George Comer (1858-1937)

Abstract

... George Comer was a professional whaleman whose career spanned the final decades of whaling in Hudson Bay. Success in whaling alone would probably justify his inclusion in this series of biographical sketches, but Comer's achievements went far beyond the sufficiently challenging tasks of pursuing whales, navigating small sailing vessels among pack ice, and wintering in the Arctic. He was a friend to the Inuit and a dedicated student of their culture, an amateur archaeologist, a scientific collector in the fields of ethnography and natural history, and a recognized arctic authority to whom a number of prominent scientists and writers owed much. ...