Buddy Levy · 2022 · survival

Buddy Levy's 2022 account of the Karluk disaster. In 1913 the ship Karluk, flagship of the Canadian Arctic Expedition under Vilhjalmur Stefansson, is frozen into the Beaufort Sea and abandoned by her commander; she drifts for months and is crushed by the ice. Her captain, Bob Bartlett, leads the survivors across the floes to desolate Wrangel Island, then treks over the frozen sea to Siberia and across to Alaska to bring help. The route follows the doomed ship and the long walk for rescue.

1. 1
   Nome

   At Nome the Karluk takes on her last supplies before pushing north into the Arctic ice as flagship of Stefansson's Canadian Arctic Expedition of 1913.

2. 2
   The Beaufort Sea

   Beset by early ice in the Beaufort Sea, the ship is frozen fast; Stefansson leaves with a small party to hunt and never returns to her, and the Karluk begins to drift helpless with the pack.

3. 3
   Wrangel Island

   Carried hundreds of miles west and at last crushed by the ice, the Karluk goes down, and her people, led by Captain Bob Bartlett, haul their boats and sledges across the broken floes to the bleak refuge of Wrangel Island.

4. 4
   The Siberian Coast

   Leaving the survivors to wait, Bartlett and the Inuit hunter Kataktovik set out across the frozen sea to reach the Siberian mainland, a desperate trek over shifting ice.

5. 5
   Nome

   Bartlett crosses Chukotka and the Bering Strait to Alaska and raises the alarm, and months later the survivors are taken off Wrangel Island, the dead left behind on the ice.