Captain Mac: The Life of Donald Baxter MacMillan, Arctic Explorer
MacMillan a thirty four year old teacher from Massachusetts saw vapor lying low over the ice ahead That meant open water The men came to a halt Robert Peary the leader of the expedition said there was nothing to do but wait for the gap to close or for new ice to form over the frigid water They waited For days and days they waited frustrated
Donald B MacMillan wearing an Inughuit style hooded coat called a
Seventeen of the twenty four men in this group were Inughuit people of northwest Greenland Donald MacMillan could plainly see they were getting panicky He knew Peary desperately wanted to reach the North Pole He also knew that without these men Peary’s 1908 1909 mission was doomed MacMillan made a quick decision Right there on the polar ice at 59°F Fahrenheit below zero he organized boxing and thumb pulling contests to take their minds off their fears of the ice It worked Had the Inughuit deserted Peary and his assistant Matthew Henson likely never would have discovered the North Pole MacMillan made a discovery of his own that winter It became his all consuming passion to explore the Arctic and Share everything he learned with the world Ethe grant In 1909 men and dogs trekked over the frozen Arctic Ocean for more than
a month to reach the North Pole Matthew Henson took this photograph when the group came to a ridge of jumbled sea ice Donald B MacMillan's story begins on a narrow strip of land at the tip of Cape Cod Massachusetts where everything is within sight of the sea Young Donald breathed the salty air and heard the sounds of waves and bell buoys and squawking sea gulls The rhythmic ebb and flow of tides was as much a part of him as the rhythm of night following day He was not content however to watch ships sailing to and from faraway places He longed to be on them to sail far beyond the
