EP02 | Ada Blackjack: The Woman Wrangel Island Couldn't Kill — Part 1

In 1921, a 23-year-old woman named Ada Blackjack boarded a small wooden schooner in Noam, Alaska, bound for one of the most remote islands in the Arctic. Ada had no experience hunting or trapping. She didn't even know how to shoot a rifle, and she was terrified of polar bears. In fact, Ada didn't really want to go at all. But she had a very good reason for saying yes. One that had almost nothing to do with adventure and everything to do with the life she hoped to return to. What Ada couldn't have known was that she was heading into one of the strangest and most disastrous expeditions in Arctic history. Four of the five people who landed on Wrangell Island would never make it home. And the one who did would be Ada. But how a woman who arrived with almost none of the skills she would need became the expedition's sole survivor is only part of the story. Because what happened on Wrangel Island and what happened to Ada afterwards is far stranger than the survival story alone. This is the story of Ada Blackjack. I'm Leanne, and before we get into today's story, I just want to take a minute to say thank you. When I released the first episode of this podcast, I really had no idea what to expect. So to everyone who watched or listened, subscribed or followed the show, shared one of my posts, left a comment, or just took the time to tell me what you thought, thank you. I've read every comment, and honestly, seeing people connect with the stories and with the idea behind this podcast has meant more to me than you could imagine. If you're new here, the real unreal is where we explore bizarre coincidences, unbelievable survival stories, strange history, mysteries, scams, human behavior, and the kinds of stories that just sound too crazy to be true. If you enjoy the show, I'd love your support. You can find links to all of my social channels in the show notes where I share episode teasers, additional pieces of story information, and some of my own stories as well. And of course, if you haven't already, please consider subscribing or following the show and leaving a rating or review. Those small actions really do make a huge difference in helping other people discover the podcast. And without further ado, let's get into the story. Ada Blackjack was born on May 10th, 1898, in Spruce Creek, which was a remote settlement north of Nome, Alaska. Nome had boomed during the gold rush, drawing thousands of people north in search of fortune. But as the gold dried up, so did much of the outside interest, and by the time Ada was growing up, the once booming town had largely been forgotten. Although Ada was in Upiat, she had little experience with hunting or wilderness survival. She spent the first eight years of her life with her biological parents, but after her father died of food poisoning, Ada and her sister Rita were sent by their mother to a Methodist mission school in Nome, about 46 miles away from home. There, Ada learned English and was taught the domestic skills expected of a young woman at the time, including cooking and housekeeping. Most importantly, for what would come later, she became an expert seamstress. At the age of 16, Ada married Jack Blackjack, a local dog musher. And for those of you that don't know what a dog musher is, because I didn't know, I had to look it up, and apparently it's somebody that runs sled dogs, teams of sled dogs. Now they had three children, but only one of them survived infancy. And Jack treated Ada very badly. He routinely beat her and he intentionally withheld food from both her and the family, which kept them in a constant state of hunger. As a result, two of their babies died from starvation, an illness in infancy, amid severe malnutrition and a complete lack of adequate medical care. The marriage was deeply abusive and unstable, worsened by Jack's alcoholism and his failure to provide even the most basic necessities for the family. In 1921, Jack abandoned Ada on the Alaska's Seward Peninsula with their only surviving child, five-year-old Bennett, who was suffering from tuberculosis. With no other option, Ada set out on foot for Gnome, 40 miles away. And when Bennett became too tired to walk, she carried him. By the time she reached Nome, Ada was alone, impoverished, and trying to care for a seriously ill child. She desperately sought work as a seamstress to support herself and Bennett. And although she was able to find employment, it just wasn't enough to support Bennett and the care that he needed for his tuberculosis. She had to make the heartbreaking decision to place him in an orphanage, vowing that she would find a way to make enough money to bring him back home. According to Ada's diary, she was headed home from work one day and saw U.S. Marshal Jordan standing across the street. Jordan waved to her and called out, saying that he wanted to speak to her. He explained that four men were looking for an Inuit woman who could sew skins and do seamstress work. And the next day, Jordan introduced Ada to two of the four men, Mr. Crawford and Mr. Knight. They told her about an upcoming one-year expedition in Siberia that would require her services. At first, Ada was reluctant to agree to their proposal, and there were a few reasons for this. The first was that she was terrified of polar bears. The second was that she was already uneasy because of a recent visit to a shaman who had warned that danger and death lay ahead and cautioned her to be especially careful around fire and knives. And the third reason was that she didn't want to be the only woman on the expedition. Ada had initially agreed to go expecting other Inubiate families to join the party, and when those families backed out, Ada wanted to withdraw as well. The men reassured Ada that they would hire additional Inuit families during a stop to Siberia. But in addition to this, they offered her $50 a month, which was far more money than she'd ever made before, and enough that she could reunite with her son. Right then, she agreed. Mr. Crawford, who was the head of the expedition, had chartered the boat Silver Wave for the journey, and the commander of the ship was Jack Hammer, who had spent many years in the Arctic waters. The 1921 expedition to Wrangell Island was the brainchild of Wilhelmer Stephenson, a famous and very controversial Canadian-American Arctic explorer. By many historical accounts, Stephenson was part visionary and part smooth-talking salesman. Long before the spearheading of this expedition, Stephenson was already the most polarizing man in the Arctic exploration world. He didn't just explore the frozen north. He had written multiple bestseller books where he claimed that the Arctic wasn't a freezing wasteland as others would attest to. In fact, he referred to it as the friendly Arctic, and he promoted the idea that anyone with a rifle could easily hunt seals and polar bears and live like a king. But the polar veterans knew this wasn't entirely true. By 1921, Stephenson's reputation had been badly damaged by scandal. A few years earlier, he had led a major Canadian Arctic expedition aboard the Karluck. When the ship became trapped in the ice, Stephenson left with a small group of men, supposedly on a brief hunting trip. But while he was gone, the ice shifted, carrying the Karlock away with the rest of the crew still aboard. The ship eventually sank and 11 members of the expedition died. Stephenson never returned to them. Instead, he made his way to another ship and continued exploring the Arctic while the stranded members of his expedition fought to survive. When he eventually returned to civilization, he largely shifted responsibility for the disaster onto the Carlux captain, Robert Bartlett, a response that only added to the controversy surrounding him. At that exact same time, scientists were furious with him as well. He had gone to the press claiming that he discovered a lost white tribe of Arctic people descended from ancient Vikings. It was a total lie, meant to sell books and lecture tickets, and the scientific community labeled him as a fraud. Stephenson organized the Wrangell Island expedition for a mix of geopolitical, strategic, and personal reasons, but he was acting entirely on his own, without the backing or authorization of any government. He thought that if a British or Canadian colony could establish a continuous settlement there for two years, Great Britain or Canada could legally claim the island under international law. To create a valid foundation for a Canadian claim, he selected 20-year-old Canadian University student Alan Crawford to lead the landing party. The Canadian government refused to fund the expedition and effectively washed its hands of the entire project. Britain hadn't asked Stephenson to claim Wrangell Island either, and showed little interest in acquiring what it considered a remote and largely useless addition to the Empire. More importantly, both governments were concerned about the diplomatic consequences. Relations with the newly forming Soviet Union were already tense in the aftermath of World War I, and neither Canada nor Britain wanted to risk an international dispute over a remote Arctic island, especially one started by an expedition they hadn't authorized. Nevertheless, Stephenson deliberately ignored their warnings and forged ahead. In addition to staking a legal claim on the land through settlement, he did correctly anticipate that future international travel and trade routes would utilize polar flight paths. He targeted Wrangell Island because he envisioned it transforming into a critical strategic air base and a remote refueling station by global commercial aviation crossing the Arctic. By forcing a territorial claim, he hoped to secure a monopoly on the future of global aviation routes. Lastly, Stephenson sought to validate the radical and heavily criticized hypothesis, which he called the friendly Arctic. He publicly argued that the polar regions were not hostile, unlivable wastelands, but bountiful environments where adaptive humans could easily subsist indefinitely by hunting local wildlife like seals, polar bear, and walruses. Because so many seasoned polar veterans openly mocked this idea, Stephenson used this expedition as a personal crusade to prove them wrong. To force proof of his theory, he deliberately underprovisioned the expedition, sending the young crew into the high Arctic with only six months of rations. Stephenson fully expected them to hunt for the remainder of their two-year stay. So I want to give you a little bit of background about Wrangell Island itself and the environment. Wrangell Island sits alone in the Chukchi Sea, which is north of Siberia. It's a remote, treeless expanse of tundra, rock, and ice. For much of the year, temperatures fall well below zero. Fierce winds sweep across the exposed landscape, and the thick sea ice surrounds the island, which can make it impossible for ships to reach the shore. Winters are long and brutal, with temperatures routinely dropping below negative 30 degrees, and blizzards capable of reducing visibility to almost nothing. Because Wrangel Island lies well above the Arctic Circle, winter also brings roughly two months of polar night when the sun doesn't rise at all. Summer offers very little reprieve. Temperatures rarely climb above 40 degrees, and beneath the moss and the tundra, the ground remains permanently frozen. The island's isolation is made even more dangerous by the sea ice surrounding it. The pack ice is constantly moving and notoriously unpredictable. Even during summer, it can remain so dense that ships simply can't reach the shoreline. Effectively, what that means is that there's no guarantee that because a ship reached Wrangell Island one year, that it would be able to reach the shore the next. At the time of this expedition, there were very few resources on the island itself. Wrangell had no trees, which meant there was no reliable source of firewood for heating or cooking. The expedition would have to collect driftwood washed onto the beaches and stockpile as much as possible before winter. Once those beaches were buried beneath the snow and the ice, finding additional fuel would become much more difficult. And then there was the wildlife. Wrangle Island was and remains an important habitat for polar bears, meaning the animals Stephenson saw as potential sources of food were also a very real threat. Seals, walruses, foxes, and migratory birds could provide desperately needed meat, but their availability was highly seasonal and unpredictable. Animals that were plentiful during one part of the year could become extremely difficult to find the next. And this was the fundamental problem with Stephenson's friendly Arctic theory. Survival on Wrangel Island depended largely on things that no expedition could actually control. The weather, the ice, the availability of game, and whether a ship could actually reach them. For a well-equipped expedition with sufficient supplies, Wrangell Island was already extraordinarily difficult. For an underequipped expedition, there was almost no margin for error. With the plan in place, the expedition was ready to leave. On September 9, 1921, the Silver Wave, a small wooden schooner, left Nome carrying Ada and the men who would make up the Wrangell Island expedition. Alan Crawford was a 20-year-old Canadian university student who Stephenson appointed as leader of the expedition, despite his limited Arctic experience. Lauren Knight, at 28, was one of the more experienced members of the group. He was an American scientist and outdoorsman with previous experience in the Arctic. The youngest member of the crew was Milton Gale, a 19-year-old Canadian who joined the expedition as an assistant and would also help document their time on the island. Fred Moore, also 28, had considerably more experience with Wrangell Island itself. He had been a member of the Carluck expedition and had actually survived being stranded on Wrangell Island in 1914. Seven years later, he agreed to go back. And I'm going to sidebar here for a second because when I read that Fred had also been a part of the Carluck expedition, I had to take a pause and figure out why he would agree to go back. I mean, why on earth would someone who had already survived one disastrous Stephenson expedition agree to go on another one? So I did a little digging, and surprisingly, Fred didn't seem to blame Stephenson for what happened with the car luck. The two had actually remained close afterwards, and Fred even joined Stephenson on his lecture circuit. He had also maintained a strong connection to the Arctic and to Wrangell Island itself. So when Stephenson offered him the opportunity to return, Fred agreed. So if you're wondering like I was, there's your answer. And last but not least, there was one final member of the group, Victoria, a silver tabby kitten they called Vic. Vic had been aboard the Silver Wave because ships commonly carried cats at that time to control mice and rats. So when the schooner left Wrangle Island, Vic stayed on board. And after all of Stephenson's confidence about the friendly Arctic, there was one person who wouldn't actually be testing that theory himself, Stephenson. He stayed behind in the United States to lecture and raise funds while sending everyone else to carry out his plan. So that was the group heading to Wrangell Island. But just as important as who Stephenson was sending was what he was sending with them. And this is where his belief in the friendly Arctic really comes into play. Stephenson didn't just believe that people could survive in the Arctic by living off the land, he built the expedition around that idea. The five-person team was sent to Wrangell Island with only six months of food, despite plans to remain there for longer. Stephenson believed that once they established camp, they could simply live off the land, hunting seals, walruses, polar bears, and other game. And he was so confident in that idea that he actually cut supplies from their original list. He told the men not to waste money on things like butter and chocolate, arguing that Arctic wildlife would provide all the meat and fat that they needed. He reduced their firearms from six rifles to four and cut other weapons and ammunition to save money. What remained was largely basic, shelf-stable food like flour, rice, beans, salt, pork, and lard, supplemented by small amounts of canned food and condensed milk, sugar, tea, and coffee. Even the expedition's seven sled dogs were reportedly cheap, poorly conditioned animals purchased at the last minute in Nome. The expedition also lacked a Umiak, which is a lightweight boat which is traditionally made from animal skins and it's designed for Arctic travel. Without one, the team had fewer options for hunting, coastal travel, crossing open waters when the ice made travel impossible. So essentially, Stephenson deliberately sent five people into one of the most isolated places on Earth without enough provisions to sustain them, because he was convinced that the Arctic itself would provide the rest. So the trip to Wrangell Island itself was surprisingly uneventful. The Silver Wave left Nome on September 9, 1921, and reached Wrangell Island about a week later, but there was an important stop along the way. Now, if you recall, before leaving Nome, Ada had been assured that she wouldn't be the only Inupiate member of the expedition. The original plan had been to bring several indigenous families so that the men could help with the hunting while the women would help Ada with the sewing and cooking and other work required to keep the camp running. Unfortunately, those families backed out before the silver wave left Nome, and Ada wanted to back out too. But she was persuaded to stay after being assured that they would make an additional stop at an indigenous settlement along the Siberian coast and recruit other families there. And they did make that stop at East Cape Siberia, but they were unable to get anyone to agree to the expedition. At that point, Ada knew that if she continued to Wrangel Island, she would be the only woman and the only Inupiate member of the expedition. Interestingly, the stop along the Siberian coast also highlights another problem with the expedition. If you recall, Stefanson had no authorization from either Canada or Britain to claim Wrangel Island. Russia already considered the island its territory, so the expedition had good reason not to advertise what they were actually doing. During their stop in East Cape, that became a very real concern. Russian officials boarded the Silver Wave and questioned the group about where they were headed. Crawford later wrote that they were answering the questions quite diplomatically, but they didn't elaborate on exactly what they told them. What we do know is that the group was deliberately keeping the true purpose of their expedition quiet. They were, after all, traveling towards an island Russia had already claimed with the intention of claiming it for Britain without the permission or the backing from the British government. The silver wave reached Wrangell Island on September 15, 1921. Despite how difficult the island could be to get to, their arrival was remarkably easy. Crawford wrote that there wasn't a single piece of ice in sight. The weather was unusually mild and clear, and they were able to bring the schooner close to shore. They weren't entirely sure where they had landed, though. Fred Moore, despite having been stranded on Wrangell Island years earlier, couldn't immediately identify the location. They eventually determined that they were about a mile west of Rogers Harbor, along the island's southern coast. At around 7 o'clock that evening, they began unloading their supplies, working through heavy surf to bring the expedition's gear and equipment ashore. By around 10 30 or 11 p.m. that night, they had unloaded most of their supplies, and at that point, the group returned to the ship to eat. And sleep, but by 3 a.m. the next morning, the wind began to pick up, and they were awakened and told to get the rest of their personal belongings off the ship. On the morning of September 16th, the expedition officially took possession of Wrangell Island. Crawford and the other three men raised the British flag and signed a formal proclamation declaring Wrangell Island part of the British Empire. And the proclamation itself is again worth mentioning because they never had authorization from either government to do so. The document declared that Wrangell Island was now the possession of King George V and part of the British Empire. It was signed by Crawford, Knight, Moore, and Gale and dated September 16th, 1921. Shortly afterwards, the silver wave pulled away from the island. Knight described the ship leaving with three blasts of a whistle and a great deal of flag waving, and then it was gone. At that moment, the expedition actually had reason to be optimistic. The weather was surprisingly good. There was no sea ice in sight. Crawford reported abundant fox and polar bear tracks, and Knight believed that they had enough equipment to make a successful winter of it. Clearly, at that point, they were looking at their situation quite positively. They expected to establish their camp, hunt, conduct their work, make it through the winter, and be resupplied the following year. As far as they were concerned, the expedition was off to a great start. When Ada first saw Wrangle Island, she was overwhelmed by the size. She later remembered thinking that it looked more like a mainland than an island, and for a moment she considered turning around and going back, but Ada decided that leaving wouldn't be fair to the men on the expedition team, so she stayed. Almost immediately, everyone began preparing for winter. The men hauled driftwood from the beaches and began stockpiling it for fuel. While splitting wood, Knight accidentally drove an axe into his leg, leaving him with a serious wound. But the men carried on with their duties. They also started building the frame for a snow house that would eventually become their winter shelter. Until it was finished, all five of them lived together in a canvas tent. Ada began doing the work that she had been hired to do. She made snowshirts, worked on the reindeer skin parkas that they had brought with them, attaching hoods and preparing clothing for the colder weather that was coming. But Ada was struggling almost from the moment that they arrived. Her five-year-old son Bennett was back home in Nome, seriously ill with tuberculosis and living in an orphanage because Ada couldn't afford the medical care that he needed. She was now thousands of miles away on an island she had already been afraid to come to, surrounded by polar bears that she was terrified of, and living as the only woman among four men after being assured that other inupiate families would be joining the expedition. Within two weeks, Ada reached a breaking point. On September 29th, Ada walked away from camp. She left behind her ring and pencil, along with a note for Crawford. When she hadn't returned about an hour later, Crawford and Knight followed her tracks inland. It took them another hour to catch up with her, and when they did, Ada was extremely distressed. A bottle of liniment, a topical medicine that could be poisonous if ingested, fell from her clothing, and according to Knight's diary, she had already drunk about half of it. Ada told them that she believed the men intended to kill her. She had seen Knight sharpening his knife that morning and had become terrified of him. They eventually persuaded her to come home to camp. The men kept extensive diaries and notes during their time on Wrangle Island, and much of what we know about Ada's treatment during these first months comes not from Ada's accusing them years later, but from what the men themselves wrote down at the time. Knight in particular documented Ada's behavior in considerable detail. The day after the incident, Knight wrote that Ada had kept Crawford awake through the night, asking him to protect her from the other men. Whenever she saw one of them sharpening a knife, she became convinced it would be used to kill her. Given the warning that she'd received from the shaman before leaving Nome, it's not difficult to understand what she was thinking. Now isolated on Wrangle Island and already scared and anxious, she watched the men around camp carry and sharpen knives every day. And to Ada, that warning felt very real. On October 3rd, Knight recorded that Ada was having repeated crying spells. At one point she asked him to prepare his rifle and shoot her while she slept. Moments later, she would beg the men to protect her and make sure no one would hurt her. Knight couldn't seem to decide whether her distress was genuine. He wrote that sometimes he thought her episodes were an act, and other times he believed they were real. But instead of understanding Ada's behavior's fear, homesickness, or psychological distress, the men increasingly viewed it as a problem of discipline, and the language in Knight's diary made that very clear. He repeatedly referred to Ada simply as the woman, the female, or the seamstress. When she cried or stopped working, he described her as stubborn, foolish, or possibly mentally deficient. One point he wrote that a horse whip might be an effective way of persuading her to work, although he added that he wouldn't actually use one. By late October, they began using food as leverage. When Ada stopped working on a skin she was supposed to prepare, Crawford threatened to put her on bread and water. Knight jokingly referred to the punishment as Sing Sing fare after the prison. The conflict continued into November. Ada repeatedly wandered away from camp, sometimes walking miles towards the secondary trapping camp where Crawford and Moore were staying. On one occasion, she disappeared during bad weather and remained missing overnight. The men eventually found her several miles away and brought her back by dog sled. On November 23rd, the situation escalated. Knight recorded in his diary that Ada had refused to repair a pair of boots, so he tied her to the flagpole until she agreed to do it. His explanation was simple. Kindness hadn't worked, so he was trying something more forceful. The following day, after Ada left camp, instead of completing the work she'd been assigned, Knight recorded that she was sent to bed without supper. At the end of November, when Ada refused to make a pair of mittens for Gail, Knight again sent her to bed without supper. When Gail caught her taking hard bread because she was hungry, Knight refused to let her eat it. By December, Knight wrote explicitly that they were refusing to give Ada food because she wouldn't work. His diary also makes clear that Ada sometimes took food herself while the men were away. Their efforts to control her eventually went beyond food. On December 16th, after another confrontation over sewing, the men refused to allow Ada into the main shelter unless she agreed to work. She spent the night in an older snow house instead. The next morning, Knight told her that if she continued refusing to work, she would have to sleep outside again. Ada asked what she could make. He told her mittens and socks, and she began preparing the thread. I think it's important to acknowledge that there were two realities happening here at the same time. The men genuinely needed Ada to work because they were headed into an Arctic winter, and the clothing that she was making and repairing was not a luxury. Their survival depended on everyone doing their part, and when Ada stopped working or disappeared from camp, that created a very real problem for the entire group. But Ada was also clearly struggling psychologically, and that's what makes their responses difficult to read. So, yes, they needed her to work, but tying her to a flagpole or withholding food and threatening to leave her outside in the harsh environment were cruel methods of dealing with somebody who was already struggling and in obvious distress. It feels like they were simply trying to force her into submission. The men had legitimate survival problems to solve, but that necessity didn't make the way they treated Ada humane. Eventually, the situation changed, and by late December, Knight's own diary begins describing Ada very differently. He wrote that she was working industriously. She scraped skins, made mittens, baked bread, cooked, washed dishes, and sewed. By February, Knight recorded that Ada was doing all of the cooking, dishwashing, and other camp work in addition to sewing and mending. And by May, he acknowledged that she was doing far more than she'd actually been hired to do. Ada had been brought in as a seamstress, but Knight wrote that she was now insisting on cooking and washing dishes as well, and that she was doing, in his words, as well as anybody could wish. All the while, Ada remained desperately homesick. She wanted to get back to Gnome. She wanted to get back to Bennett. Meanwhile, the practical work of surviving their first winter continued. The men hauled as much driftwood as they could find from the beaches and built up their supply for heating and cooking. They had constructed a more permanent snow house, and by late October, they had packed the frame with blocks of snow and were finally able to move out of the canvas tent. Despite everything that had happened during those first few months, by the end of the first winter, the expedition itself was still functioning. They had shelter, they were hunting, Ada was sewing and keeping much of the camp running, and for the moment, Stephenson's experiment still appeared to be working. By December, Ada's crying spells had become less frequent, and the situation in camp had begun to settle. During the darkest parts of the polar night, the group even managed to celebrate Christmas together. They pooled together some of their limited luxury foods to make a special Christmas meal, and the men gave Ada small gifts from their personal belongings, and Ada made winter clothing and accessories for the men. For a brief period, the conflict that had defined those first few months seems to have eased, and the five of them were functioning more like a team. Despite the rocky beginning, Stephenson's plan did appear to be working. The men trapped foxes during that first winter, but they were not particularly successful. When the spring arrived in 1922, the wildlife returned. There were geese and duck, followed by seals and polar bears, and according to Ada, that spring the men had killed more than 30 seals and more than 10 polar bears, giving the group a substantial supply of fresh meat. But there were still problems. The island was so damp that they couldn't properly dry most of the animal skins, so nearly all of them had to be discarded. But when it came to food, the central premise of Stephenson's friendly Arctic theory seemed at least for the moment to be holding up. They had survived their first winter. They had shelter, they were successfully hunting for much of their food, and they were expecting a ship to arrive that summer with fresh supplies and eventually take them home. But by the summer of 1922, the ship that they were waiting on never arrived, and their food situation was beginning to change. The commercial provisions that they had brought from Nome had been largely depleted, leaving them increasingly dependent on what they could hunt, and the abundance of game that they had seen during the spring wasn't consistent throughout the year. The wildlife that had been so abundant during the spring was becoming less reliable. On August 15th, Gale recorded that he and Crawford had spent the day dipping hard bread in grease and still couldn't satisfy their hunger. Meanwhile, back in Nome, an attempt was finally being made to reach them. Stephenson had arranged for an experienced Arctic captain named Joe Bernard to take the schooner Teddy Bear to Wrangell Island. Bernard left Nome on August 20th carrying supplies and additional people intended to continue the occupation of the island. Stephenson wasn't necessarily planning to abandon the Wrangell Island project. His intention was to send a new group to the island, and he was hoping that one or more of the original men might agree to remain for another year and lead them. But the members of the original expedition would also have the option of returning to Nome aboard the teddy bear. Unfortunately, they never got the chance. The teddy bear ran into very difficult conditions as it traveled north. The ship encountered heavy winds and dense sea ice that blocked their route towards Wrangell Island. Bernard repeatedly tried to find a way through, but the schooner simply couldn't reach the island. Eventually, he had no choice but to turn back. He returned to Nome in September without ever making contact with the expedition. With the summer ending in no way to communicate with the outside world, the group had little choice but to prepare for a second winter with whatever remained on the island. And this next winter was going to be very different from the first. As the group began preparing for their second winter, another problem was developing. Lorne Knight was getting sick. Ada had written in her diary that she noticed it while they were gathering wood. Knight seemed unusually tired and worn down and began complaining about the work and his back. Over time, his symptoms became more concerning. His strength had declined and his joints and muscles began to hurt. And eventually it became clear that Knight was suffering from scurvy, a disease caused by a prolonged deficiency of vitamin C. But there's something about Knight developing scurvy that I find a little strange. This wasn't his first time having it. Knight had developed scurvy during an earlier Arctic expedition with Stephenson, and he knew what the disease felt like. And more importantly, he knew how to treat it because he'd recovered from it before by eating fresh meat. And that probably sounds strange because most of us associate vitamin C with oranges or fresh fruits and vegetables, but fresh animal tissue contains small amounts of vitamin C as well. And in particular, certain organs, if they're eaten raw or lightly cooked, it can provide enough vitamin C to prevent or even reverse scurvy. The important distinction here is how the meat was being prepared. They were mostly eating polar bear, but because of the risk of parasites, they had to cook it thoroughly, which also destroyed much of the vitamin C that Knight needed. Fox, on the other hand, was eaten less thoroughly cooked, so it offered something that the polar bear meat didn't. But at this point, Knight wouldn't eat the fox. According to the surviving accounts, he couldn't stand the strong smell, which is interesting when you consider that Knight knew that he had scurvy. He'd had it before, and he knew fresh meat was the treatment. While all the others ate fox, Knight continued to refuse it, and his condition continued to deteriorate. There are indications that some of the other members may have been experiencing early symptoms as well. Gail described Crawford as unusually tired and dragging his feet, but their symptoms never really progressed the way Knights did. And if you recall from earlier, Knight suffered from an axe wound while splitting wood shortly after they arrived on Wrangell Island, and it had been very slow to heal. Vitamin C is essential for the production of collagen, which the body needs to maintain and repair tissue, so as Knight's deficiency became more severe, that lingering wound was another indication that his body was no longer repairing itself properly. The situation became even more dangerous as winter set in and game became increasingly difficult to find. Their remaining provisions were disappearing, and Knight's declining health meant he was becoming less capable of hunting. The fox offered a potential source of the vitamin C that he needed, but at this stage he continued to refuse it, so Knight's scurvy progressed. By January 1923, scurvy wasn't their only problem. The group was running dangerously short of food. Knight had calculated that what remained at their main camp was enough to support only about three people until the seals and birds returned in the spring, but there were five of them. So they began seriously considering something that they discussed before. Someone would have to leave Wrangell Island and try to reach Siberia. The original plan was for Alan Crawford and Lauren Knight to make the journey. So on January 7th, 1923, the two men set out across the frozen sea, but Knight couldn't do it. His scurvy had weakened him so badly that they were forced to turn around and return to camp, and that changed the plan. Knight would remain on Wrangell Island with Ada, while Crawford, Moore, and Gail would make the journey instead. The three men would attempt to cross roughly 90 miles of frozen Arctic Sea to the Siberian coast, hoping eventually to reach civilization and get help. We can't know what would have happened if Knight had remained healthy. The group was already facing a serious food shortage, and some kind of attempt to reach the outside world may have happened regardless. But we do know that Knight was originally supposed to make that journey with Crawford. His scurvy made him physically incapable of doing it, and the plan changed. Instead, Crawford, Moore, and Gail left together, and none of the three would ever be seen alive again. And that's where we're going to leave Ada's story for today. I'll be back with part two, where we'll continue the story of Ada Blackjack and the Wrangle Island expedition. Until then, thank you so much for listening, and I'll see you next time on the Real Unreal.