Robert E. Peary - The North Pole: Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club

The North Pole by Robert E. Peary

Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club

Robert Edwin Peary, Sr. was born on May 6, 1856 in Cresson, Pennsylvania.

The early death of his father when Peary was 3 dictated that he and his mother moved to Portland, Maine. His senior education took place at Bowdon College and he graduated in 1877 with a Civil Engineering degree.

For Peary his overriding ambition became the North Pole. It was a dream that had also obsessed many others.

His first exploration attempt was Greenland in 1886. He managed just 100 miles before turning back.

In 1891 he broke his leg but the recuperation enabled him to more clearly define how to achieve his ambition. Inuit survival techniques were now researched and this gave him valuable insight.

By 1892 he had established that Greenland was an island.

In his 18981902 expedition, he claimed an 1899 visual discovery of "Jesup Land" west of Ellesmere. Peary also achieved a "farthest north" for the western hemisphere in 1902 north of Canada's Ellesmere Island.

Peary's next expedition was supported by a $50,000 gift. Peary used the money for a new ship. The SS Roosevelt battled its way through the ice between Greenland and Ellesmere Island, establishing an American hemisphere "farthest north by ship."

The 1906 "Peary System" dogsled drive for the pole across the rough sea ice of the Arctic Ocean started from the north tip of Ellesmere at 83 north latitude. The parties made well under 10 miles (16 km) a day until they became separated by a storm.

Peary was without a companion sufficiently trained in navigation to verify his account from that point northward. With insufficient food, and with uncertainty about whether he could negotiate the ice between him and land, he made the best possible dash and barely escaped with his life off the melting ice. On April 20, he was no further north than 8630' latitude. He claimed the next day to have achieved a Farthest North world record at 8706' and returned to 8630' without camping, an implied trip of at least 72 nautical miles (133 km) between sleeping, even assuming direct travel with no detours.

There is little doubt that although greatly honoured for his expeditions that Peary was rather elastic with the truth.

For his final assault on the Pole, Peary and 23 men, including Ross Gilmore Marvin, set off from New York City on July 6, 1908 aboard the S.S. Roosevelt under the command of Captain Robert Bartlett. They wintered near Cape Sheridan on Ellesmere Island, and from Ellesmere departed for the pole on February 28 March 1, 1909. This book relates that attempt on the North Pole.

Subsequent to the attempt Peary was promoted to the rank of captain in the Navy on October 20, 1910. By his lobbying, Peary was eventually recognized by Congress to have "attained" the pole (not "discoverer" in deference to 1908 North Pole claimant Frederick Cook's supporters), Peary was given the Thanks of Congress by a special act of March 3, 1911. By a special act of Congress on March 30, 1911, Peary was promoted to the rank of Rear Admiral in the Navy Civil Engineer Corps retroactive to April 6, 1909, and retired the same day.

In early 1916, Peary became chairman of the National Aerial Coast Patrol Commission. It advocated the use of aircraft in detecting warships and submarines off the U.S. coast. Peary used his celebrity to promote the use of military and naval aviation, which led directly to the formation of Naval Reserve aerial coastal patrol units during the First World War.

At the close of the First World War, Peary proposed a system of eight air mail routes, which became the genesis of the U.S. Postal Service's air mail system.

Admiral Robert Edwin Peary died in Washington, D.C. on February 20, 1920. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Index Of Contents

INTRODUCTION

FOREWORD

CHAPTER I - THE PLAN

CHAPTER II - PREPARATIONS

CHAPTER III - THE START

CHAPTER IV - UP TO CAPE YORK

CHAPTER V - WELCOME FROM THE ESKIMOS

CHAPTER VI - AN ARCTIC OASIS

CHAPTER VII - ODD CUSTOMS OF AN ODD PEOPLE

CHAPTER VIII - GETTING RECRUITS

CHAPTER IX - A WALRUS HUNT

CHAPTER X - KNOCKING AT THE GATEWAY TO THE POLE

CHAPTER XI - CLOSE QUARTERS WITH THE ICE

CHAPTER XII - THE ICE FIGHT GOES ON

CHAPTER XIII - CAPE SHERIDAN AT LAST

CHAPTER XIV - IN WINTER QUARTERS

CHAPTER XV - THE AUTUMN WORK

CHAPTER XVI - THE BIGGEST GAME IN THE ARCTIC

CHAPTER XVII - MUSK-OXEN AT LAST

CHAPTER XVIII - THE LONG NIGHT

CHAPTER XIX - THE ROOSEVELTS NARROW ESCAPE

CHAPTER XX - CHRISTMAS ON THE ROOSEVELT

CHAPTER XXI - ARCTIC ICE SLEDGING AS IT REALLY IS

CHAPTER XXII - ESSENTIALS THAT BROUGHT SUCCESS

CHAPTER XXIII - OFF ACROSS THE FROZEN SEA

CHAPTER XXIV - THE FIRST OPEN WATER

CHAPTER XXV - SOME OF MY ESKIMOS LOSE THEIR NERVE

CHAPTER XXVI - BORUP'S FARTHEST NORTH

CHAPTER XXVII GOOD-BY TO MARVIN

CHAPTER XXVIII - WE BREAK ALL RECORDS

CHAPTER XXIX - BARTLETT REACHES 87 47

CHAPTER XXX - THE FINAL SPURT BEGUN

CHAPTER XXXI - ONLY ONE DAY FROM THE POLE

CHAPTER XXXII - WE REACH THE POLE

CHAPTER XXXIII - GOOD-BY TO THE POLE

CHAPTER XXXIV - BACK TO LAND AGAIN

CHAPTER XXXV - LAST DAYS AT CAPE SHERIDAN

APPENDIX I

APPENDIX II

APPENDIX III

INTRODUCTION

Some years ago I met at a dinner in Washington the famous Norwegian arctic explorer, Nansen, himself one of the heroes of polar adventure; and he remarked to me, "Peary is your best man; in fact I think he is on the whole the best of the men now trying to reach the Pole, and there is a good chance that he will be the one to succeed." I cannot give the exact words; but they were to the above effect; and they made a strong impression on me. I thought of them when in the summer of 1908 I, as President of the United States, went aboard Peary's ship to bid him Godspeed on the eve of what proved to be his final effort to reach the Pole. A year later, when I was camped on the northern foothills of Mt. Kenia, directly under the equator, I received by a native runner the news that he had succeeded, and that thanks to him the discovery of the North Pole was to go on the honor roll of those feats in which we take a peculiar pride because they have been performed by our fellow countrymen.

Probably few outsiders realize the well-nigh incredible toil and hardship entailed in such an achievement as Peary's; and fewer still understand how many years of careful training and preparation there must be before the feat can be even attempted with any chance of success. A "dash for the pole" can be successful only if there have been many preliminary years of painstaking, patient toil. Great physical hardihood and endurance, an iron will and unflinching courage, the power of command, the thirst for adventure, and a keen and farsighted intelligence, all these must go to the make-up of the successful arctic explorer; and these, and more than these, have gone to the make-up of the chief of successful arctic explorers, of the man who succeeded where hitherto even the best and the bravest had failed.

Commander Peary has made all dwellers in the civilized world his debtors; but, above all, we, his fellow Americans, are his debtors. He has performed one of the great feats of our time; he has won high honor for himself and for his country; and we welcome his own story of the triumph which he won in the immense solitudes of the wintry North.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

THE WHITE NILE, March 12, 1910.

FOREWORD

The struggle for the North Pole began nearly one hundred years before the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth Rock, being inaugurated (1527) by that king of many distinctions, Henry VIII of England.