Dirigo in the Arctic: Donald B. Macmillan, Harrison J. Hunt, and The Crocker Land Expedition, 1913-1917

• Main Author: Lagerbom, Charles H
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: DigitalCommons@UMaine 2012
• Subjects: arctic; Inuit; Crocker Land mirage; Robert Peary; American Museum of Natural History; Earth Sciences; Geology; History; United States History; Antarc*; Arctic Ocean; inuit
• Online Access: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mainehistoryjournal/vol46/iss2/4; https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/context/mainehistoryjournal/article/1088/viewcontent/46_2_Article3.pdf

The polar careers of three Maine men intersected in the far reaches of the northern Arctic Ocean at a speciï¬c geographic spot on the globe: 83° North Latitude, 100° West Longitude. Called Crocker Land, it had been sighted by polar explorer and Maine resident Robert E. Peary on June 24, 1906. In 1913, Mainer Donald B. MacMillan organized the Crocker Land expedition to explore this land that Peary had sighted. Another Mainer, Harrison J. Hunt, signed on as doctor for MacMillan’s venture in 1913. Crocker Land tied them all together, but only one of the three actually stood where it should have been located; another only glimpsed the land from afar; and the third never even got close to it and came to regard its non-existence as an apt metaphor for the entire expedition. Crocker Land became their nexus and colored each one’s actions from that point forward. The author is a doctoral student in history at the University of Maine and is researching the connections between Maine and the polar world. He is president of the Antarctican Society, membership chair for the American Polar Society, and author of The Fifth Man: The Life of Henry R. Bowers, published by Caedmon of Whitby in 1999. He can be reached at [e-mail].