William Laird McKinlay, 1889-1983

• Published in: ARCTIC
• Main Author: White, Gavin
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: The Arctic Institute of North America 1983
• Subjects: Bartlett; Robert Abram; 1875-1946; Biographies; Canadian Arctic Expeditions (1913-1918); Education; Expeditions; Exploration; History; Karluk (Ship); Mathematics; McKinlay; William Laird; 1889-1983; Meteorology; Science; Sea ice; Search and rescue; Shipwrecks; Sleds; Social interaction; Stefansson; Vilhjalmur; 1879-1962; Survival; Teachers; Alaskan waters; Alaska; Northern; Chukchi Sea; Sibir'; Russian Federation; Vrangelya; Ostrov; Scotland; Antarctic; Arctic; Herald Island; Laird; Sibir’; Sutherland; Wrangel Island; Antarc*; Chukchi; eskimo*; ice pack
• Online Access: https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/arctic/article/view/65337

William Laird McKinlay, one of the scientific staff of the Canadian Arctic Expedition of 1913-18, died at G1asgow on 9 May 1983 at the age of 94. The son of a factory moulder in the industrial town of Clydebank downriver from Glasgow, he became a pupil-teacher at the age of 14 and subsequently studied at the University of Glasgow where he graduated both M.A. and B.Sc. in 1910. It was during his student days that his aid was enlisted by Dr. W.S. Bruce in classifying specimens brought home by the Scottish Antarctic Expedition, and this was to change his life. In 1913 he was teaching mathematics in a Glasgow school when Bruce recommended him to Viljhalmar Stefansson for appointment as meteorologist and magnetologist. McKinlay travelled to Esquimalt, B.C., where he joined the main party aboard Karluk, commanded by the veteran Newfoundlander Bob Bartlett, with Stefansson himself in overall charge. Discord made itself felt at an early stage. When Karluk was trapped in the ice off the north shore of Alaska, Stefansson and his companions went hunting ashore; weather separated them from the ship which drifted to the west while Stefansson occupied himself with the sledge travel, at which he was adept, and discovered new lands to the far north. Karluk turned out to be less than ideal for work in ice, while her crew had only been hired for a round trip and were largely unprepared for privations. After drifting with the ice for over six months, the ship was crushed and sank. Four men made their way to Herald Island where they died. Four others struck out on their own and were never seen again. The others, eleven crewmen and scientists with two Eskimo men, one Eskimo woman, and two Eskimo children, took what supplies they could to Wrangel Island 80 miles away. Then Bartlett and the Eskimo Kataktovik made an epic journey across the ice to the Siberian mainland in search of help. Those who remained on Wrangel Island divided into small groups and eked out a miserable existence in which two died, .; one seemingly shot himself. The remainder were rescued, thanks to Bartlett, in September of 1914. And McKinlay went to war as an officer in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. Seriously wounded at Cambrai in 1917, he endured a long period of recuperation and limped for the rest of his life. . He returned to teaching. It was only long after his retirement and the death of his wife, when he was moving with his daughter and her family to a new home in Glasgow, that his Arctic diaries and mementos aroused the curiosity of his granddaughters. He promised to write the story which turned into the book Karluk: The Great Untold Story of Arctic Exploration, published in 1976 when he was 87. Readers of that work, which was translated into many languages, will be aware that McKinlay was somewhat critical of Viljhalmar Stefansson. . Perhaps his disappointment with Stefansson was heightened by McKinlay's being a scientist working in which he considered a scientific and thus a noble cause, with standards to which he felt Stefansson did not adhere. Yet it was not only in Stefansson that he was disappointed, for when he experienced comradeship in the army he "realized that this is what had been entirely missing up north: it was the lack of real comradeship that had left the scars, not the physical rigours and hazards of the ice pack, nor the deprivations on Wrangel Island." . [After] . Karluk had been published, McKinlay turned to the writing of his autobiography, a story which is frequently hilarious and utterly gripping, with the emphasis being placed upon teaching. But it would be wrong to suggest that in old age he slaved over his typewriter. He delayed the revision of Karluk for his publishers for most of a glorious summer in which he felt priority must go to his roses. And when he wrote his autobiography, in his nineties, he still did enough in his garden to win a neighbourhood prize. .