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Nature of Casualty
Abandoned after trapped in ice. Tornfelt, Evert E., Burwell, Michael, Shipwrecks of the Alaskan Shelf
and Shore, U.S. Department of the Interior, Minerals Management Service, Alaska OCS Region, 1992
The five northernmost ships, the Roman, Comet, Concordia, Gay Head, and George, were completely
surrounded. Slightly to the south the John Wells, Massachusetts, Contest, J. D. Thompson, Henry
Taber, Fanny, Monticello, and Elizabeth Swift were not as tightly gripped... The Japan had gone
ashore at East Cape in 1870 in a brutal autumn storm just as the last ships were leaving Bering Strait.
The men lived with the Eskimos for the winter. Many of them made their way to the John Wells in June
1871 and then were distributed throughout the fleet only to have to abandon their new vessels three
months later. Bockstoce, John R., Whales, Ice, and Men: The History of Whaling in the Western Arctic,
University of Washington Press, Seattle Washington, 1986: 154, 165
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