previously been Robert E. Peary's mistress, bearing him two children. Over the next four years, MacMillan and his men remained stranded in the remote Greenland wilderness. In the spring of 1915, the team's physicist, Maurice Cole Tanquary, made it back to the base at Etah. From there, word was relayed to the American Museum of Natural History, one of the expedition's sponsors, and the first of a series of failed rescue attempts began. The schooner George E. Cluett set out that summer, only to be trapped in ice for two years. A second attempt in 1916 suffered a similar fate. Finally in 1917, the ship Neptunewith MacMillan's old shipmate Capt. Bob Bartlett in command-managed to reach them and returned the remaining expedition crew members to terra firma. The inability of existing ships to successfully navigate the treacherous Arctic and to withstand the tremendous pressure of pack ice had sentenced MacMillan to four years of exile. Four years stranded on sea-ice might have chilled another man's enthusiasm for Arctic exploration, but, instead, he spent a lot of that time thinking about a better way to get around in polar seas. A ship designed specifically for Arctic exploration, he thought, would have to be smaller, heavier, and carry less sail than existing ships charting the Arctic seas. By the time he returned to the United States, MacMillan was ready to contract with a naval architect and begin fundraising for the construction of an Arctic exploration schooner. Unfortunately, the United States was just entering World War I, putting a halt to funding and recruiting men for exploratory expeditions. MacMillan answered the call to service, joining the US Navy. When the war was over, he returned to his plans for his schooner. He contacted the naval architect William H . Hand Jr., a respected designer of sailing yachts at his Buzzards Bay Yacht Agency in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Hand transformed MacMillan's concepts about what was critical to withstand the brutal Arctic sea environment into a design that included strength, maneuverability, and endurance, while maintaining beautiful lines and the elegance reminiscent of the yachts he had been designing. MacMillan contracted with Hodgdon SEA HISTORY 155, SUMMER 2016
Schooner Bowdoin has made twenty-eight voyages to the Arctic. Brothers Shipyard in the tiny hamlet of East Boothbay, Maine, to build the schooner for $35,000, financed by friends who purchased shares for $100 each. Bowdoin was launched into the Damariscotta River in East Boothbay in April of 1921. MacMilIan wasted no time putting Bowdoin through sea trials. That summer he rook her to Baffin Island, where he and his crew spent the remainder of the summer. While the schooner sailed off to destinations far and wide, Hand continued his relationship with the yard throughout his long and illustrious career. At the time of his death in 1946, he was still in East Boothbay, supervising the construction of
his latest design. On 23 August, Bowdoin crossed the Arctic Circle for the first time. The explorers remained in the Arctic through the fall and the winter, eventually returning to warmer climes in the spring of 1922. This would be the first of more than 25 ofMacMillan's expeditions to the Arctic in the schooner, ultimately sailing more than 300,000 nautical miles. MacMillan would return to the Arctic aboard Bowdoin for the last time in 1954. During these voyages, Bowdoin's crew and their team of scientists collected flora and fauna and conducted experiments, adding considerably to our knowledge of the region.
Bowdoin launch, Hodgdon Brothers Shipyard, East Boothbay, Maine, 1921. At 88 feet long,
the wooden schooner was stoutly built with shallow draft for hugging the land and reducing the risk ofgrounding in northern waters that were largely uncharted at that time. 39