STEFANSSON EXPEDITION

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 47, 25 February 1914, Page 7

STEFANSSON EXPEDITION

LEADER SAFE IN WINTER " QUARTERS. (By Telegraph.— Press Association.- *Copyrlghfc.i OTTAWA, 23rd February. Mr. V. Stefaneson, who is in search of the supposed Arctic Continent, reports that he d> safe in. winter quarters oft Point Collison. He thinks his vessel, the Karluk, is safe, but has not yet traced her. tin his final meesage to the public boforo the expedition sailed last June, Mr. Steia&seon. remarked : — It is of course impossible to guess 'what fortune 'may attend the voyage of the Karluk, for that is so largely a matter of wind and weather that good management and thorough equipment are but secondary factors of success. That the expedition is thoroughly equipped is all that we can say of it for the present. The ohar.acter of its management will develop from day to day, and it will be only some years from no^y, if no disaster overtakes us, that it will be possible to decide the relative value of the factors that make for its success or failure. There are many better vessels afloat than the Karluk, although she has already withstood the Polar ice through many seasons and is as souad now as when new. She has a sailing master in Captain Bartlett whose experience, gained under Admiral Peary, places him in the first rank in the world among ice navigators, but the Beaufort Sea, north of Alaska, varies in it* ice conditions perhaps more from season to season than any other part of the North Polar Sea. The Karluk has at least two chances out of three of penetrating to Herechell Island, and of sailing thence northward for a greater or^ less distance beyond the farthest attained by any vessel heretofore in that quarter, for no vessel up there has over stood off shore looking for anything but whales, for .which search is never prosecuted farther than two hundred miles from land, even when no ice is sig-hted at the farthest north.]