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"Wavescan" is a weekly program for long distance radio hobbyists produced by Dr. Adrian M. Peterson, Coordinator of International Relations for Adventist World Radio. AWR carries the program over many of its stations (including shortwave). Adrian Peterson is a highly regarded DXer and radio historian, and often includes features on radio history in his program. We are reproducing those features below, with Dr. Peterson's permission and assistance.
Wavescan N554, October 6, 2019
No! Greenland is not for sale! The Early Wireless Scene
During the month of August (2019), the news media in the United States revealed the previously unreported information that President Donald Trump was interested in buying the island of Greenland from Denmark. But the sharp response from the Prime Minister of Denmark, Mrs. Mette Frederiksen, stated: "Greenland is not for sale!"
During its long history, the United States has expanded its territories on several occasions by buying land from other countries. In 1803, they bought the territory in mainland North America that came to be known as the Louisiana Purchase from France. In 1867 they bought Alaska from Russia, and during World War I, in 1917, they concluded the purchase of the islands of St. Thomas, St. John and St. Croix from neutral Denmark to form the U. S. Virgin Islands in the Caribbean. So why not make a similar endeavor for Greenland?
In 1868, a document was prepared on behalf of the State Department in the United States regarding the suggested purchase of Greenland, but Congress demonstrated no interest. Then, in 1946, the United States offered Denmark $100 million for Greenland, but Denmark had no interest. Then as recently as 2001, the influential twice-monthly publication, National Review, suggested that the United States should again offer to buy Greenland from Denmark. And now, the recent kerfuffle over the same suggestion once again.
The island of Greenland is the largest island in the world, though one distinguished geographer states that Greenland is actually three separate islands that are closely related geographically. The total land mass extends 1,700 miles north and south, and 650 miles east and west at its widest point.
Most of Greenland is covered with what is called the Greenland Ice Sheet; that is ice, snow and slowly moving glaciers. If all of this congregated ice were to melt, the global sea level would rise, it is calculated, by 24 feet.
The earliest settlers in Greenland were the Eskimo-Inuit people, who began to arrive from Siberia via Alaska and Canada around 2500 BC. The famous Viking traveler and explorer Eric the Red arrived from Iceland with a contingent of settlers on 14 longships in the year 986, though ultimately their three main settlements at the southern end of Greenland died out, maybe around 500 years later.
The modern era of exploration in Greenland began in 1721 with the arrival of merchants and missionaries from Denmark; and since then there have been anywhere up to a hundred varied explorations of Greenland by parties from Europe, the Americas and Asia. For example, the exploration ship Effie M. Morrissey alone made nearly a score of exploratory visits to Greenland during the 20 year era beginning in 1926.
As would be expected, the first usage of wireless and radio in Greenland was associated with exploration, and the ship that carried this particular exploration party was the Bowdoin. On April 9, 1921, the 88 ft. long schooner Bowdoin was launched from the Hodgdon shipyards at East Boothbay in Maine in the United States.
This heavily reinforced wooden ship was designed for frigid northern exploration by Arctic explorer Captain Donald B. MacMillan, and it had a steel nose for ramming icebergs at sea. Though the Bowdoin was equipped with sails, yet it was also loaded with a marine engine, and an oversize rudder to enable the ship to make quick turns.
In July (1921), MacMillan set out for his first exploration trip into the Arctic in his brand new ship, the SS Bowdoin, named in honor of the college in Brunswick, Maine where he had previously obtained his graduate education. This voyage took them to Baffin Island, the large Canadian island that lies next to Greenland.
However, that preliminary expedition took them along the western edge of Baffin Island; that is, between the Canadian mainland and Baffin Island, and not between Baffin Island and Greenland itself. On that occasion, preliminary wireless equipment had been installed on the ship, though they had no success in their longwave transmissions. The subsequent report from the expedition stated that the main problem was electrical interference up in the auroral zone. So, the world’s first wireless experiments at the top of the world in the Arctic met with a dismal failure.
The next MacMillan expedition to the Arctic, and to Greenland in particular, set out from Wiscasset, Maine aboard this same Bowdoin in June 1923, with wireless equipment made available by Zenith Radio in Chicago. The callsign WNP was conveniently utilized to mean rather appropriately Wireless North Pole.
The transmitter was a 500 watt unit operating in Morse Code on 1365 kHz, and the Wireless Operator was Donald Mix, W9AT, from Bristol, Connecticut. The first choice as Wireless Operator for this Greenland expedition fell to the famous No. 1 amateur radio operator in the United States, Don Wallace, 6AM, but he was unable to accept because his son, Billy, was still an infant.
The antenna system on the Bowdoin was a 4 wire flat top, 52 feet long. Each week, Donald Mix sent a 500 word newspaper report to the United States in a specially designed secret code. This 1923 usage of radio was the first successful radio transmission from the Arctic.
Every Thursday evening at midnight, the Zenith mediumwave broadcasting station, WJAZ, at the Edgewater Beach Hotel in Chicago, transmitted a summarized news bulletin for the benefit of the men aboard the good ship Bowdoin. Some say that this Chicago radio station, WJAZ, was launched specially for communication with the MacMillan exploration party in Greenland.
However, the once a week midnight broadcasts from Chicago were on the air under a special experimental callsign, 9XN, not the broadcast callsign WJAZ. (A similar callsign, 9ZN, was the amateur callsign of Eugene McDonald, one of the early founders of Zenith Radio, though it was also used at times in Zenith communications.)
There were two ships in the 1925 MacMillan Expedition to Greenland, once again the auxiliary Schooner Bowdoin with the call WNP, and a former Canadian minesweeper, the cargo holder SS Peary, with the callsign WAP. The letter P in the three letter callsign WAP, does seem to have reference to the ship Peary. The Zenith transmitter aboard the Peary was a 1 kW unit, which was noted in the United States in the 8 MHz range.
The callsign for the Bowdoin in 1931 was a regular four letter callsign, WDDE; and in February 1938, the Bowdoin was noted with a radio broadcast to the United States on 4800 kHz. QSL cards were regularly issued for the radio transmissions from the several MacMillan expeditions to Greenland.
More about radio transmissions from subsequent expeditions to Greenland next time.