Five former shipmates of MacMillan sail bay on Arctic schooner Bowdoin

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CASTINE – Latitude: 78 degrees, 45 minutes, 20 seconds.

That is how far north the schooner Bowdoin sailed in the summer of 1948, the farthest north the Arctic exploration vessel had been to that point. As usual, along with its longtime skipper, Donald MacMillan, and his wife, Miriam, the ship carried a contingent of young men, mainly high school and college students, who helped sail the Bowdoin and conduct a variety of scientific activities.

Before the Bowdoin was built, MacMillan had sailed with Adm. Robert Peary to the Arctic on his trips to explore the region. They copied travel and living skills from Inuit Indians, including the use of dog sleds. With the Bowdoin, MacMillan later made more than 20 trips to the region.

Five of the seven surviving members of the Bowdoin’s Class of ’48 gathered on board the ship this week for a sail around Penobscot Bay with a crew from Maine Maritime Academy, which is the current owner of the ship.

Although some had been on board the schooner since their voyage, it was the first time in 57 years that the former shipmates had sailed on the Bowdoin together.

“It’s one of the high points of my life,” said Paul Eitel of Melbourne, Fla., who organized the reunion. “It means an awful lot.”

Along with Eitel were shipmates John Snyder of Arlington, Va.; Bruce Nelson of Charlottesville, Va.; Peter Rand of Cape Elizabeth; and Martin “Hap” Person of Plymouth, Mass.

They were joined by Edward Morse of Owls Head, who sailed as ship’s physician on the Bowdoin’s 1947 Arctic voyage, their wives and a contingent from Maine Maritime Academy.

The reunion included a stop at the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum at Bowdoin College before the group arrived at the MMA campus for an afternoon cruise. The shipmates, all now in their 70s, came aboard last Thursday morning and clambered all over the vessel, quickly heading below decks to check out their bunks and pointing out changes in the vessel to the current crew members.

“Just walking on board brings up a lot of wonderful memories,” Nelson said.

Among those memories was the visit to the ship by some Inuit fishermen. “They came in a kayak, and I got in it in the water,” he said. “That was something not very many white men had done. It was quite an experience.”

Most had not sailed before and none had been to the Arctic. “There were so many totally new experiences,” Person said. “I’d never sailed before. There was a whole series of doing something like that; it was all totally new.”

Person had been chosen for the trip to help collect birds, but, he said, he quickly developed a new interest, rocks.

“There was nothing but rocks up there,” he said. “I became fascinated with the geology, and that was fostered by Mac. He had a library on board, and he really focused on the fact that he had a lot of young men on board with him. And he had a lot of books about rocks.” The rocks and the ice held an attraction for others on that voyage.

“It just blew you away,” Snyder said. “We were seeing a dynamic of a part of the world I had never experienced before. I became a professional geologist because of that. I wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t gone on that trip.”

Snyder taught and eventually became a geologic administrator with the National Science Foundation. He was not alone. Both Person and Nelson changed their college majors to geology after the voyage. After a stint in the Coast Guard, Person started an investment management company. Nelson taught geology at the University of Virginia for 25 years before retiring.

The voyage on the Bowdoin was like a glimpse back in time to what the world had been like in Maine at the end of the last ice age, Morse said, with people living on land right next to a glacier that regularly calved icebergs.

“They were living on the fringe of that mass of ice that was 2 miles thick. It’s mind-boggling to see the size of those things,” he said. He recalled shooting movies on that trip at midnight.

“The sun was still up in the sky, so I could shoot just like I normally would. We were sailing so close to those icebergs that you could see the shadow of the mast and the guy up in the ice bucket there on the iceberg,” Morse said.

Of those at the reunion, Peter Rand was the only one who had sailed more than once to the Arctic on the Bowdoin. Having made the ’48 trip, he came back in two successive years and served as mate.

“That was a pretty high point of my young life,” he said. Although the Arctic was interesting to him, the real attraction was sailing with Mac and Miriam, he said.

He had heard MacMillan lecture about the Arctic. “He was a pretty dramatic guy,” he said. “He was spellbinding. He explained things in a way that was fascinating.”

His stories became legend among his former crew members, partly because MacMillan told them with such enthusiasm and partly because they were based on his experience.

“I’ve often told people that Mac had forgotten more about the Arctic than anyone else ever knew,” Eitel said. He recalled MacMillan’s expertise as a sailor and navigator at a time when ships were equipped with little in the way of technology.

“A compass in the north is worthless,” Eitel said. “You got true north and magnetic north and the needle just goes round in circles. It’s all dead reckoning, and he knew every point of land – he’d been there so many times.”

Others noted that he was at all times a teacher. “He encouraged us to learn as much as we could,” Nelson said. “He told lots of stories. He was an informal teacher, and maybe that is the best kind of teacher. He talked about it from a realistic point of view.”

There was no question as to who was in charge on board, but still, MacMillan was very approachable, Person said.

“He was an inspired teacher,” he said. “He was always ready to help you learn. You listened when he spoke, but you were never afraid to ask a question.”

For several on board, the afternoon cruise was a homecoming of sorts, but for others it was also a checkup on the condition of the vessel which, not too long ago, had fallen on hard times. Some of those on board had a hand in helping to restore it. Person worked with MacMillan to turn the Bowdoin over to the Mystic Seaport Museum in hopes that it would be cared for there. But the schooner languished there from neglect and had fallen into disrepair when Rand and Morse worked with MacMillan and others to buy the ship back for a dollar.

“Mac insisted on putting up the dollar,” Rand said. He and Morse went along when a crew towed the vessel back to Maine and helped found the Schooner Bowdoin Association that helps to raise funds to rebuild the vessel. That effort preserved the schooner and set it on a course that eventually led to Castine and Maine Maritime Academy, where students continue to learn how to sail it in a manner very similar to the way the Class of ’48 had done.

“It’s very satisfying,” Rand said. “The Bowdoin really is a part of Maine Maritime, and they are really going to do everything they can to preserve her. That represents a lot. The Bowdoin is a part of the history of Maine and the nation’s history as well.”