Dateline 1947 – Point Barrow, Alaska

Written by Thomas Remington as told by Sy Powell

More times than not, people all over the world spend much of their daydreaming hours only wondering what it would be like to fly to the moon, sail around the world, shake hands with a famous person or saw lumber in the tiny Maine town called Washington. HUH??

Sy Powell, who now resides in Scarboro, Maine, is a native Mainer and is one of those people who have had adventures some of us can only dream of. Why is it though that when we are experiencing something that so few will ever be fortunate to experience, we often fail to realize what is actually happening? We are in some kind of denial or perhaps it seems so surreal that reality never actually sets in.

How I hooked up with Sy Powell is a bit of a fluke but as with everything, I am a firm believer that everything happens for a reason. Sy emailed me a couple of months ago trying to contact Joe Perham, noted Maine humorist. I built and maintain Joe’s website and when Sy emailed the webmaster at Joe’s site, he thought he would be reaching Joe.

Some confusion reared its head and it wasn’t too long before I realized that being a middleman in this attempt to communicate with Joe was only creating more confusion. I gave Sy some addresses and telephone numbers and suggested he contact Joe directly.

Somewhere in the middle of the bedlam, Sy realized that I was also a part of Maine Hunting Today. In an email to me from Sy apologizing for bothering me, he began to send me some old photos he had of some hunting trips he took with the Eskimos while living in Alaska back in the late 1940s.

It took little more to pique my interest and I relayed to Sy that I was interested in telling his story and sharing his photos. This is his brief biography of some of the adventures Sy has undertaken of the course of many years and I thank him for being willing to share.

Sy Powell was a member of the United States Air Force during World War II. The Air Force had sent him to Tech School to study flight weather. Upon completion of his studies, he was given orders to the Island of Shemya near the far end of the Aleutian Islands. Attu is the last major island in the chain of the Aleutians and the Island of Shemya sits just east of Attu.

Sy was not at Shemya for very long. The Air Force was sending soldiers home as the war had ended. Early in 1947, Sy returned to Washington, Maine where his father was running a small sawmill and dabbling in antiques and second hand junk in an attempt to eke out a living. Having spent that entire summer working in the sawmill, Sy realized he was not cut out to be a “lumberjack” as he calls it.

In the fall of 1947, Sy responded to an ad in the local post office offering Civil Service jobs to former military personnel. With his weather training in the Air Force, he was accepted to a position with the United States Weather Bureau and along with that acceptance came an airline ticket to Barrow, Alaska.

Barrow, Alaska Weather Bureau Office.
Temperature at time of photo was –43 F – had to run out,
take picture and return before film froze.

He arrived in Barrow in the winter of 1947 equipped with an Argus C3 35 mm camera and would spend 3 years there before being transferred to Nome and then on to Wales. As Sy points out, it gets a bit confusing sometimes to remember the exact timelines as he was shuffled around quite often while working for the Weather Bureau.

Point Barrow is the northern most tip of Alaska and is quite remote to say the least. Point Barrow is a spit of land about a mile north of Barrow. Barrow is an Eskimo village. In 1947 there were approximately 1000 residents of Barrow and this was the location of the weather offices where Sy worked.

Barrow was explored by the British and named after Sir John Barrow. The Eskimo name for Barrow is “Ukpeagvik”, which means a place where owls are hunted. Just to the south of Barrow a monument is erected to mark the spot where a plane, the Winnie Mae, crashed in 1935 killing Will Rogers and Wiley Post.

During the three years at Barrow, Sy got to experience events some of us could only dream of. He was invited by the local Eskimos and accompanied them on whaling expeditions, polar bear hunts, seal hunting in the Arctic Ocean with “skin boats” among other things.

Sy’s photos show an oomiak, which is a large whaling boat covered with walrus skin. He would ready the dog sleds with supplies. The natives taught him how to “mush” the dogs and take the supplies out to the whale camp. Whale camp was located about 3 or 4 miles out into the Arctic Ocean to where the first “lead” was found. A lead is where the ice has split away from the main pack.

All members of the families and villagers
helped out with whale hunt.

Orphaned polar bear cubs.
Flown to Seattle and found a home at a zoo.

Natives sew walrus skins onto the outside of their boats

A 30 foot whaling boat called an oomiak.
Its frame is covered with walrus skins.

 

The whales follow these open water leads to spring feeding and calving grounds. During this migration, the whales are somewhat trapped and surface in these relatively narrow leads. Once a whale is spotted, crews man their boats and give chase with rifles and harpoons. Attached to the harpoons are inflated sealskins, called pokes, which are used for buoyancy and drag to impede the whales in their attempt to dive. This also tires the whale to near exhaustion at which time the natives finish the kill.

 

 

Whale hunters waiting for one to surface.

Heading out to hunt.
Sy is seated at very bow of boat – 1949

Inflated sealskins act as buoys.

 

Once the hunt has completed, the whale is floated to the edge of the ice within the lead and a signal goes out to all the villagers of the kill. A slope is chopped into the ice to make a gradual ramp leading out of the water and up onto the ice. Ropes are tied around the tail and all hands work together and drag the mammal out of the water and up onto the ice.

 

 

Readying a whale to be hauled out
of the water and onto the ice.

At this point in time many hands go to work salvaging every conceivable part of the whale right down to the bones. Nothing from the whale is discarded as Eskimos have found uses for every part – even to feed their dogs.

Sy was transferred down to Nome, Alaska, most famous for being the finish line to the Iditerod Sled Dog race. Nome is south and west of Barrow and is located on the south side of the Seward Peninsula. Later on he would be transferred to Wales which is the most western point of the Seward Peninsula and is the point where the United States comes closest to Russia. The Bering Strait and the International Dateline separate them.

Front Street Nome, Alaska 1950

Sy describes Wales as a “tough” outpost and that he was a one-man operation for a while before being sent an additional weatherman. Sy says they became a 24 hour operation then. He had his own D-4 Caterpillar tractor for transportation, two one-cylinder diesel generators and a Collins voice radio communication system. On a good day, which Sy says was a rarity; you could see East Cape Siberia and the Diomede Islands. The Diomede Islands are located about half way between Wales and Siberia.

Wales was an important outpost during World War II. It was a navigation point for transporting new fighter planes to the German front. Planes were brought into Anchorage and then to Wales. From there they were taken across the Bering Strait to Siberia to join the Russian Air Force battling the German invasion.

Groceries and mail back then were brought in by bush pilots. In the summer they landed on the hard sand beaches and in the winter on the frozen tundra just behind the village. Sy would drag an old telephone pole behind his D-4 tractor to keep the runway relatively smooth for the bush pilots.

Around the Wales area and the Seward Peninsula there was never a lot of snowfall but what snow there was would be carried for miles looking for some place to stop. A house or structure of any kind was a good target and one could very easily become buried in drifted snow in a relatively short amount of time. Because of this a trap door was constructed into the attic of the houses so if someone got snowed in they could crawl out through the attic and slide down the drift.

Also constructed where a series of posts and ropes strung between Sy’s residence and the Weather Bureau office. So often there were whiteouts and the only way to move between buildings was using the ropes. Once outside, he would wrap an arm around the rope and begin to slowly back up until he bumped into hopefully, the right building. Often you couldn’t see your own feet it would be blowing so badly.

Wales, Alaska 1951

Wales, Alaska 1951

Groceries and mail arrived by bush pilots.

 

Once his duty was over in Wales, Sy left there and returned to the States for a couple years before becoming re-instated with the U.S. Weather Bureau. After his re-instatement, he received orders to go to King Salmon, Alaska for a four-year tour of duty.

King Salmon is located southwest of Anchorage near the upper end of the Alaska Peninsula. The Katmai National Park and Preserve lies just to the east. To the west is Bristol Bay. It is while stationed at King Salmon that Sy had the opportunity to do some moose and caribou hunting and fishing on the King Salmon River.

Sy had a friend who owned a Piper Tri-Pacer airplane and the two would fly down the coastline from King Salmon about 50 miles and land on the beach. From there they would climb the bluffs to reach the tundra where they would often find a lot of caribou and brown bears. On one of the trips they shot 3 caribou. Not having enough room to take but just one animal out in the initial trip, they returned the next day to retrieve the other two. One animal had nothing left but a few bones and a little hide but the other was find. Sy’s buddy had covered the animal with his sweater and his human scent was enough to keep the bears and any other critters at bay.

Moose were relatively easy to get. Not only were they plentiful but you could take boats up the King Salmon River and shoot a moose that was standing on the shoreline. They butchered the animal right there and packed it into their boats for the trip home.

 

 

What remained of one of Sy’s
caribou left out overnight.

Moose were plentiful along the shores
of the King Salmon River.

 

After 31 years with the Weather Bureau, Sy retired. All of his time was not spent in Alaska although I would be willing to bet they are among the most memorable times. He spent time with the Atlantic Weather Patrol as part of research meteorology spending time on ships traveling about. He did a stint in rocket meteorology (high altitude studies) cruising aboard aircraft carriers to places like South America, through the Panama Canal, down to Cape Horn and back.

Spending a short time studying tornadoes in Illinois and then on to ocean weather, for Atlantic shipping interests, his services were becoming obsolete due to the emergence of satellites. With not many places left to go, Sy settled in at the Portland, Maine Jetport Weather Station and stayed until retirement in 1984. He has lived in Scarboro since then. He worked for a few years as a graphic artist and a sign painter as well as some free-lance art work and crafting until a stroke last August left him about 90% blind. He loves to listen to his jazz collection, play with his computer and is an avid Joe Perham fan.

Sy so humbly keeps telling me in a kind of apologetic way, “I’m really not much of a hunter.” What is “not really much of a hunter”? I might consider myself something of a hunter but only in my dreams have I gone whale hunting with the Eskimos, polar bear hunting, seal hunting, flying to remote places in Alaska hunting caribou and moose or even fishing on the King Salmon River.

Not being much of a hunter is all relative I guess but my fascination in the story is two-fold – the history of post World War II Alaska and the excitement of the adventures one man has experienced in his lifetime. We should all be so lucky.