Wrangel Island

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Secondhand adventures

Ada Blackjack and The Ice Master – Heroes of Wrangel Island Adventure writer, Roderick Eime, finds himself transported to the remote Russian Arctic after finding a long-forgotten tale in a bargain bookstore.

Sometimes you wonder if books have supernatural powers. Have you ever plucked a book from a shelf or a remainder bin and suddenly found your life careering off in an entirely unforeseen direction? I’m not talking about Dianetics or anything by the Dali Lama, but rather a seemingly innocuous volume on, say, adventure or exploration.

This happened to me on at least one occasion when I stumbled on upon a copy of ‘The Ice Master’ in my favourite bargain bookstore under Central Station in Sydney. It seemed innocent enough, a ripping yarn about a crusty old salt that trudged and sailed 700 miles in search of rescue for his shipwrecked companions.

Then, through a convoluted series of events, I was introduced to the Arctic heroine, Ada Blackjack, by the author, Jennifer Niven. Not so spooky, you say? How about if that meeting occurred on remote and desolate Wrangel Island, 100 old miles north of Siberia in the ice-choked Chukchi Sea? Yeah, now it’s getting interesting.

‘The Ice Master’ was a riveting and sensitive account by Niven published in 2000 of the 1913 voyage and subsequent sinking of the Karluk, the expedition vessel of the Canadian Arctic Expedition. In a further coincidence, the then 24-y-o Australian, George Hubert Wilkins (OE26), was one of the team who abandoned the vessel with expedition leader, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, in controversial circumstances.

Niven meticulously researched old papers, diaries, letters and books to recreate this fateful voyage in a gripping tale described by Glamor Magazine as “Into Thin Air meets Titanic in this truly chilling adventure.”

Captain Robert ‘Bob’ Bartlett (1875-

8 2 ou ter edge

1946) was the Newfoundland-born master of the 321GRT Karluk, a former whaling vessel, who refused to give up on his men even under the most trying of conditions.

“It was hard to see what was going

ViVilhjalmur Stefansson, whose fixation with Wrangel Island cost the lives of many men.

Ironically, Stefansson never saw or set foot on Wrangel Isand

on around us,” wrote Bartlett, “for the sky was overcast and the darkness was the kind which, as the time-honoured phrase goes, you could cut with a knife, while the stinging snowdrift … under the impetus of the screaming gale, added

to the uncertainty as to what was about to happen from moment to moment.”

After drifting trapped in ice for five months, Karluk was carried westward some 1000 kilometres by the pack until finally crushed and sunk about 100 kilometres NW of Wrangel Island. “Finally around 6.45 pm there was a horrific blast, right outside McKinlays bunk on the port side. It sounded like an explosion.”

Barlett played Chopin’s funeral march on the gramophone as the ship went down and the 22 men, one woman, two children, 16 dogs and a cat took to the ice in the frigid winter darkness.

Through Bartlett’s foresight, a camp had been established on the ice prior to the sinking and the party waited for enough daylight to begin the march across the frozen sea to Wrangel Island. Three months after the sinking, the survivors arrived, although eight men had become lost en route and were never seen again.

With the camp established on Wrangel Island, Bartlett prepared for his rescue journey with Kataktovik, an Inuit hunter, and they set off across the melting ice to Siberia and Alaska on a journey that would take a further two months. “He was worn out, ill, fed up and exhausted.” But he still had to negotiate with the station sergeant at Saint Michael, Alaska, to send his urgent telegraph message because he didn’t have enough money for the required full payment in advance. But Bartlett got his rescue ship and recovered the remaining men and Inuit family in another heroic episode, but the grandiose Vilhjalmur Stefansson still had plans for desolate Wrangel Island.

In her research for ‘The Ice Master’ Niven had uncovered another tale, that of Ada Blackjack, a poor illiterate Inuit single mother with a sickly child who has signed on as a seamstress for Stefansson’s latest folly; a return to Wrangel Island.

It was on my own voyage to Wrangel Island in 2005 aboard the mighty Russian icebreaker, Kapitan Khlebnikov, where I met Jennifer Niven who was aboard as a guest lecturer. “I’ve just finished her book!”

I remarked with childlike enthusiasm to my travel agent when I learned of her inclusion.

I had visions of a weathered, adventure beaten woman who had scaled mountains and wrestled crocodiles, but it just goes to show how preconceptions can be misleading.

Instead I met an immaculately coiffed, perfectly made up diva who looked more like a best selling Mills & Boon writer. She ventured out onto the ice in leopard skin gumboots, Rodeo Drive sunglasses and oh-so stylish après ski Gortex. Her radiant smile and engaging manner instantly won her friends and admirers throughout the ship and when she began her lecture on her then new book, Ada Blackjack, you could have heard a pin drop.

“I am not a rugged mountain climber or explorer,” she began to the hushed auditorium, “I do not thrive on extreme outdoor situations and adventures. I do not enjoy the cold nor do I particularly enjoy “roughing it.”

I like my conveniences, my creature comforts, and I am much more likely to subscribe to In Style magazine than to the REI catalogue. Perhaps that is why, whenever I tell strangers that I am an author, I usually hear: “Let me guess— romance novels!” When I tell them that I’ve actually written two non-fiction accounts of real-life Arctic adventure history, the second response tends to be: “Where’s your beard? Your pipe?

Your outdoor gear? What’s a girl like you doing writing books like this?”

In her talk, Niven paid homage to her mother, also an author, who had fostered her writing skills and taught her the value of a great story.

“That is one reason I identify with Ada Blackjack. No one who met her would immediately classify her as a hero. Just 23 years old, she was barely five feet tall, unskilled, timid, and completely ignorant of the world outside Nome, Alaska. She was deathly afraid of guns and of polar bears. She knew nothing about hunting, trapping, living off the land, or even building an igloo. She had a questionable reputation and was despondent over a failed marriage and a chronically ill young son. When she

Top left: Ada in action on Wrangel Island.

Left: Ada. Bottom: Jennifer Niven with her copy of Ice Master at Rodgers Harbour, Wrangel Island.

“Finally around 6.45 pm there was a horrific blast, right outside McKinlays bunk on the port side.

It sounded like an explosion.”

the Karluk survivors had camped. This was a lovely day in the Arctic, midsummer, but the barren tundra and thick, gloomy skies did nothing to cheer the atmosphere. Jennifer clutched her designer day pack and slowly walked toward the site of the old camp. She was channelling something or somebody, clearly overawed at finally setting foot at the site she had spent many months researching. I interrupted her for a photograph, she gracefully obliged, but she stayed in her trance, the impeccably applied mascara amplifying her saucerlike eyes.

“Perhaps the next time someone asks me if I am a writer of romance, I will remind them of the beauty of finding the story in everything, and I will tell them of a sweet, unassuming young woman who never thought of labelling herself.

“Brave?” Ada would say whenever people would praise her courage. “I don’t know about that. But I would never give up hope while I’m still alive.”

And so ended my own vicarious brush with fame and history. From the crowded bookshop in Sydney to the pebbly shores of the impossibly isolated Wrangel Island, I had met two impressive women who dared to venture way out of their respective comfort zones.

Ada lived to the ripe old age of 85 and died in 1983. Jennifer continues a highly successful career as a best-selling author with her new fictional character, the adventurous Velva Jean Hart.

Visit Jennifer’s website, www.jenniferniven. com, for details on all her books.

signed on as seamstress of the 1921 Wrangel Island Expedition—in search of a husband and money to care for her son— the men considered her a hindrance and a nuisance. They scoffed that she would never make it. Yet Ada alone survived, having taught herself the skills she needed to endure.”

When the Khlebnikov arrived in dramatic fashion at Wrangel Island after crashing relentlessly through metre-thick pack ice and scattering curious polar bears, we made our first landing at Rodgers Harbour where

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