Page 178 - New Grammar with a Smile 7

2 Ada Blackjack

Read the passage carefully.

Merely 23 years old, Ada Blackjack was barely five feet tall, unskilled, timid, and
completely ignorant of the world outside Nome, Alaska. She was mortally afraid of
guns and polar bears. She knew nothing about hunting, trapping, living off the land,
or even building an igloo. When she signed on as seamstress with the 1921 Wrangel
Island Expedition, the men considered her a hindrance and a nuisance. They scoffed
at her, sure that she would never survive the harsh conditions.

There were five of them—four men and a woman. They had volunteered to live on
the icy Wrangel Island to the far north of Siberia. Their goal was to prove that this
inhospitable land was, in fact, habitable. This was the brainchild of Arctic explorer
Vilhjalmur Stefansson. And it was to go hopelessly, disastrously wrong. Among the
five explorers was Ada, whose husband had died—leaving behind a child with chronic
tuberculosis. Ada decided to join the expedition, at a good salary, for just one year.
She was employed as the team’s seamstress.

The rest of the team were hardened adventurers: three Americans named Lorne
Knight, Milton Galle, and Fred Maurer, and a Canadian called Allan Crawford.

On 16 September 1921, the team was left on the barren Wrangel Island, far north of
Siberia.

Stefansson was so convinced that the island was teeming with wildlife that he left
them with enough food for just six months. He promised to send a supply ship the
following summer.

The mission began well. They built a large snow house and then began to hunt.
They managed to kill ten polar bears, 30 seals and many geese and ducks: they
were confident that they could survive until the arrival of the supply ship. But the
promised vessel never arrived and the five faced a long cold autumn with dwindling
supplies. They soon ran short of tea and coffee, flour, beans and sugar. As autumn
developed into a ferocious Arctic winter, the wild game disappeared and the five were
left extremely hungry. Worse still, Lorne Knight developed a serious illness.

On 28 January 1923, Crawford, Galle and Maurer decided to traverse the icy Chukchi
Sea to reach the Siberian mainland and seek help. The three men were never seen

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