She recovered. The dynamic in the camp shifted, by subsequent accounts, and the group worked together more cooperatively through the middle months of 1922. Whether the resolution of the initial conflict was complete, or whether its dynamics simply became less overt as the survival necessities of the situation became more pressing, is not fully clear from the available record.
What is clear is that Ada was present and functioning and essential to the camp’s operation as the second year of the expedition began. The men could not have survived without someone who could sew the fur clothing that kept them alive. The clothing was her work. The warmth was, in a literal sense, her contribution.
## The Failed Resupply: A Ship That Could Not Get Through
Stefansson had planned for a relief ship to reach Wrangel Island in the summer of 1922, bringing fresh supplies and, presumably, the option of rotation or departure for some or all of the group. The ship — the Teddy Bear — attempted the voyage and was turned back by ice.
The group on Wrangel Island did not know this. They waited for a ship that did not come. The summer of 1922 passed without resupply. The autumn set in, and then the winter of 1922-1923, and they were looking at a second full winter on an island where game was now significantly scarcer than it had been.
The game scarcity was one of the expedition’s critical planning failures. Stefansson’s “friendly Arctic” theory held that people willing to adapt could live off the land in the polar regions. This is true in a general sense — Indigenous peoples had done so for millennia — but it requires specific knowledge, specific skills, and specific conditions. The conditions on Wrangel Island in 1922-1923 were not the conditions of Stefansson’s theory. The game had moved. Hunting was producing inadequate food. The group’s supplies, already stretched by the absence of resupply, were running out.