Louise Boyd - Arctic Explorer
Louise Arner Boyd was born on 16th September 1887 in California, the only daughter and youngest child of John Franklin Boyd and Louise Cook Arner.
Her father owned part of the Bodie gold mine, which meant the family enjoyed a privileged, carefree life, with the three children being given a well-rounded education.
Every summer, they stayed on their ranch in the Oakland Hills where the young Louise joined her two brothers in exploring Mount Diablo, fishing and camping.
Tragedy struck when Louise was still in her teens. Within months of each other, both her brothers died from heart disease.
The shock led to her parents looking to their remaining child, their young daughter, for comfort. Which led to her joining them on their many travels to Europe.
In 1919, aged 32, Louise bought a car in Buffalo, New York, and drove across the United States. This, at a time when they were no highways, with many roads nothing more than gravel. Making such cross-country trips would become a regular occurrence for her, which she would record in her many journals.
By 1920, after caring for her parents, she lost both of them within the space of a year and was left as the sole heir to the family fortune.
She spent a few years travelling Europe and the US, and it was a fateful trip aboard a Norwegian cruise ship in 1924 that gave her, her first sight of the Arctic. And, thus, her future was set.
In 1926, Louise chartered a ship to return to the Arctic, in the company of friends. Interestingly, the ship she used was the ‘Hobby’, which had been used by the renowned Norwegian explorer, Roald Amundsen.
It wasn’t long before her exploits reached the attention of international newspapers who called her, among other things, “The Girl Who Tamed the Arctic”.
While planning her second trip, Louise learned that Roald Amundsen had disappeared on 18th June 1928. He had been conducting a search and rescue mission to find the Italian explorer, General Umberto Nobile. Nobile’s airship, ‘Italia’, had crashed during his second series of flights around the North Pole.
Roald Amundsen - Svalbard 1925 (Wikipedia - image from Preus Museum)
Cancelling her pleasure trip, she offered her services and her ship to the Norwegian government to help search for Amundsen. She covered about 10,000 miles in her search across the Arctic Ocean but could find no trace of him or his men.
Despite this, the Norwegian government awarded her the Chevalier Cross of the Order of Saint Olav, given to individuals for extraordinary accomplishments on behalf of the country and humanity. She was the first American woman to be so honoured.
Although Nobile had been rescued, Amundsen and his men were never found; after three months of searching, the Norwegian government called off the search in September 1928.
By now, Louise was making regular expeditions to the Arctic. All through the 1930s, she led a number of scientific expeditions to Greenland. Having learned through correspondence with her friend, Alice Eastwood, a botanist at the California Academy of Sciences, Louise and her team photographed, surveyed and collected hundreds of botanical specimens.
Alice Eastwood (Wikipedia)
Louise was also responsible for mapping areas of Greenland that had yet to be mapped, producing very accurate charts.
The American Geographical Society published her findings and photographs in a book, ‘The Fjord Region of East Greenland’. An area in eastern Greenland was later named Louise Boyd Land.
In August 1934, Louise was elected as a delegate to the International Geographical Congress, an international geographical society. Based in Warsaw, she embarked on a three-month journey across the Polish countryside, travelling by rail, car, boat and on foot. She photographed and recorded the culture and customs of many ethnic Poles, Ukrainians, Byelorussians and Lithuanians.
The resulting narrative, accompanied by over 500 photographs, and titled, ‘Polish Countrysides’, was published in 1937 by the American Geographical Society.
In the leadup to the Second World War, Louise was getting ready to publish a book covering her 1937 and 1938 Greenland and Arctic expeditions. The United States government asked her to delay publication because of the sensitive and strategic significance of the knowledge she was about to publish.
They also asked her to lead a geophysical expedition along the west coast of Greenland and down the coast of Baffin Island and Labrador. Although she’d already spent a significant portion of her wealth, she wouldn’t accept payment for any of her work. She used her own money to charter and outfit the schooner, ‘Effie M. Morrissey’, which was owned and commanded by Captain Robert Bartlett.
‘Effie M. Morrissey’, photo taken 1894 (Wikipedia)
An interesting aside – in 1913, Captain Bartlett had commanded the ‘Karluk’, the flagship of the Canadian Arctic Expedition, which had been organised under the leadership of Vilhjalmur Stefansson… the same Stefansson who would go on to organise the disastrous expedition to Wrangel Island in 1921, which was covered in last week’s post about Ada Blackjack.
After being trapped in ice for about five months, the ‘Karluk’ was eventually crushed and sank. It was Bartlett’s leadership that helped save the lives of the surviving crew.
Captain Robert Bartlett (Wikipedia - image in US public domain), taken in 1914 on board the US Coast Guard Cutter Bear after he had completed his march from the camp on Wrangel Island
The ‘Effie M. Morrissey’, with Louise leading a scientific party of four men in addition to Bartlett’s crew, left Washington on 11th June 1941. The expedition’s purpose was to obtain data on radio-wave transmission in the Arctic. When they returned in November of the same year, they’d gathered valuable date.
Because of her work for the US Army, Louise was awarded a Department of Army Certificate of Appreciation in 1949.
And the book she’d been asked not to publish before the war was published in 1948 – ‘The Coast of Northeast Greenland’.
In 1955, at the age of 67, instead of settling down to enjoy what was left of her fortune, Louise wanted to see more of the north. So, she hired a plane and pilot and became the first woman to fly over the North Pole.
Louise Boyd on her return from her flight over the North Pole
She was the second woman to receive the Cullum Medal of the American Geographical Society. The medal is awarded “to those who distinguish themselves by geographical discoveries or in the advancement of geographical science”.
In 1960, she became the first woman elected to the Society’s board.
As she’d spent most of her fortune on her beloved expeditions, Louise had to deal with financial difficulties as she neared the end of her life.
Louise Arner Boyd died on September14th, 1972, aged 84. She isn’t buried alongside her family; instead, she’d requested that her ashes be scattered at sea in the Arctic.