What Ada could not have fully calculated was that the expedition would last two years instead of one, that the resupply that was supposed to come in the summer of 1922 would not arrive, and that the circumstances of her return would be so different from anything the contract had described.
## Silver Wave and the Approach to the Island
The Silver Wave sailed from Nome in September 1921. The vessel was not a major Arctic exploration ship; it was a working boat of the kind that served the Alaska coast trade, capable of navigating the waters between Nome and the Chukchi Sea. The route to Wrangel Island required crossing the Chukchi Sea — north of the Bering Strait, east of Siberia — and finding the island through the sea conditions of early Arctic autumn.
The crossing was the first experience Ada Blackjack had of the Arctic Ocean itself, of the specific quality of light and water and horizon in those latitudes. The sea in September can still be relatively open — the seasonal ice has not yet formed — but the conditions are distinctly different from the waters around Nome, which are themselves not mild. The cold was different. The scale was different.
The ship stopped on the Siberian coast before reaching Wrangel Island, where a final attempt was made to recruit additional workers. When that attempt failed, the group continued with its five members: Crawford, Knight, Galle, Maurer, and Ada. She was the only woman, the only Indigenous person, and the only one who had been expected to be part of a larger group of Indigenous workers. The isolation she would experience on the island began, in a specific sense, with the departure of the Silver Wave from Nome.