The Inuit Knew It

With apologies to the late Alootook Ipellie (The Inuit Thought of It), it's worth noting that the fragments of a vessel found on Hat Island by Doug Stenton's archaeological team were already known about by the Inuit. As oral historian Dorothy Eber relates it:

In the Arctic Islands Lodge, I hear again the stories Frank Analok, Moses Koihok, and Mabel Angulalik pass 'from generations before us' of the exploring ship at Imnguyaaluk in the Royal Geographical Society Islands and the ship the Inuit say sank, perhaps with the help of shamans. As a child, Mabel heard that her own relatives came upon what they thought were pieces of a ship's wreckage buried in sand, she believes, to the east of Hat Island.

The full story is in Eber's Encounters on the Passage: The Inuit Meet the Explorers, on page 132. Mabel may, for all I know, still be living in Cambridge Bay. Someone should give her a call and let her know her family tradition was right.