Science: MacMillan Back

The Governor of Maine cancelled all his engagements and went to the seashore. There, at Wiscasset, he found a band of other notables—a rear admiral, an Army colonel, a U. S. Senator, various fellow state officials, a squad of Bowdoin College alumni, a Chicago banker, officers of the National Geographic Society. With one exception, they were all on hand to welcome and felicitate the same person, Explorer Donald B. MacMillan, whose stout auxiliary schooners were nearing the harbor after a summer in the Arctic.

The exception was the Chicago banker, Mr. F. H. Rawson of the Union Trust Co. He was there to meet MacMillan’s cabin boy. He chartered a small steamer, took aboard other impatient ones and was waiting on the pier at Monhegan Island (30 mi. up the coast) when, trailing the Peary by a few hours, the Bowdoin, Macmillan at the wheel, skimmed around Lobster Cove Point and rattled out her anchor chains in Deadman’s Cove. Not the last of the landing party that soon stepped ashore was a 15-year-old Cabin Boy Kenneth Rawson, tanned, broadened and more rugged than when his father last saw him, and 30 lb. heavier. He had taken his tricks at the wheel with the best of them, was pronounced “able seaman” by his commander.

That evening the winds raged, the channels foamed and a deluge fell. The welcomers bought out the slicker, gum-boot and food supply of the isolated little resort and waited with the homing argonauts until the second day, clear and fine, permitted returning to Wiscasset for the postponed official ceremonies.

The expedition’s radio equipment had kept the world pretty fully informed of what befell during the past four months, but MacMillan and his lieutenants did a lot of summing up.

Lieut. Commander Richard E. Byrd of the Naval air unit that was assigned to accompany MacMillan and that flew three Leoning Amphibian planes a total of 5,300 miles over perilous ice-lands: “I think that again the great National Geographic Society has fathered an expedition that has contributed scientific knowledge to the world.” He particularized: experience with radio and solar compasses, data on flying conditions in frigid air and over snow-covered terrain. He warmly complimented the men under him on their courage and discipline, citing Mechanic Bennett’s heroism in climbing out on a wing to prevent a cold-clogged oil tank from bursting, the joint feat of changing three 900-lb. Liberty motors with improvised equipment, and the readiness of all the men to fly over Ellesmere Land “where a forced landing meant ‘curtains’ [i. e. dropped curtains—Death].” Pilot Earl Reber of the NA-3, despite an attack of stomach ulcers that kept him on a milk diet for weeks, was credited with the most miles flown. Reber described the foggy flying weather as “dirtiest ever.”

Dr. Walter N. Koelz, ichthyologist of the U. S. Bureau of Fisheries, the Naturalist of the expedition, reported a collection of specimens so large that he had filled even his bunk with them and slept in the hold. Included were birds and animals not yet named. Jacob Gayer, staff photographer of the National Geographic Society, had over 1,000 colored pictures of wild life.

Commander MacMillan reiterated his belief that heaver-than-air machines are impracticable for Polar flying. He gave the Navy men and planes their due but insisted that, until the dirigible is proven a contender, “the dog is still king of the Arctic.”

Such a severe summer had not been seen in the Arctic within the memories of the oldest Eskimos.

To him, the most important feature of the whole trip was a stone church found on the way home at Gotthaab, Greenland, which he was certain had been erected by early Norsemen. It was finely preserved; the walls, laid without cement, being smooth as a ship’s deck. It had evidently served as a fortress, with peepholes for windows. Ruined homesteads lay near. Next summer MacMillan will investigate the Gotthaab remains more fully, and other remains on an island near Labrador, to establish the route by which the Vikings penetrated his native New England.