EAST MONTPELIER – If you gad about enough and try to do at least one new thing a week, you’re bound to encounter interesting people, educational experiences, and exciting situations. A perfect proof of that came up for me last summer, when I trundled across New England to join my friend Bea in visiting some of her old friends on the coast of Maine. Two visits it was, the first with a happy group that’s gotten together for about 50 years for various holidays; the second with an elderly couple, Irv and Civia, a few miles down the coast not far from Brunswick.
Sitting on the deck at the second visit, Bea and Irv, who’ve been colleagues forever, fell into shop talk, and I into reverie. Then Civia happened to mention she’d heard I was interested in the Arctic. When I allowed that was true, she disappeared into the house and returned bearing a book.
In the past couple of years I’ve discovered that a sure sign of a born teacher or professor – clergymen, too, come to think of it – is their apparently instinctive support of others’ interests. When you finish talking with such a person, you feel energized and better about yourself, and may have collected some information, to boot. I was clearly talking with just such a person.
The book bore no title except one glued in its spine: Davidoff * Trip to North * 1925. Opening it, I was surprised to see it in typescript, with occasional black-and-white photographs pasted in, and the whole photocopied. This was the transcript of the journal kept by the expedition doctor, young Leo Davidoff, on the so-called 1925 MacMillan-Byrd Expedition to northern Greenland. It was then typed as 132 pages, and proofed by hand with a fountain pen. To me it was the Mother Lode.
I scanned it only briefly that warm summer afternoon out on the deck beside Harpswell Sound, and afterward found myself hankering for another, longer look. When I later suggested a viewing (it was still in Maine), it miraculously turned up in Boston and shortly after was on its way to Montpelier. It’s what great teachers do.
Doctor Davidoff was obviously a serious journal-keeper. Through all exigencies (including debilitating chronic seasickness), he wrote at length, and with fresh eyes, of his shipmates, the rocky coasts of Labrador and Greenland, and the people along the way, native Inuit, Moravian missionaries, and Danes. The purposes of the expedition were to collect avian specimens for study, test the ability of amphibious aircraft to fly to the North Pole (and back, presumably) from Etah in Greenland, and improve long-distance radio communications. It was thus a mix of rugged sailors, Navy aviators and mechanics, and the wealthy founder of the Zenith Radio Corporation, all under the nominal command of Donald MacMillan in the famous Arctic schooner Bowdoin. The majority of the expedition sailed on the Peary, a steamer belonging to the radio magnate. This disparate mix of characters and goals was a recipe for tension and strife. Success would require all MacMillan’s skills with people, as well as Arctic navigation.
Davidoff, disinterested in the various goals beyond his medical practice, is a shrewd observer of character. “…the naval contingent has been a disappointment from the start,” he writes. “The commander is a coxcomb who struts about, clattering his acquaintanceship in intimate terms with all the great and near-great, his ancient kinea descent, his own accomplishments and his philosophical leanings, which latter are so naive, so based on ignorance…that I had difficulty to prevent myself laughing in his face.” This was none other than the soon-to-be-famous Richard Byrd, who later claimed to have been the first to fly over the north and south poles. The pursuit of polar distinction seems not to have been ennobling.
The year of Davidoff’s initiation was a “bad ice year.” But in spite of his debilitating seasickness, he kept his journal going as the little convoy worked its way across the Labrador Sea and through Baffin Bay to northern Greenland at last. The aviators assembled their planes and reconnoitered north, with no success. The ships, both low on coal, pleaded with the Danish officials for replenishment (who knew there were coal mines in Greenland?). Finally, as the Arctic summer began to cool, they packed up their airplanes and bird specimens and started home. Davidoff realized how much he had missed trees and his home, and loved to hear the changing of the watch during the night: “Course sou’ by sou-west.” Thanks for the great read, Irv and Civia!
