National Network for Equitable Library Service

Each year, thousands of people visit Bob Bartlett’s boyhood home located in Brigus, Newfoundland and Labrador, to catch a glimpse of this famous sealing captain’s amazing life. Hawthorne Cottage has been designated a National Historic Site. The Log of Bob Bartlett captures details and experiences that are not widely known about his forty years of adventures. His log details his two most historic feats—his journey with Robert Peary to reach the North Pole and his heroic deed aboard the Karluk—yet it also sketches his early life and some of his most memorable ice travels during and after the Great War. Bartlett made twenty-eight excursions into the Arctic, yet one wonders what drove this urge for discovery, especially to the most frigid and unforgiving of places. He has been quoted as saying, “The truth was I could not stop myself in pursuit of adventure. I was committed to the Arctic. I’d got the poison in my veins.”