When MacMillan arrived, he mistook her for an Inuit woman. Following this, MacMillan was a member of the crew on her husband's Arctic explorations; she joined 9 Arctic voyages, collecting photographs, artifacts, films, and audio recordings. Arctic explorations After five years as a high school teacher, MacMillan caught the attention of explorer and fellow Bowdoin graduate Robert E. Peary when he saved the lives of nine shipwrecked people in two nights. Peary subsequently invited MacMillan to join his 1908 journey to the North Pole. Although MacMillan himself had to turn back at 84°29' on March 14 because of frozen heels, Peary allegedly reached the Pole 26 days later. MacMillan spent the next few years traveling in Labrador, carrying out ethnological studies among the Innu and Inuit. He organized and commanded the ill-fated Crocker Land Expedition to northern Greenland in 1913. Unfortunately Crocker Land turned out to be a mirage. The expedition members were stranded until 1917, when Captain Robert A. Bartlett of the ship Neptune finally rescued them. On December 24, 1918, shortly after the armistice which ended the First World War, MacMillan was commissioned an ensign in the Naval Reserve Flying Corps. MacMillan was 44 years old at the time, making him one of the oldest ensigns in the history of the U.S. Navy. After the war, MacMillan began raising money for another Arctic expedition. In 1921, the schooner Bowdoin—the namesake of MacMillan's alma mater—was launched from East Boothbay, Maine and set sail for Baffin Island, where MacMillan and his crew spent the winter. The expedition was notable for taking along an amateur radio operator, Don Mix, who used station WNP ("Wireless North Pole") to keep them in contact with the outside world. In 1923 there was concern about a new ice age and he again sailed toward the North Pole aboard the Bowdoin, sponsored by the National Geographical Society to look for evidence of advancing glaciers. In 1925 MacMillan led a scientific expedition backed by the National Geographical Society and financed primarily by the Chicago entrepreneur Eugene McDonald - which was accompanied by U.S. Navy personnel and planes commanded by Lt. Cmdr. Richard E. Byrd. The planes were to be used for aerial surveys of Baffin and Ellesmere Islands, investigation of the Greenland icecap, and reconnaissance of previously unexplored areas of the Arctic Sea. The aerial results proved to be disappointing due to severe weather conditions, unreliable engines