MacMillan Party Intact

1916

Battle Harbor, Labrador, Sept. 8. — The Grenfell Mission schooner George B. Cluett, which went to the relief of the Donald B. MacMillan Arctic expedition in July 1915, has returned here, Only Captain H. C. Pickles and the crew are aboard, MacMillan, Dr. E. O. Hovey, who led the relief expedition, and the other scientists of the party having elected to remain for a time in the northern part of Greenland.

The MacMillan party wintered aboard the Cluett in Parker Snow Bay east of Etah and Captain Pickles reports that on July 28, 1916, when the Cluett left North Star Bay, Greenland, about twenty miles north of the expedition's winter quarters, all the party were in good health and had an abundance of supplies.

The MacMillan party were joined by Knud Rasmussen, the Danish explorer, who has been engaged in that region in mapping out the coast, and it is understood that they will return by way of Denmark.

The Cluett was just able to get clear of her anchorage through a narrow lane of ice, and after four weeks of battling with heavy ice, reached open water at a point about the latitude of Durban Harbor, forty miles north of Cape Dyer. Throughout August fog and southerly head winds prevailed. The hull of the Cluett on her arrival here appeared to be in good shape, in spite of the hard winter through which she passed, and her buffeting by the ice on her trip south. Her engine has been out of commission since last October and her propeller shaft and rudder chains are broken.

The crew seems to be in good shape, despite the shortage of food and other hardships through which they passed. The winter's diet of salt horse and bread was varied by a supply of birds and sea pigeons, which were netted in large numbers, and whale, sea walrus and Polar bear meat.

—The Fryeburg Post, Fryeburg, Maine, Sept. 12, 1916, p. 6.

Russian Explorers Believed Lost

1916

OTTAWA, Ontario, Canada — Two small Russian expeditions which have been missing in polar regions have been given up as apparently lost by the Russian government. Canada has been asked by Russia to make public the fact that these two exploration parties, sent out by the Archangel Society in 1912 for the study of conditions in the Russian far north, have not been heard from in four years. The expeditions were headed by K. A. Russanoff and Lieutenant Brusiloff.

The Russanoff party left Spitzbergen in the motor boat Hercules for Nova Zembla in August, 1912. That headed by Brusiloff started north one month later. The latter expedition was not considered adequately equipped.

Hearing nothing from either explorer, the Russian government in March, 1914, dispatched the Norwegian ship Eclipse to the rescue. Eighteen months later the Eclipse returned to Christiania after having been icebound in the Arctic for many months and having learned nothing of the missing men.

Available records do not state the number of men who accompanied the Russanoff and Brusiloff expeditions. It is known Russanoff's party included the oceanographer Kutchin.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Sept. 16, 1916, p. 5.