It was a carnival-like atmosphere as the two ships in Donald Baxter MacMillan’s latest Arctic expedition were about to sail from Wiscasset, Maine.
School children released multi-colored balloons, the 5th Infantry Band played “Aud Lang Syne,” and thousands of well-wishers gathered to see him off shouted, “See you in September, Mac,” the Associated Press reported on June 20, 1925.
Among those on board was Floyd Bennett, formerly of Ticonderoga, an Adirondack aviation legend for which Floyd Bennett Warren County Airport in Queensbury and Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn are named.
“Floyd Bennett, a former resident of Ticonderoga and now an aviation pilot is one of the party accompanying Donald B. MacMillan, Arctic explorer, on the expedition which left… last Saturday in an attempt to reach the North Pole by the air route and discover a supposedly ‘lost continent’ north of Alaska,” the Ticonderoga Sentinel reported on June 25.
Bennett was co-pilot with Lt. Commander Richard Byrd of MA-1, one of three planes participating in the aviation portion of the multi-faceted expedition.
Byrd had personally selected Bennett and the other four pilots for the expedition. “Bennett will undoubtedly encounter many
thrilling experiences which he can relate upon his return from the North,” the Sentinel suggested.
Perhaps Bennett was fascinated by the weekly radio broadcasts to the crew, and anyone else who wished to listen in, updating crew members on current events in the United States.
“Every Wednesday at midnight an unusual radio program has been broadcast from the Chicago Tribune broadcasting station, WGN, in the Drake Hotel to the MacMillan Arctic Expedition, now anchored off Etah, Greenland, within eleven degrees of the North Pole,” The Indianapolis Times reported on Aug. 20.
The Rev. Gardner MacWhorter of Chicago, a fraternity brother of MacMillan at Bodowin College, was the announcer. Commercial radio was still a relative novelty at the time.
Byrd and Bennett, on this expedition, did not achieve their goal of flying over the North Pole, hampered in part by weather conditions.
But they did compile information on the type of aviation necessary, the terrain, and the use of short-wave radio which would prove helpful for their successful flight across the North Pole in 1926.
MacMillan, the overall leader of the expedition, led more than 30 expeditions to the Arctic over his 46-year career, according to the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum in Brunswick, Maine.
The historian, sailor and researcher took many photographs and films of Greenland and Labrador, and compiled a dictionary of the Inuit language.
MacMillan’s primary goal for the 1925 expedition was to attempt to prove his contention that Norsemen were the first white
men to visit North America, the Associated Press reported on June 20.
He hoped to document the “Lost Colony of Greenland” which Erik Thorvaldsson (c. 950 – c. 1003, known as Erik the Red) had supposedly established in 980.
The evening before MacMillan and his crew departed, the governor of Maine hosted a dinner in MacMillan’s honor.
“Gov. Ralph O. Brewster of Maine tonight authorized Donald MacMillan, who sails for the Arctic tomorrow, to claim any territory he may discover in the polar regions for the state of Maine,” The Associated Press reported on Jan. 19.
The governor, tongue-in-cheek, was weighing in on an international debate between United States and Canada about which nation would control any new territory MacMillan discovered.
“The flag of the state of Maine may be planted on this territory where there is much to indicate may exist that great state. It will then remain for the federal government to decide whether or not it will recognize and protect our rights,” Brewster said.
Bennett, a Lake George native, had lived in Warrensburg, Schenectady and Ticonderoga before enlisting in the Navy flying forces during World War I. At Ticonderoga he had worked as an automotive mechanic at People’s Garage.
In 1926, Byrd and Bennett captured international attention with their successful flight over the North Pole. More than 2,000 people attended a ceremony honoring Bennett at Shepard Park at Lake George.
The Glens Falls Band played “Home Sweet Home” and businessman and publisher Addison B. Colvin, speaking on behalf of Gov. Al Smith, proclaimed Bennett the “Monarch of the Air” and the “Calvin Coolidge of the Air,” The Lake George Mirror reported.
“Although there have been several receptions for Commander Byrd and our party, none can compare with this one,” Bennett mused. “There is something about a place of one’s childhood that one can never forget.”
Bennett died from double pneumonia April 25, 1928 at Jeffrey Hale Hospital in Quebec.
Read more about Floyd Bennett.
Illustrations, from above: Chief Aviation Pilot Floyd Bennett (U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command); A Loening OL-2, one of the planes purchased for use by the MacMillan Arctic Expedition, circa 1925 (U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command); Bennett in the sealskin flight suit the 1925 crews obtained in Labrador (National Archives); and Floyd Bennett’s mother raising a flag at the Bennett Memorial on Main Street in Warrensburg, NY (ca. 1930?).
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