Interview with Lena Kimiatook, Taloyoak, by Dorothy Eber, [Interpretation Tommy Angattitauraq] (1994)

[Reported incident with ship, or boat, in the vicinity of Josephine Bay, northeastern King William Island]

... At that time, when they were getting ready, they were all excited, getting quite restless. They were heading back to where they came from because they couldn't travel the way they wanted to, even though the weather was so calm, pieces of wood started coming out from under the boat, started floating up, and then this spirit, "the one with the bad tail," with the aid of his spirit, started taking out those pieces of wood from under the water. And at that time these white people didn't notice their ship was breaking apart even though it was so calm, and then they were cursed by this shaman so they wouldn't notice anything.

[...]

So even though the pieces were coming apart from the ship, the captains ship, they didn't notice either, so when they got ready, they were really rushing, because they wanted to go while there was no ice in that area where they planned to go, so after a while when they were very far from the shore, and then all of a sudden, the ship broke apart, and then a lot of these white people, they were swimming, they tried to swim to the shore, but the water was so cold, some of them drowned. Some of them sank into the deep water, and also some of them died of hypothermia, and a few of them managed to swim to an island, and then on that island they left quite a few stuff like a piece of wood from the ship and also a few of their belongings, but herself, she has never been in that area, it's much too far.

[...]

One of the ships was crushed by the ice, the other was crushed by a shaman.

[...]

These two white surviving people – there probably were some other survivors – after that ship collapsed, and they also buried their important belongings, the Inuit think that you can establish those that they buried there because they were under permafrost...

Sunken ship