Donald MacMillan

Rear Admiral Donald B. Mac Millan

Alden Whitman for The New York Times

Tuesday, November 8, 1970

"While I would like to go into the Arctic for the adventure that it promises, my greatest desire would be to bring back to scholars of all kinds bits of useful knowledge about this little-known domain."

In these words, written just after the turn of the century, Donald Baxter Mac Millan expressed an ambition that he largely achieved in 30 expeditions to the Far North between 1908 and 1954.  He was 34 years old on his first trip and a few days short of 80 when he completed his final journey.

An anthropologist, ethnologist, geographer and skilled naturalist, he made fundamental contributions to Arctic geology, botany, zoology and geography as well as to the understanding of Eskimo culture.  He introduced the airplane to the Arctic, pioneered in the use of short-wave radio there and was the first to use snowmobiles in the region.  And in thousands of illustrated lectures across the United States, he made his knowledge available to the public and to generations of school and college students.

Oddly, the explorer, who became a rear admiral in 1954, never set foot on the North Pole; but he did fly over it in 1957 -with three other Arctic veterans- Sir Hubert Wilkins, Peter Fruechen and Colonel Bert Balchen.  His initiation into the North came through Admiral Robert E. Peary, whose son had attended, in 1900, a summer camp run by Admiral Mac Millan, then a teacher.  The two men corresponded, and Admiral Peary invited him to join the Peary expedition of 1908-1909 as an assistant.

At the 85th Parallel, the neophyte nearly perished when he fell through the ice ("Peary held my freezing feet against his warm body to save them") and had to forgo the final stages of the trip, on which Peary insisted he had reached the Pole. Instead, Admiral Mac Millan hobbled back along the trail to set up supply caches for Peary's return trip.

Undismayed by the hazards of polar life, Admiral Mac Millan participated in the Cabot Labrador expedition of 1910, in the course of which, in a sixteen foot canoe, he almost reached Hudson Straits under sail and paddle.  It was "a marvelous trip," he said later, recalling how he had relied on his shotgun and fishing tackle for food and how he had found shelther beneath the canoe, hauled out on shore, or among the Eskimos.

Few white men were held in such esteem and affection by the Eskimos as Admiral Mac Millan, whose Eskimo name was Nagelak, or Leader, for he strove to improve their health and living conditions and to create an understanding of their problems.  Among other things, he compiled a dictionary of conversational Eskimo and established a school for Eskimo children at Nairn, Labrador, which he kept supplied with food and equipment for many years.  He held Eskimo brainpower in high regard, saying, "If they were not intelligent, they couldn't survive in that country."

Admiral Mac Millan's attachment to the Far North began in childhood.  He was born in Provincetown, Mass., on November 10, 1874, the son of a hardy Scotch fisherman.  His father, Captain Neil Mac Millan, was drowned off Greenland while fishing for halibut when Donny Baxter, as the boy was called in the Scots tradition, was 9. His mother died shortly thereafter, and he was brought up in Freeport, Maine, by an older sister.

After working his way through Bowdoin College in the class of'98, he became a teacher- and it was while he was at the Worcester (Mass.) Academy in 1908 that he received Peary's invitation to join his polar expedition.  Although he never taught formally thereafter, save for anthropology lectures at Bowdoin, he stocked his Arctic crews with scientists and students to whom he passed along his accumulated scientific knowledge.

Admiral Mac Millan's first polar trip in which he was the Commander was the Crocker Land Expedition in 1913.  Starting out with 19 men and 165 dogs, he expected to remain in the north for two years and had to stay for four years until a relief ship made it to the west coast of Greenland.  In this time, he and his sledges crisscrossed 10,500 miles of the Arctic, travelling the Greenland coast, Ellesmere Island, Axel Heiberg Island and the Polar Sea.  The fare was often dog biscuit, birds' eggs and seal and walrus meat.

In addition to making basic geographical findings and to collecting 200 boxes of scientific specimens, Admiral Mac Millan disproved Peary's discovery of Crocker Land by showing that it had been a mirage.  He told about his feats in a book, "Four years in the White North," published in 1918.

In World War I, Admiral Mac Millan served in the Navy Air Arm, and later in the Reserve; but in 1920, he was back in the North, this time in Hudson's Bay.  The following year he was again in the Arctic on the first of a series of voyages in the celebrated schooner Bowdoin, a vessel of his own design that was double-ribbed and sheathed in ironwood and had a spoon bow able to lift up and crack down through an opening in an ice field.  The 88 foot long ship, graceful as a seabird, made 26 Arctic trips before being laid up.  Her last voyage was in 1954.

On his voyages in the Bowdoin, Admiral Mac Millan mapped the coast of Baffin Island; studied the great ice cap, Meta Incognita- found coal on Ellesmere Island; gathered biological specimens in Labrador; and offered evidence to show that the world was nearing the end of an ice age.

In World War 11, the explorer was commissioned a Reserve commander in the Navy and was dispatched to the Arctic with a ship and four planes.  He made 10,000 aerial photographs of the Labrador, Greenland and Baffin Island coasts, and then worked with the War Department in establishing a Northern radar network and served on the Secret Defense Board.  Nevertheless, some of his last years were passed in official neglect on a small pension.

Admiral Mac Millan's final voyage, in 1954, was one of the hardest he had ever undertaken.  The Bowdoin took a terrific beating from the 120-mile-an-hour winds and shifting ice packs.  Moreover, an Eskimo pilot, guiding the ship along the coast near Holsteinborg, Greenland, ran her onto a ledge and rocks ripped off part of her iron keel and ironwood sheathing.  For five hours, the vessel lay keeled over, with waves crashing into her hull.  Then a high tide refloated her, and the admiral was able to take her into port, where she was beached and repaired.

For his exploits Admiral Mac Millan received many awards, including the Medal of Honor, the Elisha Kent Kane Gold Medal, the Explorers' Club Medal and the Hubbard Gold Medal of the National Geographic Society.

Admiral Mac Millan lived the last years of his life in Provincetown with his wife, Miriam, whom he married when he was 60.  His deck was the porch of a shipshape home facing the Atlantic.  Erect as a stanchion on a schooner's fo'c'sle even into his 90's, and with a New England twang in his still-strong voice, he liked to chat with visitors about the Arctic and his "boys"- the men who had sailed with him on the frozen seas.

The admiral did not like to think of himself as retired.  "I am just not that kind," he said.  And when he was 94, he was asked by Capt. Alan B. Shepard Jr., the nation's first astronaut, if he were available for a moon trip.  With scarcely a twinkle in his blue eyes, he replied: "Damned right!"

Alden Whitman for The New York Times

Tuesday, November 8, 1970