ARCTIC ADVENTURERS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18763, 17 July 1924, Page 9

ARCTIC ADVENTURERS.

BELIEF SHIP WRECKED. WRANGEL ISLAND PARTY. EFFORT TO SUCCOUR FAILS. VESSEL CRUSHED IN THE ICE. ANOTHER EXPEDITION GOING. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. (Received 5.5 p.m.) Sun. NEW YORK. July 15. A message from San Francisco states that the American cutter, Bear, failed to reach Wrangel Island, in the Arctic, north of Siberia. She had been despatched thither to pick up the members of last year's relief party, who were left behind. The Bear had to be abandoned, having become a total wreck through being crushed by the ice. She lost her propellers. The Lomen brothers are row organising a new expedition to proceed to Wrangel Island and succour the persons left there by the Nome expedition.

A Canadian expedition to Wrangel Island sailed in the Maud from Nome, Alaska, on June 23, 1922, Captain Roald Amundsen having left the ship at Cape Hope for Point Barrow (whence he hoped to fly across tho North Pole), the Maud, on July 28, left to make the attempt to drift across the Polar Basin. The party eventually landed. News was received at Vancouver on September 1, 1923, that all its members, led by Mr. Alan Crawford, of Toronto, had perished, except Ada, an Eskimo cook. Mr. Harold Noice, of the relief party which made this discovery, returned to Nome, Alaska, on August 31 with Ada. He stated that Mr. Crawford, with two companions, had started over the ice to reach Siberia in December, -1922, when their supplies were almost exhausted. Mr. Knight, a fourth member of the party, who was too ill to travel, had died in June, of scurvy. Mr. Crawford and his party, who had a dog-sled, with provisions for 17 days, were never seen again. Ada subsisted on biscuits and snared game for months. Mr. Noice found a bottle in Roger Harbour, to the south side of the island, containing the names of the party and a declaration claiming Wrangel in the name of King George. The relief party left Mr. Charles Wells with 13 Eskimos to colonise the island and- to search for the bodies of the original explorers. They had provisions and ammunition for three years. It was this party, headed bv Mr. Wells, that the American cutter Bear set out to relieve.