"Blue Dolphin" to Sail Again to Arctic Waters
A RETURN VISIT to Arctic waters will be made this summer by David C. Nutt '41, Arctic Specialist on the staff of the Dartmouth College Museum. He sails this month in command of the Blue Dolphin which last year took a Dartmouth expedition to northern coastal waters.
The schooner will cruise .to Labrador to resume oceanographic, hydrographic and biological research begun last summer. Special emphasis will be placed on the Hamilton Inlet area and the northern part of Labrador. The Blue Dolphin is not expected to return to the United States until September.
The crew of eighteen will include seven Dartmouth men in addition to Commander Nutt. Richard H. Backus '44 of Cornell University, a member of last year's expedition, will again be in the crew. Others are Lawrence K. Coachman '48 and James E. Schwedland '48, both of the Yale Forestry School; Otto P. Schmacher '49 Dartmouth Medical School student; John J. Daily '53, radioman; William W. Stubbs '53; and Nicholas Deane '54, member of next fall's entering class.
This year, Prof. Elmer Harp, the Museum's Curator of Anthropology, instead of sailing with Commander Nutt will take his car and drive to North Sydney, Nova Scotia, ferry across to Port au Basque, Newfoundland, and drive wherever there are roads available, to continue his archaeological research, under a grant from the Arctic Institute of North America, on the prehistoric Indian and Eskimo cultures of Newfoundland and Labrador. He plans, as well, to go to the interior around Grand Lake and Red Indian Lake where the Beothuk Indians were last known to have settled, and he hopes to be able to get out to the northeast coast around the Bay of Exploits. Later he will concentrate again on the west coast, where he will operate along the 80-mile stretch between Bonne Bay and Port au Choix. Because of unprecedentedly stormy weather he was unable to visit this portion of the coast last summer.
After spending several days in Port au Choix where early settlements of the Cape Dorset Eskimos have been discovered, he plans to return to southern Labrador to further investigate sites which he discovered last summer in Forteau Bay and Pinware Bay. He will be accompanied and assisted by Mrs. Harp and their elder son, Tack.
Robert G. Chaffee '36, paleontologist, is taking off early in July for Hat Creek, Beaver Divide, Lost Cabin and Como Bluff in Wyoming. Mrs. Chaffee, having on previous expeditions proved her worth as an efficient collector, will be his field assistant. This is a reconnaissance trip to outline further field work and to make collections wherever possible. "Hap" Pearson 51 is going along for geological field experience.
JAMES E. COONEY '38 of Des Moines, chosen to represent District IV (Middlewestern States).
