one of the most remarkable individual survival and rescue efforts of twentieth-century polar exploration. With one Inupiat companion (Claude Kataktovik), Bartlett crossed 600 kilometres of pack ice from Wrangel Island to the Siberian coast, travelled by dog sled along the Siberian coast, and eventually reached the whaling station at Emma Harbor in May 1914. From there, he arranged relief for the remaining 14 survivors on Wrangel Island.

The relief expedition, conducted by the Canadian government and involving multiple vessels, reached Wrangel Island on 7 September 1914, approximately eight months after Karluk's sinking. Of the original 25 who had been aboard Karluk at her sinking, 11 survived the subsequent eight-month survival period on the pack ice and on Wrangel Island. The 14 dead included 8 who died on the pack-ice marches, 2 who were murdered by the deranged expedition member, and 4 who died of cold, exhaustion, and scurvy on Wrangel Island.

The subsequent public response to the Karluk disaster was complicated by Stefansson's political and scientific reputation. Stefansson, who had separated from the expedition on 20 September 1913 and thus survived the main disaster, had continued his reconnaissance work and had eventually produced substantial scientific contributions to Canadian Arctic exploration. The public perception of his leadership, however, was substantially criticised by Bartlett's later account (The Last Voyage of the Karluk, 1916) and by subsequent biographical scholarship. The specific criticism was that Stefansson had abandoned the expedition complement to an uncertain fate when he departed on 20 September 1913, and that his political and scientific reputation subsequent to the disaster had been built on the work of the subordinates he had abandoned.

The cultural legacy of the Karluk expedition has been substantial. Bartlett's 1916 memoir became a standard work of early twentieth-century Arctic literature; Niven's 2001 non-fiction account The Ice Master brought the disaster to renewed public attention and is the principal contemporary source on the event. The wreck of Karluk lies at approximately 150 metres depth north of the Siberian coast; the site has never been located by subsequent expeditions. The 14 dead are commemorated by the Canadian Arctic Expedition Memorial at the Canadian Museum of History, Gatineau, Quebec, and by a memorial at the Newfoundland Memorial University, St John's (Bartlett's home province).