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Nature of Casualty
Abandoned after trapped in ice. In 1872 found high and dry South of Point Belcher. 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
On Saturday, September 9, the captains in the northern fleet faced the likelihood that their ships would
not escape and that they must act quickly to save themselves. As far as ten miles south of their
position their scouts could find no clear water deep enough to move one of the larger ships. Holding a
meeting, they decided to lighten the smallest vessel in the northern fleet, the 270-ton Kohola of
Honolulu, to try to get her south inside the ice. The Kohola would then go in search of the remainder of
the Arctic whaling fleet..... The captains sent their men down to the Kohola to put her water, oil, stores,
and other movables on board the Carlotta. Whey they had finished and got her going, she was able to
cover only a few miles before she grounded in six feet of water on the sand bar that projects off the
mouth of Wainwright Inlet and on which the ice had grounded in five and a half feet. There was nothing
they could do. 1872: The Thomas Dickason was hard ashore, high and dry with 800 barrels of oil in
her hold, and the Kohola was completely crushed. Bockstoce, John R., Whales, Ice, and Men: The
History of Whaling in the Western Arctic, University of Washington Press, Seattle Washington,
1986:155-156, 163
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