Forty whaleships, hunting bowhead whales, had passed…

Forty whaleships, hunting bowhead whales, had passed north through Bering Strait in late June 1871.

By August, the vessels had passed as far as Point Belcher, near Wainwright, Alaska, before a stationary high, parked over northeast Siberia, reversed the normal wind pattern and pushed the pack ice toward the Alaskan coast.

Seven ships had been able to escape to the south, but thirty-three others were trapped.

Within two weeks, the pack had tightened around the vessels, crushing four ships.

The vessels are spread out in a long line, some sixty miles (ninety-seven kilometers) south of Point Franklin.

By mid-September all twelve hundred and nineteen people aboard the ships evacuate in small whaleboats with a three-month supply of provisions, cross seventy miles (one hundred and ten kilometers) of ocean, and are eventually brought to safety by the seven ships which had escaped the ice to the south.

Amazingly, there were no casualties.

The seven whalers that had escaped (the vessels Europa, Arctic, Progress, Lagoda, Daniel Webster, Midas, and Chance) are forced to dump their catch and most of their equipment overboard to make room for passengers on the return trip to Honolulu.

The total loss is valued at over $1,600,000.

Twenty-two of the wrecked vessels are from New Bedford, Massachusetts.

In 1872 the bark Minerva will be discovered intact and subsequently salvaged, but the rest are crushed in the ice, sink, or are stripped of wood by the local Inupiat.