Heinrich Klutschak

[1] 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.

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.

[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.

[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.

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.

[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.

[12] 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.

[14] Despite his successes in Germany and Austria, Klutschak's return to New York saw him having to scrape by taking various jobs including clerk, private secretary, and errand boy, mostly working with whaling companies.

He suffered from tuberculosis in his final years, and though his influential friends in the American Geographical Society, including Chief Justice Charles P. Daly negotiated his admission into a sailor's home on Staten Island in January 1890, he waited until March to move in, when a heavy snowstorm forced him back to his room at 320 Broome Street.