## August 19, 1923: The Donaldson Arrives
The relief vessel Donaldson, under the leadership of Harold Noice, pushed through the ice and fog and found Wrangel Island on August 19, 1923. Noice had been sent by Stefansson’s organization to relieve the expedition.
He came ashore expecting to find five people.
He found Ada Blackjack.
She was alone, she was thin — her weight after rescue was recorded at approximately 90 pounds, down from roughly 120 when she had left Nome — and she was alive. She told Noice and the rescue party what had happened: the three men who had walked onto the ice and not returned, Knight’s death in June, the months since.
Vic, the cat, was also recovered. The headline in the prompt requires the qualifier “human” survivor, and it is accurate: both Ada and Vic made it through.
Ada later said, in various accounts, that she spotted the ship through a break in the fog and ran to the beach. The moment of rescue, after nearly two years and months of absolute solitude, is one of the things the record does not fully document in her own words. What is documented is that she was coherent, functional, and in good enough condition that the crew of the Donaldson subsequently said she could probably have survived another year on the island if the ship had not come.
The three men who had left in January were not among the rescued. She learned, on the voyage home, that they had never reached Nome. They had died on the ice or in Siberia. Nobody ever found them.