Bartlett: The Great Explorer

by Harold Horwood

This is the story of the greatest Canadian ice captain who ever lived--the greatest, by general consent, of any nationality in this century.  Robert Bartlett took ships to the north coast of Ellesmere Island, sledged to within 150 miles of the North Pole, made twenty-two voyages into the Canadian Arctic, and six to other parts of the Arctic, yet is almost wholly unknown in Canada.

Besides piloting some of the most famous exploring voyages of all time--those of Robert E. Peary and Vilhajalmur Stefansson--Bartlett made four arctic voyages for the American Government and sixteen expeditions of his own which produced, in the period between the world wars, an immense wealth of scientific knowledge.  He was the first arctic explorer to place science ahead of exploration.

Harold Harwood worked from the original manuscripts and ships' logs to tell the life-story of this remarkable man.  Bartlett was a colourful, often controversial character, a man whose extraordinary courage and tenacity were of heroic proportions.

169 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

Born in St. John's, Newfoundland in 1923, Harold Andrew Horwood wore many hats: union organizer from 1946-48; political organizer from 1946-52, Member of the Newfoundland House of Assembly from 1949-52, journalist, editor of The St. John's Evening Telegram from 1952-58 and The Examiner from 1960-61, co-founder of the Writers' Union of Canada, for which he served three terms as Vice Chair and one, from 1980-81, as Chair, Writer-in-Residence at the University of Western Ontario and at the University of Waterloo, founder of The New Quarterly and, of course, writer.

Published in China, Japan, and various European countries, as well as Canada, Great Britain and the United States, Harold wrote more than twenty books of fiction, history and travel writing. He died in Annapolis Royal in April 2006.

Reviews

[Chiyaa Pasal · Rating 5 out of 5]

I collect a lot of books about Newfoundland. I picked up this one many years ago and it sat on my shelf or in a box for a long time. I hadn’t really heard much about Captain Bob Bartlett before delving into the book; a part biography and part homage to, as the title says, “A Great Explorer”.

Horwood does a great job of bringing Bartlett to life. I enjoyed the writing style and the accounts of the voyages. Bartlett was almost bigger than life; a man with great skill at sea and in the Arctic on ice as well as someone with, at time, a lot of luck.

I’ve read some other stories about early explorers (Bartlett was one of the last true great explorers). I am always amazed and in awe of what they have accomplished and how they are true leaders of people.

Although this is a biography, I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in not one but multiple stories of courage, human endurance and exploration.