Wrangel Island

Two years ago Russia sent three white men, three white women and 50 Eskimo families to bleak little Wrangel Island, disastrous site 300 miles north of the Arctic Circle. The people were called a colony and their planting on the island was a Soviet gesture of possession against the rival claims of the U. S. and Canada. In the 1820's the Russian Baron Wrangel heard of, but did not see, the island. In 1867, Captain Thomas Long, U. S. citizen, sailed around and named it. Just before the War, Captain Robert A. Bartlett, who recently announced his plans to drift across the Arctic in a tub-shaped boat (TIME, Jan. 14), was wrecked there. He walked across the ice to Siberia. Almost half his party died on Wrangel Island. In 1921, four men and Ada Blackjack, Eskimo sempstress, tried to live on the island. All but Miss Blackjack died. And dead, probably, are the Russian colonists sent there two years ago. A Russian relief ship, the Stavropol, tried to reach them this winter. Last week the Stavropol's captain, back at his Siberian base, reported that he had not been able to break through the Arctic ice.