On or about December 4, 1910 the schooner Louise was trapped in the ice in the Bering Strait somewhere off Cape Prince of Wales, the westernmost point in North America, the ship was crushed and wreckage from the ship later washed up on the shores of the cape, however none of the four people onboard were ever found. The ship was built in 1898 in Coupeville, Washington and was owned by captain Harry Owens of Seattle, she was a small schooner, 46' long, 15' wide and only 21 gross tons and she had a gasoline engine. She sailed from Nome, Alaska bound for Siberia with two crew and two passengers on a regular trading voyage.

One of the passengers was John W. Kelly, a noted researcher of native Eskimo tribes in the Bering Strait and Siberia. In 1889 Kelly was the interpreter onboard USS Thetis which cruised the Bering Strait and the Arctic Ocean on a study mission for the navy, another goal of the cruise was to establish a refuge at Point Barrow. Following this cruise he and Ensign Roger Wells, Jr., USN wrote the English-Eskimo Vocabularies report. Kelly also wrote books about Eskimo traditions and legends, stories which had been passed down by the tribes for centuries. Having spent 25 years living and trading with these peoples he was at the time the greatest authority of the Eskimo peoples. Mt. Kelly, a navigational landmark in Siberia had even been named for him.