Capt. George Baker Leavitt Sr. (18601925) was a Maine-born mariner who captained several whaling vessels out of New Bedford, Massachusetts. The steam whalers captained by Leavitt were active in the whaling fishery off the Alaska North Slope, where Leavitt met and married an Inupiaq woman. The mariner befriended many early Arctic explorers, whom he replenished with supplies and provided transportation to, as well as assisted in Arctic exploration. Leavitt IslandLeavitt Island was initially given by explorer Ernest de Koven Leffingwell to the island known today as Pingok Island. Since Leffingwell's initial designation, the name Leavitt Island has instead been used for a smaller island just west of Pingok Island. Leavitt Island is one of the Jones Islands on the Beaufort Sea coast.GeoNames.Org view of Leavitt Island; in the Beaufort Sea's Harrison Bay is named for the early New England whaling captain.
Early life in Maine and beginnings of career George Baker Leavitt was born in Portland, Maine, on June 5, 1860, the son of George Washington Leavitt and his wife Helen E. (Greene) Leavitt, whose family was originally from Virginia. Descendants of one of New Hampshire's earliest settlers, the Leavitt family had lived in Portland since the eighteenth century.George Washington Leavitt was a descendant of Thomas Leavitt, one of the earliest settlers of Exeter, and subsequently of Hampton, New Hampshire. Shortly after the birth of his son, George Washington Leavitt was killed in action during the American Civil War.A corporal of Company F, 5th New York Volunteer Infantry, George Washington Leavitt was killed during the Second Battle of Bull Run on August 30, 1862. George W. Leavitt's brother Joseph, who served with the 5th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment, was also killed during the conflict, dying of wounds suffered at the Battle of Spotsylvania. Letters from the two siblings to their family were collected by their father John, and are now in the collection of the University of Virginia's Alderman Library. Four years after the conflict ended, his widow remarried Storer S. Knight of Portland, where George Baker Leavitt was raised, along with three children born to his mother by her second husband.Genealogical and Family History of the State of Maine, Vol. II, George Thomas Little, Henry S. Burrage, Lewis Historical Publishing Company, New York, 1909
Like other early Maine Yankees, George Baker Leavitt decided to make his living from the sea and embarked on a career aboard whaling ships sailing from the thriving Massachusetts seaport of New Bedford. Leavitt joined the fleet at an early age, and first served in a succession of minor posts such as second mate, before eventually earning the right to captain his own vessel.As a second mate aboard one early voyage of the whaler Hume, George Leavitt cruised unsuccessfully in a small whaleboat for two weeks in the broken ice of late spring looking for whales. There followed a succession of whaling ships of which he served as captain, including the Mary D. Hume, the Thrasher, the Grampus, the Balaena, and the steam whalers the Newport and the Narwhal.
The whaling fishery Leavitt arrived in the Canadian Arctic in the late nineteenth century as the New England and San Francisco-basedLeavitt apparently worked for a time for the Pacific Steam Whaling Company of San Francisco after leaving the employ of his initial New Bedford, Massachusetts-based employers. whaling fleet pursued their targets into the frozen northern seas. The oil-bearing bones in the heads of bowhead whales were highly sought-after and brought large profits to the whalers. Captains of the whaling ships (first sail, and later steam powered) would leave San Francisco in early summer, then whale in the Beaufort Sea for as long as the season would allow (generally eight or ten weeks) before new ice set in during September. Then they would go into winter quarters at Herschel Island, Canada. By early the next summer, as soon as the ice broke, the whaling vessels would depart the Herschel with their catch from the previous year, which they would transport to San Francisco via the Bering Strait. In San Francisco, the vessels would sell their catch, refit their vessels, then depart again for the north, where they would repeat the exercise all over again.The New North, Agnes Dean Cameron, D. Appleton and Company, New York, 1909
Early whaling captains and their crews were well paid if the boats netted their prey. In 1907, for instance, George Leavitt and his vessel Narwhal, steam whaler, took some 15 bowhead whales. In such cases, the captain received one-12th of the take; the first mate one 22nd; the second mate one 30th; the third mate one 45th. Other sailors aboard received smaller percentages of the haul, down to the so-called "green hands", who received one 200th. The engineers aboard ship received a straight salary of $120 a month.
The work was immensely tiring and complicated, embracing everything from seamanship to whale hunting (with metal harpoon guns) to complex logistics. In the winter of 1896, the crews of several ships faced starvation as the frozen seas prevented the ships from reprovisioning. "These two vessels were in such desperate straits for food in the fall of 1897", wrote First Lieutenant D. H. Jarvis of the Overland Relief Expedition of 1898, "that it took heroic work to keep them supplied, and Captains Leavitt and McKenna are deserving of great credit for the ways they brought their crews through."Cruise of the U.S. Revenue Cutter Bear, United States Congressional Serial Set, United States Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C., 1901
Injuries were common. As captain of the Newport, Leavitt wrote of one of many amputations performed in the fleet – many by himself and other captains. On March 9, 1894, wrote Captain Leavitt, "Both feet, or the best part of both feet, were amputated from a man belonging to the Narwhal [a ship Leavitt later captained]. These feet were taken off well back, the same way as with the other amputations, with the difference that after the foot was cut to the bone, a piece of canvas was put on and the flesh hauled back and the bones then cut off. In this way a flap was formed, and the whole business turned out very well indeed."Report of the Cruise of the U.S. Revenue Cutter Bear and the Overland Expedition for the Relief of the Whalers in the Arctic Ocean, Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C., 1899
Leavitt's career as captain
It was not work for the faint-hearted. Aside from injuries aboard ship, the ice and frigid waters posed immense risk. During one particularly treacherous summer, it was impossible to make it past Nelson Head before August 14 because the passage was still frozen. "The ice", wrote Leavitt in his log, "was solid all the way across [to Cape Parry]."Bulletin of the American Geographical Society, Vol. XL, George C. Hurlbut (ed.), American Geographical Society of New York, Published by the Society, 1908, New York Many of the early boats, including the schooner Bonanza, became stuck in the ice and were destroyed.Bonanza, Tacoma Public Library
In another horrifying incident, Leavitt and other captains watched as eight whaling ships became trapped in the ice on Alaska's northern coast. "As an eerie postscript to an already chilling bulletin", writes John Taliaferro of the 1898 incident in his In A Far Country, "Captain James McKenna of the Fearless and Captain George Leavitt of the Newport reported that the Navarch [another whaler] had been spotted drifting in the pack ice, to the north of them."In A Far Country: The True Story of A Mission, A Marriage, A Murder, and The Remarkable Reindeer Rescue of 1898, By John Taliaferro, Published by PublicAffairs, 2006
It was an enormously complicated undertaking.In memoirs of his contemporaries, Capt. Leavitt earned high marks for his seamanship and leadership abilities. In his A Whaler & Trader in the Arctic, 1895 to 1944: My Life with the Bowhead, Arthur James Allen described the Captain as "one of the finest and most capable men I have ever had the pleasure of sailing with. He had the welfare of his men at heart, and treated and fed them fine." To help him figure out the elements and the topography, Captain Leavitt, like some other early pilots, hired a Native Inuit (Eskimo) guide named Natkusiak ( 1885–1947), who helped him in his expeditions across the Arctic seas, including his trips to some islands like Norway Island where other whalers had not dared venture.
Natkusiak worked for Leavitt for several years. During this time, when the steam whaler Narwhal was wintering at Herschel Island in 1906–07 with Leavitt as her captain, the Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson first met Leavitt and his Native guide. Leavitt and the explorer went on to become fast friends, with Leavitt often offering advice on the area to Stefansson, as well as bringing him supplies from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. In 1908, Stefansson hired Leavitt's Native guide, who went on to aid the Arctic explorer on his subsequent expeditions.
Leavitt himself proved to be the source of advice and support to the explorer Stefansson, who quotes him often in his journals and calls him 'explorer' as well as 'captain'. The Maine-born mariner, Stefansson noted, was intrepid in his nautical work, often sailing to places beyond the reach of others. "Captain Leavitt had told me that the Narwhal was the only ship of the whaling fleet", Stefansson wrote, "that ever went to Norway Island, but I have heard of others that went within of it – to Terror Island."The Friendly Arctic: The Story of Five Years in Polar Regions, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, The Macmillan Company, New York, 1921
In his journals, Stefansson wrote often of his relationship with the early whaling captain. "Captain George Leavitt of the Narwhal had entertained me aboard his ship in winter quarters at Herschel Island several times during the winter of 1906–1907, and had now brought me a consignment of ammunition, kerosene, alcohol for the preservation of scientific specimens, and various things of that sort, sent North in his care by the American Museum of Natural History."My Life with the Eskimo, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Reissued by Kessinger Publishing, 2004
Nor was Stefansson the only early Arctic explorer who benefited from the counsel of the New England mariner. Ernest de Koven Leffingwell, another early Arctic explorer and cartographer, was often given berth aboard Captain Leavitt's ships as he traveled back and forth to the Arctic region. In 1908, after the explorer's own early vessel The Duchess of Bedford was itself trapped in the Arctic ice and smashed, Capt. Leavitt provided passage for Leffingwell and his party back to San Francisco.Arctic Explorer and His Chance of Rescue, The New York Times, November 8, 1908 As a token of thanks, Leffingwell named the island Narwhal after the name of Leavitt's steam-driven whaler. Leffingwell named another island – off Alaska's North Slope – Leavitt Island, after his friend the captain.Professional Paper, United States Geological Survey, The Canning River Region, Northern Alaska, Ernest de K. Leffingwell, Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C., 1919
Following the destruction of his own ship, and unable to continue his work with the meager supplies left and Native assistance, Leffingwell wrote that "the writer returned to civilization in the fall of 1908 as guest of Capt. George Leavitt, of the whale ship Narwhal."The Canning River Region, Northern Alaska, Ernest de K. Leffingwell, United States Geological Survey, Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C., 1919
Family life in Alaska and legacy