She Went to the Arctic for Her Son — And Ended Up Fighting to Survive Alone

In January 1923, three men from the expedition set out across the frozen ice toward Siberia in search of help. They disappeared into the Arctic and were never seen again.

That left Ada Blackjack and Lorne Knight alone on Wrangel Island. Knight was suffering from scurvy and was becoming increasingly weak, while Ada had never been trained as an explorer or hunter. She had originally joined the expedition as a seamstress because she needed the money to pay for medical treatment for her young son.

But with no one else coming to save them, Ada had to learn how to survive.

She taught herself to shoot, set traps, search for food and chop wood. She cared for Knight as his condition deteriorated, all while trying to keep herself alive in one of the harshest environments on Earth. Throughout the ordeal, she also kept a journal documenting what was happening around her.

On June 23, 1923, Lorne Knight died.

Ada was now completely alone, except for Vic, the expedition's cat.

There was no rescue party coming immediately, and no guarantee that anyone even knew she was still alive. Yet Ada continued doing what she had learned to do. She hunted, maintained her traps, gathered what food she could find and waited for a ship to appear.

She waited for fifty-eight days.

Then, on August 20, 1923, a ship finally reached Wrangel Island.

When rescuers arrived, they discovered that of the five people who had landed there almost two years earlier, Ada Blackjack was the only human survivor.

The story quickly attracted attention. Newspapers portrayed the Iñupiat woman who had gone north as a seamstress and somehow learned, largely on her own, the skills necessary to survive the Arctic after the rest of the expedition had vanished.

But Ada was not particularly interested in becoming famous.

Her greatest concern was her son, Bennett.

The money she earned from the expedition eventually helped pay for his medical treatment. While others turned her ordeal into a remarkable survival story, Ada herself largely avoided the spotlight and went on to live a much quieter life than the legend surrounding her might suggest.

Ada Blackjack died in 1983 at the age of 85.

Her gravestone bears a simple inscription honoring the woman who had survived an ordeal that few would have imagined possible:

HEROINE — WRANGEL ISLAND EXPEDITION

Perhaps the most remarkable part of Ada's story is that she never set out to become an explorer or an adventurer. She went to the Arctic because she needed money to help her child.

She did not know how to hunt when she arrived.

She learned because there was no other choice.

And when everyone around her was gone, she survived.