Dinner at Borup lodge, Greenland, 1913-15. Sporting a Bowdoin jacket, Hunt is on the right, next to expedition leader Donald MacMillan
Hancock residents Mardi Thompson George and her brother Tyler Thompson have been recalling their grandfather, Harrison J. Hunt, the country doctor from Maine who joined Arctic explorer and Bowdoin graduate Donald MacMillan on his ill-fated Crocker Land expedition in 1913.
“[H]e left his family behind and went off into the wilderness,” Thompson George told the Emily Burnham of The Bangor Daily News. “I think he wanted adventure.” Hunt, Bowdoin graduate of 1902, saw a newspaper ad, which read, “Doctor for Crocker Land Expedition needed. Sailing in six weeks.”
Originally meant to be two years, the expedition lasted twice that long, not returning home until 1917. Hunt returned to practice medicine in Maine, retiring in 1960.