Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum - Pearys Arctic quest: untold stories from Robert E. Pearys North Pole expeditions

Peary s

Arctic

Quest

Untold Stories from

Robert E. Pearys North Pole Expeditions

Susan A. Kaplan and Genevieve M. L e Moine

Camden, Maine

An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

4501 Forbes Blvd., Ste. 200

Lanham, MD 20706

www.rowman.com

Published in cooperation with The Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine

Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK

Copyright 2019 by The Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum, Bowdoin College

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Kaplan, Susan A., 1951 author. | LeMoine, Genevieve M., author. |

Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum & Arctic Studies Center, issuing body.

Title: Pearys Arctic quest : untold stories from Robert E. Pearys North

Pole expeditions / Susan A. Kaplan, Genevieve M. LeMoine.

Description: Camden, Maine : Down East Books ; Brunswick, Maine : The

Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum, [2019] | Published in cooperation with

The Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine.

| Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018054847 (print) | LCCN 2019009486 (ebook) | ISBN

9781608936441 (electronic) | ISBN 9781608936434 (cloth : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Peary, Robert E. (Robert Edwin), 18561920. |

ExplorersUnited StatesBiography. | Arctic regionsDiscovery and

exploration. | North PoleDiscovery and exploration.

Classification: LCC G635.P4 (ebook) | LCC G635.P4 K28 2019 (print) | DDC

910.9163/2dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018054847

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America.

Contents

Preface

Does the world need another book about Robert E. Peary and the North Pole? This was the question we asked ourselves as we embarked on this project more than a decade ago. Our answer was a qualified yes. Not a book that combs through the events of the 55-day journey over the sea ice in 1909, looking for some lost detail that will definitively prove Pearys location on April 6, 1909. Or one that focuses solely on Pearys motives, constructing a psychological profile to categorize him as a hero, liar, or tragic figure. Rather, we felt it was time to step back and look at his career and his North Pole expedition from a broader perspective. In the long run, whether he, or anyone else, got to the North Pole in the early twentieth century is unknowable.

The impetus for this project was the hundredth anniversary of Pearys 19081909 North Pole expedition. Whether you believe he made it to the North Pole or not, this was clearly an event that we at the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum felt needed to be acknowledged. In the spring of 2008, we opened a major exhibit, Northward Over the Great Ice: Robert E. Peary s Quest for the North Pole . From the earliest planning stages of the project, we decided not to focus on that single, contested achievement, having long since concluded that there is no way to prove whether Peary, Henson, Odaq, Sigluk, Ukkaujaaq, and Iggianguaq were at the North Pole when Peary claimed they were. Far more interesting to us as Arctic anthropologists and archaeologists were some often-neglected aspects of that expeditionthe people he chose to employ (and without whom he would have accomplished much less); how he identified or developed, evaluated, and refined the exploration tools and techniques he used; and the positive and negative impacts of his work on the Inughuit community.

Our interest in these topics led us in many different directions. We sought out the unpublished records of expedition members in archives and museums and have also been fortunate to have access to some that have been in family hands for the last 100 years.

Among Pearys often-studied papers at the National Archives and Records Administration in College Park, Maryland, we examined the usual journals and correspondence, but we also paid close attention to things that most other researchers had overlooked, particularly Pearys long obsession with the technological side of his workdesigns for improved sledges, snowshoes, stoves, and even ships. Such drawings first appeared before Peary had even been to the Arctic and continued throughout his career. No detail was too small for him if it meant more efficient and more comfortable work. We also looked at the existing papers of the other members of the expedition, some held at our own institution (Bowdoin College) and others scattered around the Northeast. These more personal accounts each give a slightly different perspective on events and include many small details that help bring the North Pole story to life.

In some cases, finding resources was a matter of good luck, such as when we read in a local newspaper that the grandson of George Wardwell, chief engineer on Pearys ship, the SS Roosevelt , was visiting family in a town close by and had some of his grandfathers papers. We did not know that Wardwell had kept journals. We were soon to discover that Wardwell was a very consistent diarist, writing every day of his experiences in managing the ships boilers and engines, and commenting on other activities around the ship (always including what he had for dinner). His account of the 1906 voyage back from the Arctic on a badly damaged vessel, and the events leading up to it, is riveting reading and adds considerably to our understanding of that near-disaster.

Other times we relied on imagination and detective work, including publishing an article in a local newspaper to ask for help in locating a misplaced collection of Wardwells photographs. The response (and a clue from a Bucksport, Maine, barber) led us on a long trail tracking down a dispersed collection and ultimately to the Castine Historical Society in Castine, Maine, where we combed through unidentified files of negatives in the hopes that some of them might prove to be from the North Pole expedition. Miraculously, we found an envelope of negatives that included images of snow-covered landscapes and men wearing polar bear skin pants. These rare Wardwell negatives have now been identified and conserved.

Emma Bonanomi, a curatorial intern at the museum when we were developing the North Pole exhibition, spent months searching for film footage of Matthew Henson, ultimately discovering a rarely seen 1951 interview with him at the age of 85. However, we were not always successfulwe continue to look for the 19081909 log of the SS Roosevelt , last referred to publicly during Pearys congressional hearing in 1911. And we did not stumble on any smoking gun that would put to rest the eternal North Pole debate, but we did turn up some interesting material to help flesh out an understanding of Pearys expeditions, the roles played by those who helped him carry out the work, and the impact of those expeditions on the Inughuit with whom he worked.