Schooner A.W. Greely

A.W. Greely frozen in at Foulke Fiordat near Etah, Greenland, 1938
History
United States
Name:	A.W. Greely
Namesake:	Adolphus Washington Greely
Acquired:	by purchase, 1936
In service:	1937
Out of service:	1938
Fate:	Sold, 1938
General characteristics
Type:	Schooner
Tonnage:	200 tons
Length:	109 ft (33 m)
Beam:	27 ft (8.2 m)
Draft:	11 ft (3.4 m)

A.W. Greely was a three-masted wooden schooner that became known for her role in the MacGregor Arctic Expedition, a privately funded expedition to the North Pole between July 1, 1937, and October 3, 1938.

She was built as Donald II in 1925 for Hollett and Sons of Newfoundland and measured 200 tons, 109 feet (33 m) long, 27 feet (8.2 m) in beam. The vessel drew 11 feet (3.4 m) of water and was specially reinforced for ice conditions.

Donald II was purchased in 1932 by Master Mariner Captain William Trenholm for use as a merchant ship. With only his daughter for crew, he plied the West Indies route taking down lath and returning to Newfoundland with salt for the cod fleet. Captain Trenholm died on his last voyage on Donald II, leaving his daughter to skipper the ship home by herself.

Owned by Ann Trenholm of Louisbourg, Nova Scotia, by 1937 Donald II was out of service and needed work to be made seaworthy as she hadn’t been under sail since her master's death.

Donald II was purchased by Clifford J. MacGregor in 1936 for what would become known as the MacGregor Arctic Expedition. Lieutenant Commander Isaac Schlossbach was tasked with bringing the schooner from Nova Scotia to New Jersey. With “Dusty” Dustin, a veteran of Byrd’s Second Antarctic Expedition, Captain Frasier Wilcox and H.L. Fleet, they departed Louisbourg late in 1936, with a cargo destined for Boston.

By the spring of 1937 Donald II was in Port Newark, New Jersey where new motors were installed and the vessel reinforced and reconditioned for the expedition. She was rechristened A.W. Greely on 2 May 1937, in honor of Adolphus Greely, leader of the ill-fated Lady Franklin Bay Expedition of 1881 and 1882.

The expedition set sail from Port Newark on 1 July 1937. They made two stops in Nova Scotia: Lunenburg and Sydney, and two stops in Greenland, one at Fairhaven and another at Idglorssuit, Umank Fjord. After departing Idgorsuit the ship encountered ice in Baffin Bay. At the lower end of Robertson Channel they were stopped completely by a wall of ice 15 feet (4.6 m) thick. Unable to proceed further they tried to seek shelter on Ellesmere Island only to find the entire coast blocked with ice. They then drifted south along the coast of Greenland urgently looking for winter quarters as new ice was already forming and there was a danger of being frozen in.