Isobel Wylie Hutchison and the letter from a ‘ghost ship’

And the paper is one of the reasons why this letter is so extraordinary.  Three of the six sheets bear the name and coat of arms of the Hudson’s Bay Company, which began exporting furs out of Rupert’s Land (part of modern-day Canada) in 1670 and was still flourishing in 1933, which is when this letter was written.  It would be easy to assume that the writer had picked up some headed notepaper in one of the HBC’s Canadian stores, perhaps in Winnipeg or Calgary;  but she did not.    

On 17th August 1933, Isobel Wylie Hutchison was lying on her bunk in a small trading schooner just off the Seahorse Islands, about 50 miles southwest of Point Barrow in Alaska.  Bedded down in the engine house were two Icelanders:  Pete Palsson and his younger brother, Kari.  Snoring in his bunk in the cabin was the vessel’s owner, Ira Rank.  All were asleep because the ship was hemmed in by sea ice and unable to move.  No one could do anything until the wind changed and started to loosen the pack.  

Isobel Wylie Hutchison on Trader leaving Nome

Isobel felt it was time to write a cheery letter to her sister, Hilda, back home in Scotland.  Plant-collecting was Isobel’s official purpose, but for the past few weeks she had done precious little botanising and was focused instead on her dwindling chances of reaching Herschel Island (Qikiqtaruk) before the sea froze over entirely.  Indeed, if the wind didn’t change direction soon, she might be trapped right here with Ira, Pete and Kari, among crates of apples, oranges and watermelons and cans of every conceivable food from sweetcorn to lobster and bully-beef.  At least they wouldn’t starve. 

‘My dear Hilda,’ she began. ’Here we are in “Trader”, right up at the top of the Arctic ocean,  at present we are lying-to in the ice unable to make Point Barrow till the wind blows again from the east!  There is far more ice up here than usual and I am beginning to wonder if we can get round to Herschel after all.’ 

Apart from the abundant food stores, there was another blessing about Isobel’s predicament which she hastened to explain to Hilda.  The ship that she had originally hoped to travel on had hit an iceberg and nearly sank in the Bering Sea.  Everyone was rescued but the ship had been forced to return to port for emergency repairs.  In the light of that, Ira Rank’s last-minute offer of a passage from Nome to Barrow on board Trader was a Godsend.   

But now there were new challenges, because space on board was tight and the weather was appalling.  ’Mr Rank and I,’ continued Isobel, ‘have to share the cabin and cookhouse between us!!  However, I have not been seasick at all… and am really having a most interesting adventure.’  As for the Palssons, Isobel treated them as she would her own brothers, with easygoing camaraderie.  

For the past four or five weeks, the luxury of a hot bath had been an impossible dream.  Isobel wrote:  ‘I am clad in my Burberry suit and breeks with fur coats and Bobbie’s helmet, but as the stove chimney blows smuts all along the little deck, opportunities for washing anything but my face (and that not often!) are nil! … The “bathroom” is a pail in the engine room!  Golly! I will have lots to tell if I ever get home again!’   

For all her expressions of mock horror, Isobel was hardier than she cared to admit, and ripe for a challenge.  A few days previously, as Trader was dropping anchor off Wainwright, some exciting news was shouted across to them from the harbour.  The Baychimo had been sighted, only 10 miles offshore!  And what was the Baychimo?  The ghost ship, Isobel was told.  Had she not heard about the ghost ship of the Beaufort Sea?  

The story was a strange one.  Like the legendary Flying Dutchman, the Baychimo wandered around the ocean, empty of crew, spooking sailors by emerging out of the mist and vanishing just as suddenly.  But in the case of the Baychimo, there was a logical explanation:  in 1931, as a steamer of the Hudson’s Bay Company, she had become ice-fast during a storm and the crew abandoned her, making safely for shore.  When they went to look for her, she had gone.  Initially it was assumed she had sunk, but then people started glimpsing her in the distance, apparently riding around on an ice floe.      

Although a thick fog had come down, the men on Trader didn’t think twice, and nor did Isobel.  ’We set off,’ she wrote, ‘to try and reach her as her cargo and herself are now anybody’s property who can take her.  After two hours’ sail and some difficult manoeuvring through the ice-leads, we actually reached the poor old stranded vessel, a big ship piled up on the ice.’   

Baychimo

Fixed to the hull was a rusting ladder, and the men clambered up it.  Isobel followed them nimbly, and while her companions were rummaging around in the hold, she explored the cabins on the upper decks.  ‘I got a lot of this H.B.C. notepaper on which I am writing you!!’ she told Hilda in triumph.  ‘Also some charts, nugget polish, British flags! & odds & ends including films which still seem quite good, but unluckily don’t quite fit my camera!’  There were also ‘some fine Remington typewriters… all wasted and rusty or I could have had one for nothing!’ 

In the comfort of the family drawing room at Carlowrie, Hilda may have struggled with the notion that the sheets of paper she was holding in her hand had drifted around the Beaufort Sea for two years on a derelict ship, had been salvaged and scribbled on by her sister, pushed into an envelope at Barrow or Herschel Island, transported south in a mailbag by ship and then possibly light aircraft, and conveyed across the Atlantic to an Edinburgh sorting office before a whistling postboy could cycle up the drive and ring the doorbell.   

‘We were as good pirates as any,’ Isobel assured her, but it turned out that other people had had the same thought and got there first:  ’Most of the valuable cargo had already been removed, but Pete and Kari got the ship’s compass, quite a large affair, & are blaming themselves now bitterly for not securing the valuable gyro-compass locked up below which it seems is mounted on rubies worth 50,000$!   However, I don’t know if it really existed or not!’ 

It was midnight before the jolly band of plunderers got back to Wainwright, exhilarated but also regretful that Trader was not powerful enough to tow the Baychimo herself into port, with or without her supporting iceberg:  ‘She is said to be worth $100,000 to anyone who can do so!  So we had to let a fortune slip!’ 

Trader and loot

Perhaps sensing that she might have portrayed her companions as desperados, Isobel started a new tack:  ‘The three men on board here,’ she assured Hilda, ‘are awfully decent fellows… Pete, the older married brother, is a clever ice-captain and Kari the young one is Engineer and helps me to cook!  At least, when Ira, the owner, (whose wife and shop are back in Nome) is sleeping.  Otherwise Ira does most of the cooking, but I am getting quite handy at knowing how to make stews out of cans!’  Obviously the thought of Isobel doing any cooking at all would distract Hilda from worrying about her sister turning to piracy. 

As well as sending letters, Isobel was able to receive them, albeit sporadically, because she told Hilda:  ‘I don’t know if I’ll hear from you at Point Barrow but I hope, if I ever reach Aklavik, I will know your plans there.’  In Barrow she was also hoping to post plant specimens and artefacts to gardens and museums in Scotland and elsewhere.   

After a further assurance that she was wearing her warm coat and boots, Isobel offered Hilda one last revelation:   ’I left my other coats at Nome to Mrs Smith the chambermaid at the Hotel, and also sold her my net evening gown for $5!’  (Exactly why Isobel was carrying an evening gown is impossible to say;  she might have thought it necessary for formal dinners on board the ship that took her to Vancouver.)   

With a parting query about friends and family Isobel signed off, sending ‘love to all.’   Then, no doubt, she settled down for some sleep, cosy in her bunk with a wild sou’wester blowing over the sea.   

If, as her biographer, Gwyneth Hoyle, believed, only one of Isobel’s personal letters relating to any of her journeys has survived, how wonderful that it should be this one.  Along with it is an inscribed photograph of Isobel with ‘Whitie’, one of the sledge dogs belonging to Gus Masik with whom she stayed at Martin Point.  Both are preserved in the archives of RSGS.