Arctic Odyssey: The Life of Rear Admiral Donald B. MacMillan

by Everett S. Allen

Overview

IN THESE PAGES, the reader will meet one of America’s foremost seafaring men and explorers. Donald B. MacMillan (1874-1970) was born in Provincetown on Cape Cod and orphaned at an early age. After working his way through Bowdoin College and a brief stint at teaching, he became one of Robert E. Peary’s chief assistants on the arctic expedition that finally fought its way across the bitter Polar Sea to reach the North Pole.

There followed a series of arctic expeditions spanning nearly half a century to Labrador, Baffin Island, to King Christian Island, Ellesmere Island and other unknown areas of the Arctic, resulting in valuable work in botany, ornithology, meteorology, and anthropology. He proved that Crocker Land did not exist.

The story of the schooner Bowdoin, which for many years visited the North with a crew of scientists and amateurs, is told in detail, as well as the researchers and friendships developed with the Eskimos, in which Miriam MacMillan played a significant part.

Arctic Odyssey is the thrilling story of a rich and exciting way of life, centering in the lusty and vigorous personality of one of the last and most colorful representatives of the heroic era of arctic exploration.

Everett S. Allen (1916-1990) was an experienced newspaper reporter for The Standard-Times in New Bedford, Massachusetts. For many years he followed the career of Rear Admiral MacMillan and worked closely with him while writing this book.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781789127065
Publisher:	Papamoa Press
Publication date:	12/02/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	265
File size:	35 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Everett Slocum Allen (1916-1990) was a journalist and editor of the New Bedford Standard-Times.

Born on September 29, 1916 in New Bedford, Massachusetts, the son of Joseph Chase and Mary Etta Ashton Allen, he attended Tisbury High School on Martha’s Vineyard and graduated from Tabor Academy in Marion, Mass. He received his bachelor’s degree in 1938 from Middlebury College in Vermont. Following graduation, he began his long journalism career with the Standard-Times of New Bedford, interrupted only by his service in the U.S. Navy during WWII.

Allen covered many beats for the Standard-Times beginning with the city waterfront, then as police-fire reporter, assistant city editor, acting city editor, advancing to Sunday editor and assistant to the editor, a position he held from 1950-1976. He served as an editorial writer from 1955 and editor of the editorial page from 1975 up until his retirement at the end of 1979. In 1985, Allen was awarded an honorary doctor of letters degree from Southeastern Massachusetts University in North Dartmouth, Mass.

A prolific writer of articles during his career, his deep interests in his topics turned several article series into full length books. Allen authored seven books that were published between 1962 and 1982, most notably: This Quiet Place, A Cape Cod Chronicle (1971), Martha’s Vineyard, An Elegy (1982), The Children of the Light (1973), A Wind to Shake the World (1976), and The Back Ships: Rumrunners of Prohibition (1979).

During 1979, Allen received several journalism awards, among them the Editors Award by the American Society of Newspaper Editors. That same year, he was named a fellow of the Academy of New England Journalists. Allen continued his affiliation with the newspaper with his syndicated weekly column “The Present Tense” until his death on August 5, 1990.