Ada Blackjack: A True Story of Survival in the Arctic

”Stefansson could not manage a peanut stand, my husband always said.”

I read Buddy Levy's fascinating Empire of Ice and Stone: The Disastrous and Heroic Voyage of the Karluk not too long ago (seriously, go read it if you haven't, it's great), and one of the things that struck me about that particular voyage was how irresponsible its benefactor, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, seemed during the entire thing. He lost a whole vessel immediately after getting started, shrugged his shoulders, and immediately fucked off to the arctic coast rather than travel with his one remaining boat. So when I read later on that he had the utter brass balls to try it again with an entirely different voyage and people went along with it, I had to know more. This book is about the second time grifter Stefansson tried to sell people on his idea of a friendly arctic and become That Guy who claimed a land in the name of Canada.

Four men and Ada Blackjack were hired by Stefansson to return to Wrangel Island, claim the land in the name of Canada, and survive there for six months before a relief vessel was sent for them with more supplies and to give them an opportunity to come home. They depart (with way too little supplies, under Stefansson's direction), the relief ship never makes it through, and it isn't until a year and a half that Ada Blackjack is discovered as the expedition's only survivor. The story is told from diary entries left by the four men and Ada, as well as first hand accounts from family members and Ada Blackjack herself. Stefansson's “friendly arctic” was a sham, to nobody's surprise.

Unfortunately, despite Ada Blackjack's name being the title character of this book, it really is about the entire expedition and the aftermath. Ada was brought along as the expedition's seamstress and cook, outlived everyone else on the expedition, and for her struggles had her name dragged through the press as being useless, a prostitute, among other things. Stefansson did nothing to dispel these lies, and in fact withheld the diaries of the expedition members for a long time in order to drive up book sales, sell more lecture slots, and generally make a larger name for himself than was strictly necessary. As his expedition basically amounted to nothing, he was also unable to pay the families or Ada Blackjack herself what they were due.

It's an interesting book, but I recommend reading about Stefansson's Karluk expedition first, if only to get the full impact of Stefansson's bombastic incompetence going into this. While this was a neat book in its own right, the expedition itself doesn't have nearly as much drama as some of the others I've read. Most of the interesting bits of this book to me came after the expedition when the families of the deceased start confronting Stefansson, and he has to face the consequences of his actions (or not). It's less an arctic expedition book and more an account of Stefansson's downfall.