BBC - Karluk Surviving the Arctic (2007)

Account of the ill-fated Canadian Arctic Expedition of 1913 when a group of scientists were sent to the Arctic to look for a new continent on the eve of WWI, an astonishing story of disaster and perseverance. On board were 10 scientists, 13 crewmembers, four Inuit hunters, one seamstress, her two children, and one passenger. Of these, 11 never returned and most were not heard from again until September 1914. In 1913, explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson hired William McKinlay to join the crew of the Karluk, the leading ship of his new Arctic expedition. Stefansson's mission was to chart the waters north of Alaska; yet the Karluk's crew was untrained, the ship was ill-suited to the icy conditions, and almost at once the Karluk was crushed-at which point Stefansson abandoned his crew to continue his journey on another ship. This is the account of what followed a nightmare struggle in which half the crew perished, one was mysteriously shot, and the rest were near death by the time of their rescue twelve months later. During their 13-month exile, expedition members survived for seven months amid the drifting and inhospitable Arctic ice floes before establishing camp on an uninhabited island hundreds of miles north of Siberia. Seen through the eyes a young Scottish scientist onboard, the harrowing story of the expedition features original film footage by the ship's cinematographer and reveals an intimate and shocking portrait of how these great amateurs survived, lost in the ice.

BBC - Karluk Surviving the Arctic (2007)

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