Four Years in the White North

Boston: The Medici Society of America, 1925. New and Revised Edition. Presumed first printing thus. Hardcover. Good. xv, [7], 428 pages. Some cover wear and soiling. Illustrated map endpapers (with some discoloration). Rear endpaper map has some color. Foreword by Major-General Adolphus W. Greely. Illustrated with Photographs by the Author. Frontis illustration. Maps. Sixteen chapters, Seven Appendices. Index. Donald Baxter MacMillan (November 10, 1874 - September 7, 1970) was an American explorer, sailor, researcher and lecturer who made over 30 expeditions to the Arctic during his 46-year career. He pioneered the use of radios, airplanes, and electricity in the Arctic, brought back films and thousands of photographs of Arctic scenes, and put together a dictionary of the Inuktitut language. MacMillan caught the attention of explorer and fellow Bowdoin graduate Robert E. Peary when he saved the lives of nine shipwrecked people in two nights. Peary subsequently invited MacMillan to join his 1908 journey to the North Pole. He organized and commanded the ill-fated Crocker Land Expedition to northern Greenland in 1913. Unfortunately Crocker Land turned out to be a mirage. The expedition members were stranded until 1917, when Captain Robert A. Bartlett of the ship Neptune finally rescued them. Despite being past retirement age, he volunteered for active duty with the Navy during World War II. On May 22, 1941, he transferred the Bowdoin to the Navy for the duration of the war and served as her initial commanding officer before being transferred to the Hydrographic Office in Washington, DC. He was promoted to the rank of commander on June 13, 1942. On December 24, 1918, shortly after the armistice which ended the First World War, MacMillan was commissioned an ensign in the Naval Reserve Flying Corps. MacMillan was 44 years old at the time, making him one of the oldest ensigns in the history of the U.S. Navy. After the war, MacMillan began raising money for another Arctic expedition. In 1921, the schooner Bowdoin—the namesake of MacMillan's alma mater—was launched from East Boothbay, Maine and set sail for Baffin Island, where MacMillan and his crew spent the winter. The expedition was notable for taking along an amateur radio operator, Don Mix, who used station WNP ("Wireless North Pole") to keep them in contact with the outside world. In 1925 MacMillan led a scientific expedition backed by the National Geographical Society and financed primarily by the Chicago entrepreneur Eugene McDonald - which was accompanied by U.S. Navy personnel and planes commanded by Lt. Cmdr. Richard E. Byrd. The planes were to be used for aerial surveys of Baffin and Ellesmere Islands, investigation of the Greenland icecap, and reconnaissance of previously unexplored areas of the Arctic Sea. The aerial results proved to be disappointing due to severe weather conditions, unreliable engines and inadequate navigational tools (although Byrd would use this experience in preparing for his attempt to reach the North Pole the following year). The expedition is noted for the successful demonstration of SW radio in communications from the Arctic Region. After the war, MacMillan continued his trips to the Arctic, taking researchers north and carrying supplies for the MacMillan-Moravian School he established in 1929. On June 25, 1954 MacMillan was promoted, by a special act of Congress, to rank of rear admiral on the Naval Reserve retired list in honor of his lifetime of service and achievement. Admiral MacMillan made his final trip to the Arctic in 1957 at age 82, and died in 1970 at the age of 95.