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EA-Biography

(Raye R. Platt)

LOUISE ARNER BOYD

        Louise Arner Boyd (1887- ), has organized and led numerous arctic

expeditions which she has personally financed. She is an expert on arctic

photography. Born in San Rafael, California, September 16, 1887, the daughter

of John Franklin and Louise Cook (Arner) Boyd, Louise was educated in private

schools in San Rafael and San Francisco.

        She organized, financed, and conducted seven expeditions to the Arctic

between 1926 and 1941, in vessels which she chartered and equipped. She has

been official photographer, as well as leader, on all her expeditions, her

purpose being to build up as representative and complete a collection as pos–

sible of her own photographs of land and sea ice, glacial marginal features,

land forms, and vegetation in the areas covered by her expeditions. Miss Boyd

has herself made large botanical collections on all her expeditions except two,

on which she included a botanist on her staff. Her first two expeditions, those

of 1926 and 1928, were without special scientific staffs; her expedition of 1931

included a botanist, and subsequent expeditions included staffs of experts for

carrying out a variety of investigations as well as topographical survey. She

equipped the ship chartered for her expeditions of 1933, 1937, and 1938 with an

echo-sounder, and on the 1938 expedition carried a portable echo-sounder for

use in a motor dory in waters too shallow or too ice-filled for ship navigation.

The 19 33 expedition was the first arctic expedition to do extensive sounding

with self-recording gear, and this was also the first American expedition to

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EA-Biography. Platt: Louise Arner Boyd

engage in ground photogrammetry. Tide gauge recordings were taken at various

stations on all three of these expeditions, and on the 1938 expedition observa–

tions for the measurement of magnetic declination were made at a number of sta–

tions. For the 1938 expedition, also, the ship was equipped with specially de–

signed wireless apparatus with an expert in charge for experimental work in

sending and receiving under arctic conditions.

        Miss Boyd's first expedition (in the Norwegian sealer Hobby ), in the summer

of 1926, was to Franz Josef Land, with stopovers at various points, particularly

Northbrook Island, for photography and botanical collecting. In the summer of

1928 she abandoned her plans for her second expedition and joined in the search

for Amundsen with her ship (again the Hobby ) and crew, traversing some 10,000

miles in the Greenland Sea and into the pack ice north of Franz Josef Land to

Latitude 81° 33′ N. Her expeditions of 1931, 1933, and 1937 were specifically

to the fjord region of East Greenland, although a considerable amount of echo–

sounding work was done in the Greenland Sea on the 1933 expedition and more on

the 1937 expedition. On the 1938 expedition work in the East Greenland fjords

was continued, but a major purpose of this expedition was extensive sounding

work in the Greenland Sea. On these four expeditions all fjords and sounds in

East Greenland to which ice conditions permitted entry by either ship or motor

dory were examined from King Oscar Fjord to Cape Montpensier at the northeast

corner of Ile de France, and the landing of the 1938 expedition on Ile de France

at Latitude 77° 48′ N., where heavy polar ice stopped the ship, was, at the time,

the farthest north landing ever made from a ship on the east coast of Greenland.

        For all the expeditions to East Greenland the Norwegian Sealer Veslekari

was chartered. On the 1931 expedition, which was organized primarily as a photo–

graphic reconnaissance, all the fjords and sounds in the King Oscar-Franz Josef

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EA-Biography. Platt: Louise Arner Boyd

fjord region were visited and several thousand photographs were taken; the

inner end of Ice Fjord was reached by ship for the first time; the De Geer

Glacier, entering the head of this fjord from the north, was discovered (the

area between this glacier and Jaette Glacier was subsequently officially named

Louise Boyd Land); and a previously unsuspected connecting valley between the

heads of Kjerulf and Dickson fjords was discovered (Miss Boyd was able to sup–

ply the material for a detailed topographic map of this connection, subsequently

constructed by the American Geographical Society, by taking over 200 photographs

of it from 50 selected stations).

        The expedition of 1933 (officially the Louise A. Boyd Expedition to East

Greenland, 1933) was under the auspices of the American Geographical Society.

Miss Boyd's staff on this expedition consisted of: O. M. Miller, American Geo–

graphical Society, topographer; J Harlen Bretz, University of Chicago, physio–

grapher; William B. Drew, Gray Herbarium, Harvard University, botanist; N. E.

Odell, Cambridge, England, geologist; Walter A. Wood, American Geographical Soc–

iety, assistant topographer. The expedition sailed from its outfitting base at

Ålesund, Norway, June 28, and returned September 16, having spent a few days at

Jan Mayen Island on the way out and covered the East Greenland fjord region from

King Oscar Fjord to Hold With Hope. The primary objective of this expedition

was the study of glacial marginal features; to supplement the investigations of

the physiographer and geologist, as well as to try out new methods of field

mapping, photogrammetrical surveys were made with a Wild phototheodolite of

Gregory Valley (explored for the first time by this expedition), of the raised

delta at Smedal (on Gauss Peninsula at the entrance to Franz Josef Fjord), of

Blomster Bay (Ymer Island), of Louise Glacier (Louise Boyd Land), and of Arch

and Moraineless Glaciers (Gregory Valley); the plotting was done at Zurich by

Mr. Wood on a Wild autograph rented by Miss Boyd from the Photogrammetrical

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EA-Biography. Platt: Louise Arner Boyd

Institute of the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule. Echo-sounding profiles

were made of a number of the fjords, and fairly continuous lines of sounding

were made on the runs between Norway and Greenland. Tide gauge recordings were

made on Jan Mayen Island and at stations in the Greenland fjords.

        The 1937 and 1938 expeditions (officially the Louise A. Boyd Arctic Expedi–

tions of 1937 and 1938) were also under the auspices of the American Geographical

Society and were planned as a unit. Miss Boyd's staff for the 1937 expedition

consisted of: Richard Foster Flint, Yale University, geologist; Henry J. Oosting,

Duke University, botanist; James M. LeRoy, hydrographer; Fred A. Buhler, topograph–

er; A. Lincoln Washburn, assistant geologist. For the 1938 expedition the same

hydrographer and topographer were retained; F. Eyolf Bronner was the geologist;

a radio expert A. J. Hilferty, was added to the staff; and Miss Boyd did the

botanical collecting herself.

        The 1937 expedition left Alesund June 4 and returned September 27, having

completed a journey of 8,600 nautical miles. The work of this expedition in

the Greenland fjords was a continuation of the glacial marginal studies of the

1933 expedition, and the botanist was added to the staff with the special objective

of examining plant communities associated with recessional features. The expedi–

tion was delayed two weeks in getting through the coastal ice barrier and the

program had, consequently, to be curtailed considerably. A three-day study was

made of South Glacier, Jan Mayen Island; detailed glaciological studies were made

of Agassiz Valley, Tyroler Valley, and the Narwhal Glacier area; and reconnaissance

glaciological and geological examinations were made of a number of other areas

and features. The expedition operated first in Tyroler Fjord and Valley and

around Clavering Island and then, when ice conditions prevented continuing north–

ward as originally planned, turned south to the Franz Josef-King Oscar fjord region.

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EA-Biography. Platt: Louise Arner Boyd

Plane-table surveys were made of South Glacier, on Jan Mayen Island, and of

an area of glacier-fill remnants in Agassiz Valley. Camera and plane-table

surveys were made of Tyroler Valley and of the lower section of an area ad–

jacent to Narwhal Glacier, Miss Boyd doing all the camera work on both these

surveys. In addition to sounding surveys of the head of Tyroler Fjord, of

Kjerulf Fjord, and of a section of Narwhal Sound off the front of Narwhal

Sound off the front of Narwhal Glacier (done to supplement the glaciological

studies in these areas and with a hand-operated wire sounder because conditions

did not permit the use of the ship's echo-sounder), echo-sounding work in the

fjords and sounds was done whenever the ship was in motion. Difficult ice con–

ditions were again experienced in getting away from the Greenland coast. Messrs.

Flint, Washburn, and Oosting left the expedition at Longyear City, Spitsbergen,

September 3, and the rest of the expedition continued on up the Spitsbergen

coast, carrying on the sounding work to the edge of the pack ice. An important

achievement on this expedition was the discovery and mapping, by means of the

echo-sounder, of a hitherto uncharted bank (now called Louise A. Boyd Bank),

between Jan Mayen and Bear islands, that is evidently a part of what has been

known as Mohn's Transverse Ridge since the Norwegian North Atlantic Expedition

of 1876-1878 located other sections of it.

        The 1938 expedition sailed from Ålesund June 8 and returned September 12.

A four-day program of echo-sounding (undertaken for the express purpose of im–

proving and filling in blank spaces on the existing charts) and current measure–

ment work was carried out around Jan Mayen Island, and tide gauge recording was

done for a twelve-day period at Walrus Bay. From Jan Mayen the expedition pro–

ceeded to Louise A. Boyd Bank for current measurement and further sounding work,

and the, it being the plan to cross to Greenland as far north as possible, went

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EA-Biography. Platt: Louise Arner Boyd

on up the Spitsbergen coast and into the pack ice as far as Latitude 81° 30′ N.,

Longitude 22° 30′ W. Fog preventing the fixing of soundings with any accuracy,

the expedition turned back from this point and, having carried its sounding

work along the north coast of Spitsbergen to the infrequently visited Seven

Islands, went ashore on Parry Island and, finally, after a brief stop at Amster–

dam Island, sailed for Greenland on July 21.

        The expedition landed on Bass Rock, off Little Pendulum Is land, July 25,

and then went south to Gael Hamke Bay, Godthaab Gulf, and Copeland Fjord, carry–

ing on sounding and photographic work and geological reconnaissance. On July 21

the expedition left Gael Hamke Bay to carry a line of soundings as far north as

possible along the East Greenland coast and on August 4, was stopped by heavy

polar ice near Cape Montpensier at the north end of Ile de France, where the

party went ashore for a few hours. The expedition then turned south again. Prac–

tically all parts of Dove Bay were examined, photographed, and sounded, a motor

dory in which the portable echo-sounder had been mounted being used for sounding

work in Mørke Fjord, Puster Cove, and off the front of Soraner Glacier where the

water was too shallow for the ship. Landings were made on Great Koldewey from

Dagmar Harbor at the northwest end, where, on the heights above the harbor, [ ?]

[ ?] a previously unreported lake was discovered; and at various other points,

particularly at Track Pass, which was examined and photographed from both the east

and west ends. Several days were spent in the Orientering Islands, a geological

map of one of them was made, and Miss Boyd's photographic coverage of the group

was so complete that a topographical map of it was produced from her photographs

after the return of the expedition. Bessel Fjord, Ardencaple Fjord (including

Brede and Smalle fjords at it s head), and Grandjean Fjord were all examined and

photographed before the expedition finally left the Greenland coast by way of

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EA-Biography. Platt: Louise Arner Boyd

Cape Philip Broke, on August 27.

        A report by Miss Boyd on her expedition of 1931 was published in the Geo–

graphical Review (Vol. 22, 1932, pp. 529-561), and two volumes of reports by

her and the members of her scientific staffs and others have been published

by the American Geographical Society — one on the 1933 expedition and the other

on the expeditions of 1937 and 1938, both illustrated with a large section of

her photographs and both accompanied by slip cases containing the maps and charts

and echo-sounding profiles produced from her topographical and hydrographical

surveys.

        In 1941 Miss Boyd chartered Captain Robert A. Bartlett's schooner Effie M.

Morrissey and spent the period from May to November as a temporary member of the

staff of the U. S. Bureau of Standards in charge of a program of radio and iono–

sphere research and magnetic observation for the Bureau that involved work on

both sides of Davis Strait and Baffin Ba y as far north as Ellesmore Island and

in Hudson Strait.

        During World War II Miss Boyd not only turned over to the War Department her

photographic l ib rary and her collection of hundreds of maps and miscellaneous

publications dealing with the northern countries of Europe as well as the Arctic,

but served in Washington from March 1942 to July 1943 as special consultant to

the Military Intelligence Division.

        For her participation in the search for Amundsen, Miss Boyd was awarded the

Order of St. Olaf by the Norwegian government, being the first foreign woman to

receive that honor, and was made a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor. She

was awarded the Cullum Geographical Medal of the American Geographical Society in

1938, and in 1939 both the University of California and Mills College conferred

on her the honorary LL.D. degree. She has also been awarded the Andr e é e Plaque of

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EA-Biography. Platt: Louise Arner Boyd

the Swedish Anthropological and Geographical Society and is a governor of the

American Polar Society.

        Miss Boyd's contributions to knowledge of the Arctic, in addition to the

great collection of her own photographs which she has accumulated, and her ven–

turesome use and experimentation with ultramodern equipment and techniques, in–

cluding adaptation and personal use of the camera for mapping purposes, are the

published reports on geological, glaciological, physiological, ecological, and

hydrographical investigations and the topographical and hydrographical surveys

carried out by the competent experts whom she selected for her field staffs and

for whom she furnished the best of modern equipment.

        Publications :

        "Fiords of East Greenland," Geographical Review , Vol. 22, 1932, pp. 529-561.

        "The Fiord Region of East Greenland, "by Louise A. Boyd, with contributions

by J Harlen Bretz, O. M. Miller, Walter A. Wood, William B. Drew, Charles B. Hitch–

cock, and John K. Wright, American Geographical Society Special Publication No. 18 ,

1935.

        "The Coast of Northeast Greenland with Hydrographic Studies in the Greenland

Sea," by Louise A. Boyd, with contributions by Richard Foster Flint, James M. LeRoy,

Henry F. Oosting, Fred A. Buhler, F. Eyolf Bronner, A. J. Hilferty, Alice Eastwood,

and the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, American Geographical Society

Special Publication No. 30 , 1948.

        "Polish Countrysides, Photographs and Narrative by Louise A. Boyd," with a

contribution by Stanislaw Gorzuchowski, American Geographical Society Special Publica

tion No. 20 , 1937.

       

Raye R. Platt