Heinrich Klutschak

Immediately after emigrating to the United States, Klutschak joined a New London whaler on a voyage to Repulse Bay in the Canadian Arctic, where he first became acquainted with the Aivilingmiut and may have learned some Inuktitut.[1]

A sealing expedition to South Georgia was undertaken by William Dunbar aboard the schooner Flying Fish in 1877. Klutschak joined the ship in Cape Verde. The process of joining was unusual: Flying Fish sailed openly in the daylight hours, but at night a boat was lowered to swimming distance so that the recruits could swim out and join without officially signing up for military service.[2]

The vessel eventually sighted the Shag Rocks on 22 September 1877. Dunbar landed the crew on the Northwest coast of South Georgia, and they progressed in an anti-clockwise voyage around the island, killing elephant seals to render oil from their blubber.[3] Klutschak used the opportunity to write and publish a detailed account of the island.[1] He was a critic of the practice of sealing, arguing it was cruel, wasteful, and unsustainable, and he particularly found the killing of mother seals distasteful due to it leaving the young to die.[4]

As a naturalist, he also provided descriptions of the local birdlife, with a focus on penguins and albatrosses, both of which he described fondly and not scared of people.[3][4] He also described the effect of the Allardyce Range on the meteorology of the island, providing more accurate descriptions than had existed at the time.[4] His map of South Georgia was the fourth ever made, after those of James Cook, Isaac Pendleton, and Fabian Gottlieb von Bellinghausen.[2]

Under the sponsorship of the American Geographical Society, American army lieutenant Frederick Schwatka was to command an expedition for the purpose of retrieving books and records that the whaler Thomas Barry had alleged were located in a cairn on an island in the Gulf of Boothia, which were believed to be records from the lost Franklin Expedition.[5] Barry had been writing in a journal when Inuit were exchanging Franklin relics with Captain Potter of the whaler Glacier, when one of the Inuit remarked the journal was very much like the ones put in cairns by the white men who starved to death on King William Island.[6] Schwatka, who had volunteered to be in command of the expedition, was joined by journalist William H. Gilder with the backing of James Gordon Bennett, editor of the New York Herald, and by Ipirvik ("Joe Ebierbing"), an Inuk guide and translator with indispensable knowledge of the region who at the time was living in Groton, Connecticut.[7] Klutschak was selected by the American Geographical Society for his existing arctic experience and artistic skill, while the last selected member, Frank E. Melms, was chosen for his experienced seamanship.[8]

Schwatka, Gilder, Ipirvik, Klutschak, and Melms landed on Depot Island in the northern Hudson Bay aboard the schooner Eothen on 7 August 1878, at about four o'clock in the afternoon, shortly before a storm.[9] The first task the party engaged in was to find Barry's witnesses and then Captain Potter at Repulse Bay, the former of whom could not be found and the latter of whom claimed he only heard Barry's story after it was published, suggested Barry had stolen the spoon, and that the story was fabricated.[10] Klutschak personally believed Barry's story to be entirely false.[11] Despite the purpose of the expedition being called into doubt, the group continued on.

Schwatka knew that success meant fully adopting the customs and procedures of the Inuit, including clothing, diet, and life-style, a sentiment that Klutschak agreed with. Fourteen to sixteen Inuit supported the group, who learned how to adopt to their lifestyle and undertake activities that accurately mirrored them.[5]

The sledge haul to Cape Felix on the northern tip of King William Island and back was one of the longest ever undertaken, and was conducted in some of the coldest weather ever recorded on an arctic expedition. On 27 June 1879, Klutschak and Melms found the skeletal remains of a European man, which has since been identified as John Irving, a lieutenant aboard HMS Terror, by a second mathematical prize bearing his name found at the grave.[5] Schwatka recovered the remains and returned them to Scotland, where they were interred.[12]

Heinrich Klutschak: The American Franklin Search Expedition: Crossing Simpson's Strait in kayaks (The Illustrated London News, January 8, 1881).

The party divided in two on 7 July 1879, with Klutschak and Melms heading to search the coast to the southeast, then to cross Simpson Strait, and eventually to continue on to the Adelaide Peninsula. They found no evidence of Franklin's men, and instead researched the Inuit technique of salmon fishing.[5]

On the return voyage, the reunited party stopped at a spot on the mainland where accounts suggest between ten and thirty Franklin Expedition men died. Schwatka named the place Starvation Cove while Klutschak remarked on the desolation of the spot, believing it was the last place any of the men made it to.[13]

Following the Schwatka expedition, Klutschak published a book called Als Eskimo unter den Eskimos (As an Eskimo among the Eskimos) and sustained himself on the Austrian and German lecture circuit.[13] Austrian Emperor Franz Josef attended one of the lectures and was so moved by Klutschak that he presented him with a medal.[14]