| Conquest of the North | ||||||||||||||||
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Robert Edwin Peary, who has “made good” and “nailed the Stars and Stripes”
to the North Pole, is a Pennsylvanian, born in Cresson, Pa., May 6, 1856.
When still a boy, he moved to Portland, Maine. After studying in private
schools and preparation at an academy in North Bridgton, Maine, Peary
entered Bowdoin College, graduating in 1877. He then became a draughtsman in
the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, passed a stiff examination in 1881, and
entered the United States Navy as a civil engineer, ranking as Lieutenant.
Three years later (1884), he commenced several years’ service in the field
as assistant government engineer, in the surveys for the proposed route of
the Nicaragua Canal, inventing rolling lock-gates for use on that canal. At
the end of this period, he was engineer-in-chief of the Nicaraguan Survey. When thirty years old (1886), his attention was turned from tropical to boreal research; getting a short leave of absence, he went north, and then, in company with a Dane, Maigaard, he made a reconnaissance, to the considerable gain of science, of the inland ice-cap of Greenland, east of Disco Bay, partly crossing the island. Matthew Henson, a colored man, who had served with Peary in Nicaragua, followed him to the Arctic, on this(1), as on other of his many subsequent trips. On his return, Peary immediately began to spend his spare time in preparing for another expedition to the north. In the meantime (1888), he married Miss Josephine Diebitsch, whom, when he was a young man, he had met in Maine. His experience as an engineer assisted Peary in preparing for his next expedition of 1891-92. The whole trip was thoroughly thought out, and supplies were left at convenient points. The expedition was financed by the Academy of Natural Sciences, of Philadelphia, and was thoroughly organized when it departed, under Peary’s leadership, in the Kite, (June, 1891). He established headquarters on McCormick Bay, on the western coast of Greenland. From there he made sledge excursions along Whale Sound, Inglefield Gulf and Humboldt Glacier, proving the convergence of the eastern and western coasts of Northern Greenland. He courageously persisted in his work though his leg was broken while crossing Melville Bay, and returned in September, 1892, with a brilliant record of results, particularly in the way of perfecting the equipment for future Arctic work. One of the most notable features of the expedition was his journey, with dog sledges, of 1,300 miles over the inland ice at an altitude of from 5,000 to 8,000 feet, from McCormick Bay to the northeastern extremity of Greenland where a great indentation, discovered on July 4, was called Independence Bay, and back again. This expedition determined the fact that the great inland ice cap terminates south of latitude 82° N., and that Greenland is an island with detached land masses north of it free of ice. These he called Heilprin Land and Melville Land. Dr. F. A. Cook was with Peary as surgeon on this expedition, and also Mrs. Peary, who made various sledging expeditions with him from the winter station, but returned in the Spring, leaving her husband free for his great sledging journey across the ice cap. In 1893, Peary again went north to Greenland, accompanied by Mrs. Peary; and, 13 degrees from the Pole, in winter quarters, Mrs. Peary gave birth, at a point further north than any other white child was ever born, to their oldest daughter, familiarly called, therefore, the “Snow-baby,” but christened Marie Ahnigito. Peary devoted himself to a thorough study of that Eskimo tribe known as Arctic Highlanders, and rediscovered the “iron mountain” first reported by Ross, in 1818, which proved to be three meteorites, one of them weighing ninety tons and the largest known to exist. Another very long, and exhausting expedition, commenced in 1898, and enduring for four years, proved to be one of his most important trips. It was under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club, and was financed by the late Morris K. Jesup. His ship, the Windward, reached Princess Marie Bay, an indention of Ellesmere Land, in August 1898, where she was stopped by the ice. Thence he made an overland journey in December, by sledge, to Fort Conger, further north on Ellesmere Land, planning to make it his base. His feet were badly frozen, and, though eight toes were amputated on March 13, 1899, when he returned to the Windward, he again took to active work within a very few weeks. He crossed Ellesmere Land, passed over an ice elevation of seven thousand feet and discovered Cannon Bay. The Windward returned to the United States. Peary passed the winter of 1899 to 1900 at Etah, that being the first time he had established the base which was utilized in his last trip. The rest of the year Peary spent in exploration; in August the Windward made port at Etah on her second trip. The marches of that year were frightfully exhausting; the sledging parties struggled over high parallel ridges of rubble ice, and were engulfed in the snow-filled hollows between. They were storm-bound by terrific icy gales, and, to cross open leads of water, ventured on floating ice, only escaping when contact of floe-fragments, and their cementing by quick-forming ice, bridged the gaps. The ice-pack disintegrating, the trip had to be abandoned. Returning to the south, Peary fixed his winter quarters at Fort Conger, and attempted the Cape Hecla route in 1901. His northern advance, however, was abandoned at Lincoln Bay in April, of that year. Undismayed and transferring his base to Payer Harbor, Peary again started northward in February, 1902. He reached Fort Conger by twelve marches that aroused wonder and admiration. He used nine sledges and was all but stormbound for many days at Lincoln Bay. He encountered most difficult ice conditions in rounding Cape Henry, where two men nearly lost their lives by the slipping of a sledge over the precipice of the ice pack, these sleds having to pass along an ice shelf less than a yard in width, with a precipice yawning at the side. Despite obstacles and adverse ice conditions, Peary traveled about four hundred miles in a month, the temperature ranging from 38 to 57 degrees below zero. When he left Cape Hecla, Grant Land, with sledges and dogs and Eskimos on April 6, 1902, the disintegrating ice pack was constantly shifting, while crevices and lanes of open water made progress arduous in the extreme. Strong gales broke up the ice pack constantly, rendering the situation very dangerous. So desperate was it at one time out beyond Crozier Island that Peary wrote in his journal on April 21: “The game is up. My dream of sixteen years is ended. It cleared during the night and we got under way this morning. Deep snow. Two small floes, then another period of old rubbles and deep snow—this extending north, south, and west, as far as we could see. I have made the best fight I know. I cannot accomplish the impossible.” That night the moving ice made the sound of a tremendous surf tumbling on a hard beach. The latitude was 84 degrees 17 minutes N., and the magnetic variation 99 degrees west. At that time the furthest north that any American explorer had gone. With the greatest hardship they beat back to the ship, and sailed back to Cape Breton, arriving there on September 17, 1902. The next expedition started from Sydney, Cape Breton, in July, 1905. Before he left, Peary said, that to discover the pole meant to “open up 3,000,000 square miles of absolutely unknown regions. The race is both sentimental and moral, and if we win we will be victorious in the greatest contest ever engaged in by nations wherein there was no jealousy.” The Roosevelt after leaving Etah, on August 16, 1905, gradually forced her way, with much crushing and grinding, even of her reinforced timbers, through Smith sound, Kane’s Basin, Kennedy and Robeson channels northeastwardly, along the northern coast of Grinnell Land to Cape Sheridan in Grant Land, thus utilizing the Smith Sound or “American” route. Here, Peary made his winter quarters. A “base which commands a wider range of the central polar sea and its surrounding coasts than any other possible base in the arctic regions. Cape Sheridan is practically equidistant from Crocker Land, and from the remaining unknown portion of the northeast coast of Greenland.” On October l the party killed one hundred musk oxen—just in time, for from the summit of Black Cape on October 12 they looked their last upon the sun for that season. Late in February Peary and his men set out. Three marches brought them to Cape Hecla. Just beyond Point Moss they were to leave the land and strike across the ice fields. At 84 degrees 36 minutes the expedition ran into an open lane of water two miles wide and was held up for six days before able to proceed. On this open lane Peary put the blame for his failure. As soon as young ice formed the party pushed out into the thinly covered lane. Most of the lightly weighted sledges were over and preparing to return and reload when a wind sprang up and opened the lane again. As the bulk of the provisions were on the south side, the expedition was forced to proceed without them. It was heart-breaking, but a longer delay meant certain failure. They camped one night 85 degrees 12 minutes, north latitude, in a dense fog. Then came an icy gale, and later snow, which lasted for six days, and observations taken at about that time showed that supporting parties which Peary had sent out were nowhere in sight. “It was evident,” says Peary, “that I could not count in the slightest degree on them; that whatever could be done must be done by a dash, and at Camp Storm, abandoning all things not essential, we bent ourselves to set a record pace.” Peary, carrying the compass, set the pace for the toiling sledge dogs, and their trotting drivers, and made rapid marches, the first ten hours long, covering thirty or forty miles. Provisions now ran low and the allowances were shortened. Weaker dogs were fed to their stronger brothers and by exerting themselves to the utmost the explorers were able to make fair headway. The lanes of water were increasing constantly, however, and the hummocks grew larger and larger. His observations then gave 87 degrees 6 minutes, as his location. That was Farthest North at that time. Peary felt that with his pack of dogs decimated and his sledges all but empty, he could not in common prudence push beyond. Cutting his flags from the summit of the highest pinnacle, he left in a bottle a short record of the expedition and a piece of the flag that he had carried around the northern end of Greenland six years before. Then began the march back to Camp Storm. The return march, was, if anything, more frightful than the out-going one. They were headed for Cape Morris K. Jesup through heavy “gales of wind and snow in which none but an Eskimo could keep the trail.” The chance discovery of several musk oxen alone saved the party from starvation. Once, too, the explorer and his Eskimos were nearly drowned in crossing a lane covered with thin ice. It was at the 84th parallel that Peary came upon an unusually wide lane, and while camped waiting for a chance to cross, the ice upon which the party was gathered separated from the main floe and drifted away for five days. A cold snap cemented it to the main body then, and on ice which threatened each moment to break beneath them the explorers, their dogs and provisions spread out in a long line and made the perilous crossing. The men with snowshoes on their feet did not dare to slip ahead, but were content to scuff along while the block ice bent beneath them like rubber. It was two miles across this ticklish bender and in silence the party crossed. Had they paused for an instant the ice would have given way beneath them and rescue would have been impossible. This experience, and that in the Storm Camp, on the way north, taught Peary that polar ice on the southern side of a lane moves slower than that nearer the pole and also travels east. Both he and Cook put this discovery to good use later. In November he returned to civilization, and immediately commenced preparations for what has proved to be his successful effort to find the pole. END |
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| (1) Incorrect - actually Henson was not on this trip. He did not accompany Peary on that first, brief Greenland trip. | ||||||||||||||||
