A Tale to Remember

By Agnes Nigiyok

“I will tell about the time we were just married. We got only one child. This was about the time we were in a shipwreck. This is an actual life story. Now I am getting old. We went on a schooner from around Cape Perry area. The boat had no engine. It only had sails to make it go. My husband and I did not really know how the land was. Even though it is my land around the Holman area, the reason I did not know it so well was because I did not grow up around there.

Day after day, we travelled across from the mainland. They took turns to pilot the boat. Every time we looked out on top of the boat, it had ice on it. Also, we had only new dogs with us on the ship and they too had ice on their fur.

Sometimes I got tired of lying down below. I would go out to look, but there was no sign of land anywhere. Oh yes! The ship we were on belonged to Tokluk and his wife. I was told that my relatives were still alive. My husband had wanted to bring me to see my relatives. Day after day passed. I would sleep or lay down from being seasick. I barely got up.

One of the times my husband came to check on me, he woke me and said, “Wake up. We can see some land but I don’t know what land it is.” So I got up because I really wanted to see land. I looked out. The land was really white with snow. I did not really realize how late it was. This land was to be our home. I wondered how we were going to get to the land fast enough because the ship we were on had no engines. We kept sailing. Soon we were closer to the land. Maybe the current had helped some. Again my husband came down and looked in towards me and said, “We are very close to the land but we are very near a long cliff bank.” I suddenly felt afraid. I only thought of my husband’s aunt. Her name was Banigabluk. She hardly ever got up.

She started shouting and saying, “You should put the sail outward to the sea. That way we won’t » hit against the cliff.” But no one heard her for they were so busy. There were three men. They had cut the ropes off the sails. We drifted to the shore. I was still down below deck. Only when my husband started to call me saying, “Agnes, put all our blankets and bedding on top deck”. Our ship started to tear from rocks. There were very large waves, and water started to rock back and forth inside the ship. By this time, everyone had gone on top deck. There were just a few of us. Tokluk, the ship owner, stared at my husband, Jacob Nipalayok, and David Bernhardt. They started to lower the little boat to the water. After they did that they started to throw down bags of sugar, tea, and coffee into the little boat. The waves overturned it with all the stuff in it. After a while, they decided to put a long pole from the ship down to the shallow area so that we could try and go down and get to the shore. David tried to fix it so that we could try to go down to safety. Before my husband’s auntie could go down, the long pole broke in half. They put another pole down into the water hoping that this time it wouldn’t break. The men kept telling the women not to be afraid although it was very hard not to be scared. We could be really wet right up to our waist down, but the men said, “We have to get to safety”.

So, before the second pole could break, we started to try to get to the shore. The old lady was first because we wanted her to be first to get to safety. So, after her, we all got to the shore. There was a lot of snow on the land. By the time we all got to the land, we had lost almost everything. All we had was our clothing that we were wearing. When they were on the pole, sometimes a big, huge wave would go over David Bernhardt as he was trying to fix the pole. I think that’s how we got to the shore. Only my husband was left alone on the ship. He was planning to save his dogs – even though there was no food for them. After a while we all wrung out the salt water from our clothes. Then we put them back on because that’s all we had.

My husband had six dogs. He threw them all into the water. The dogs kept trying to go back to the ship. We would call the dogs to the shore but they just tried to swim back to the ship so my husband, Jacob, had to save himself because by this time the ship was starting to break, all he had to carry with him was his small little suitcase. Inside it was his tobacco and matches. Long ago there were no cigarettes around. Oh yes, he had his hunting knife inside also. This knife was to become very handy later on.

The place on the shore we had gone into had quite a bit of wood. I gathered wood together so that I could start a fire to dry our mukluks and clothes. The Tokluks were crying because they lost all of their tea, sugar, coal, and other things.

All of the things that were on the ship, we could see them on the bottom of the ocean floor, some of them shining. The ship also broke up into pieces. Among some of the things that were on the ship – one of them was a tent and it came to shore. So we all got it untangled and the men put it up. At least now we had shelter. It was a four bar tent. I gathered wood and made fire and dried up all our socks and mukluks.

Tokluk and his wife were still very quiet and very unhappy. But David and Jacob were talking and laughing by themselves. We had nothing to eat – not even tea.

By now it was getting little daylight. Our daughter, Elizabeth, was two years old. I would breastfeed her when she got hungry. She was still lively. There was lots of snow for tea, but no pots and tea leaves.

Evening was upon us. I kept lots of wood near the fire so it wouldn’t go out. I was the only person who kept the fire going. The rest were inside the tent. After breastfeeding my daughter, I put her on my back. I started to go for a walk along the shore where the ship had broken up. It was evening time. I could not see too far.”∞