Ralph T. (Ralph Tracy) Hale

Ralph Tracy Hale was an American author who lived from 1880 to 1951. He is chiefly remembered today for The Last Voyage of the Karluk, the 1916 book he wrote with explorer and sea captain Bob Bartlett, about the doomed Canadian Arctic Expedition.

Available library and public-domain records link him strongly to that book, and a literary archive also describes him as having worked as an editor for Small, Maynard & Company in the 1910s. That mix of editorial work and firsthand historical storytelling helps explain why his name still appears in catalogues of exploration writing.

There does not seem to be a widely available modern biographical record for Hale, so many personal details are hard to confirm. What is clear is that his surviving reputation rests on a vivid account of endurance in the far north and on his role in the publishing world of his time.