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Charles Dewitt Brower
(1863-1945) |
 |
Who could
have guessed that a child born in the urban wilderness of New York city would go
on to become the most famous citizen of the frozen Arctic wilderness? But fate
had a strange destiny in store for Charles Brower, who arrived in the Arctic in
the year 1885 aboard the good ship “Beda.” Though he had initially believed his
would be a short stay among the ice floes, Brower opened his own whaling
operation, the Cape Smythe Whaling and Trading Company, at Barrow, Alaska.
Yet Brower was no mere stock clerk. A keen observer of native culture, the
transplanted New Yorker hired local Iñupiat crew members to lead his whale
hunting expeditions. By closely following Iñupiat whaling and survival
techniques, Charles Brower quickly became one of the most successful non-native
whalers in Barrow. With business success assured, Brower then strengthened his
ties to the local people by marrying Asinnataq, originally from the Shishmaref
tribe, and thereafter raised a large family. Known as the “King of the Arctic,”
Brower remained north of the Arctic Circle for the rest of his life and was the
man whom most outside visitors contacted upon their arrival in Barrow. With his
whaling station, store, and home still preserved in Barrow today, Brower, the
New York boy who became an Arctic legend in his own time, remains a central
figure in the history and culture of the frozen north.
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Fifty
Years below Zero
Charles Brower
ISBN 1590480783 |
Brower had left San Francisco with the intention of making a short dash
north on a whaling ship bound for the mythic Arctic Circle.
Adventure had a way of following Charlie Brower.
His initial landing
turned into a fifty-year long ice-bound lifestyle. Once he stepped off the
whaler and back onto dry, albeit frozen land, Brower took a job as master
of the whaling station. But, though commerce brought him north, it was the
people that helped keep him there for Charlie soon became fast friends
with the native Inuit people. They taught him how to hunt seals on the
ice, caribou on the tundra, and whales out on the sea. He learned their
secrets, lived in their igloos, navigated in their kayaks and avoided
being murdered in their feuds. Plus the young adventurer observed the
great dramas of the Far North play out. He saw the last of the sailing
ships disappear over the horizon, and watched the first airplane fly in.
For
fifty-seven years, through ice storms and northern lights, Charlie Brower
maintained both this lonely outpost and his claim as “Uncle Sam’s most
northerly citizen.” A book to remember, “Fifty Years Below Zero” is
illustrated with photos by the author.
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