Chauncey, who died of lung cancer March 17, 2009, was a man of many interests, principally literature and exploration. He enlisted in the Army during the Korean War and then obtained a master’s degree from Columbia and a doctorate from Princeton. He taught English at Dartmouth from 1962 to 1997. He published widely.
His lifelong interest was exploration, especially the Arctic, where he led five expeditions. On the first in 1968, he investigated the mysterious death of Charles Francis Hall, buried in Greenland, an amateur explorer who had died almost 100 years earlier seeking to locate the remains of Sir John Franklin’s expedition. Suspicious of the cause of Hall’s death, Chauncey obtained permission to exhume Hall’s body for an autopsy. This resulted in his most notable literary achievement, the book Weird and Tragic Shores, recently republished by Modern Library.
Chauncey’s travels took him to other distant lands, where he indulged his passions for photography and fly-fishing.
His Princeton roommates included Tom Knight, who remained a close friend. Chauncey was a trustee of Phillips Exeter Academy, from which he had graduated, and the Hotchkiss School, and served on the boards of conservation and fishing organizations. He never married.