4 NEAREST THE POLE 



moment, were quickly and readily disposed of; and 

 quarters specially arranged for the party and on deck, 

 insured fair room for each member of the expedition. 



As to regrets, no pronounced symptoms were notice- 

 able in the others, and I had made the voyage too often 

 to consider it more than a trip to Europe. 



Under these favourable circumstances let us look at 

 the personnel of the party whose home for an uncertain 

 length of time, in the ice of the Polar Sea, was 

 to be the good ship Roosevelt. First the captain, 

 Robert A. Bartlett, sailing master and ice navi- 

 gator, who was 30 years of age, 5 feet 10 3^ inches 

 tall, and weighed 174 pounds. Bartlett is one of the 

 new generation of Bartletts, a hardy family of New- 

 foundland sailors and navigators, almost all of whom 

 have been associated with Arctic work. A great 

 uncle was master of the Tigress when that ship picked 

 up the drifting floe party of the Polaris expedition; 

 two uncles, Samuel and John, were respectively 

 master and mate of the Panther in which Hayes and 

 Bradford visited Melville Bay; recently Captain Sam 

 was master of the Canadian Government steamer 

 Neptune, which wintered in Hudson Bay; and both of 

 these, as well as Harry, a younger uncle, had been 

 masters of my ships during one or the other of my sev- 

 eral voyages north. Robert was mate in the Windward 

 in the expedition of '98 to '99. 



Blonde, smooth-shaven and close-cropped, stockily 

 built and clear- eyed, he had already been farther north 

 in these regions than any of the other Newfoundland 

 ice masters, and his youth, ambition, and the Bartlett 

 blood all counted in his favour. 



