Socialite and the Sea Captain by David Hirzel

Louise Arner Boyd and Captain Bob Barlett at Sea, 1941, including a side-by-side look at their journals.

The Arctic explorer Louise Arner Boyd, working in conjunction with the United States Bureau of Standards, embarked June 11, 1941 on a polar research voyage in the legendary schooner Effie M. Morrissey with Captain, owner, and Arctic explorer in his own right, Bob Bartlett commanding. The voyage was at the request of the United States Government. Their interest lay in studies of the ionosphere in the high Arctic, the understanding of which would aid in radio communications, and to search out potential sites for military airfields. Although the United States was not yet a combatant in the war then raging throughout Europe, by the beginning of 1941 it had become clear that such neutrality would not last much longer, and that when the time came for the U.S. to enter the war, it would be on the side of the Allies. The ship departed Washington D.C on June 11, 1941, touching at New York and her home port at Brigus, Newfoundland before heading all the way through Baffin Bay and ultimately into Smith sound, reaching the voyage’s northernmost extent in the region of Cape Alexander and Cape Powell in Northwest Greenland. 

During the course of the expedition, from its departure until its return with valuable data to the same port November 3, 1941, Miss Boyd kept a journal of her daily activities on board and her photographic and scientific work ashore. Bartlett and the ship’s officers kept a detailed daily log, preserved today in Special Collections at the Bowdoin College Library in Brunswick Maine. It provides a marked contrast to Miss Boyd’s narrative.She had known Captain Bartlett from previous interactions. They were both passionately interested in polar exploration. A joint venture, in conjunction with a quasi-military purpose seemed imminently prosperous. However, over the three months of the effort, relations between the two soured irrevocably. Each felt an indisputable right to be leader of the expedition. Neither was willing to give ground. Bartlett, as captain and owner of the ship, had legal and moral right to direct the ship’s course and movement. Boyd, who had previously led five similar expeditions using Norwegian ships, and who had been contacted by the Bureau of Standards to lead this one, justifiably felt the moral weight of expedition leadership fell to her.

This volume is not intended to be a complete history of the voyage. Its entire scope and purpose is to provide a comparative, side-by-side diary of daily events and interactions while the Effie M. Morrisey ran down the west side of Baffin Bay, starting from Etah, Greenland on August 18, 1941, and stopping along the shores of Ellesmere Island, Devon Island, and Baffin Island, and ending at sea September 23, 1941, en route to Labrador. Captain Bartlett and his Effie M. Morrissey continued in the service of the United States Government war effort, logging by 1945 another four voyages into the ice at Hudson’s Bay, Baffin Bay, Greenland, and Baffin Island. A century and a quarter after her 1894 launch, she is still sailing. Bob Bartlett died shortly after the end of the war on April 28, 1946. Miss Boyd—she referred to herself at times as a “socialite”—continued to work on secret assignments for the U.S. Army Department, then lived in active retirement in Marin County, California, and died September 14, 1972. They never reconciled their differences. This side-by-side comparison invites readers to arrive at their own conclusions: Who was right or wrong here? Who was in fact the leader of this expedition?