The First Wireless Radio Station in Greenland

The island of Greenland in the northern areas of the Atlantic Ocean is the world’s largest island, and yet it also has the world’s lowest population density; just 56,000 people spread out over 86,000 square miles.  Greenland has been under Danish influence, exploration, and settlement for more than a thousand years, though at one stage back 500 years ago, Portugal explored and laid claim to the island. 
In addition Norway also has laid claim to Greenland, or at least part of it, along the central eastern coast.  Then in more recent times, the United States has granted economic support and cooperation with Greenland, and they have also operated a series of military bases in various areas of this same island. 
Nearly 90% of the local population in Greenland is descendant from the original Eskimo-Inuit settlers who migrated in from northern Canada, though the small foreign population living there are mainly of Danish background.  The official language in Greenland is Greenlandic, a local Eskimo-Inuit dialect, though Danish and English are both recognized languages, along with local languages and dialects as needed.
The earliest usage of wireless and radio in Greenland was associated with exploration and hunting.  In 1921, the MacMillan expedition aboard the ship Bowdoin in Baffin Bay made the first wireless transmissions from Arctica, though these longwave communication tests were unsuccessful, due mainly to heavy local static. 
The first successful wireless transmissions from Arctica were made from a land based station at Mosquito Bay on the east coast of Greenland, and this was under the leadership of the Norwegian animal trapper Johan A. Olsen.  The Norwegian government was aware that Olsen planned to visit Greenland once again as a hunter of land and sea animals, and they granted him sufficient funding and equipment to install a radio station for the purpose of sending weather information back to Norway. 
It was in the year 1922 that Olsen and his hunting party made another return voyage to Greenland, aboard the ocean harvesting vessel Anni 1, and they landed at a location they named as Myggbukta,  This Norwegian word Myggbukta means Mosquito Bay, a very appropriate name because of the hordes of mosquitoes in the area.
The Olsen party constructed a small building at Mosquito Bay into which they installed the new radio equipment and they then made their first transmission of weather information back to Tromso Radio on Tromsoya Island in northern Norway.  This first successful wireless/radio transmission from Myggbukta Radio occurred on Sunday October 1, 1922; it was the first wireless/radio transmission from Greenland, and also apparently the first wireless/radio transmission from Arctica.
The second series of successful wireless/radio transmissions from Greenland/Arctica came from the MacMillan expedition aboard the ship Bowdoin in Greenlandic waters in the latter part of the year 1923.  At the time, MacMillan was obviously unaware of the Norwegian transmissions from 
Myggbukta Radio, almost a year earlier.  The MacMillan 1923 claim as the first from Greenland/Arctica, which we erroneously accepted and presented here in Wavescan nearly six months ago, is in actual fact, superseded by the Norwegian station on Greenland almost one year earlier.
The Norwegian radio station at Myggbukta was on the air for several months with weather reports to Norway.  Then during the following year (1923), the station was closed and the personnel boarded the ship Anni 1 for the return voyage to Norway.  However, a few days later, the ship Anni 1 was stuck in an ice floe, and crushed; the ship was broken and sunk, and sadly all personnel died.
The radio station at Myggbukta was repaired by Gunnar Isachsen during the next year (1924) and it was temporarily reactivated.  Give two more years (1926), and the station was activated again, this time by members of the Norwegian Foldvik Expedition.
In 1931, five members of what was called the Arctic Commercial Enterprise, claimed the territory around the radio station at Mosquito Bay as a colony of Norway, though this territorial annexation was totally unofficial and without government authority.  Then during the excesses of World War 2, personnel from a patrol boat operated by the Free Norwegian Navy, the Fridtjof Nansen, came ashore at Mosquito Bay and destroyed the radio station.
After the war was over, the Norwegian government rebuilt Radio Myggbukta at Mosquito Bay in Greenland in the summer of 1946, and it was in continuous operation for the next thirteen years.  However, during the year 1959, the Norwegian government dropped all funding for this station, and so it was unceremoniously closed. 
That was the fascinating 37 year long saga of radio station LMG, Radio Myggbukta, Radio Mosquito Bay, on the east coast of Greenland.  This was the first wireless/radio station in Greenland, and apparently the first radio/wireless station in Arctica.
We might also add, that there were five other Norwegian radio stations in coastal Greenland back during the prewar era, all of which were installed during the year 1932.  These additional radio stations provided local communication for shipping in the Norwegian fishing fleet, as well as weather reports for mainland Norway.  These five additional Norwegian stations in Greenland were located at Karlsbakk, Jonsbu, Storfjord, Torgilsbu and Finnbus.
More about the radio scene in Greenland next time.
(AWR-Wavescan/NWS 580)

Greenland - The Early Wireless Scene

Greenland Coastal Radio (coastalradio.org.uk)

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 1 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.
(Adrian Peterson/AWR-Wavescan-NWS 554)