To the Edges of the Earth

by Edward J. Larson

  Ultimately, in 1908, the Roosevelt took eighteen days to transit the 350 miles from Etah through the strait and around the coast to Cape Sheridan on the Arctic Ocean. The ship had a reinforced steel prow and bypass engines that could more than double their power for short spurts. Without these features, Peary declared, it never would have passed through the strait that year. The Roosevelt could slice through light sea ice, pry open leads, and push aside small bergs. “Its passage means constant butting of the smaller ice, and constant dodging of larger pieces,” Peary explained. “When the ice is not so heavy as to be utterly impenetrable, the ship under full steam moves back and forth continually, butting and charging the flows. Sometimes a charge will send the ship forward half a length, sometimes her whole length—sometimes not an inch.”39 It was held up by heavy pack ice for days at some points, and once the crew had to dynamite a large floe that had pushed the Roosevelt on shore and partially grounded it. Even with the floe shattered, it took high tide, full steam astern, and pulling on a cable made fast to a grounded berg to free the ship.

  The Roosevelt reached Peary’s former winter quarters at Cape Sheridan on September 5, the same date that it had arrived there in 1905. Since Peary planned to start across the pack ice farther west this time, he tried to push the ship on toward a sheltered bay about 30 miles beyond his old anchorage. “But after two miles,” he wrote, “we came to another impassable barrier of ice, and it was decided that it was Cape Sheridan again for this year’s winter quarters.” Those 2 miles, Peary boasted, gave him a new “farthest north” by a ship sailing under its own steam.40 Bartlett burrowed the ship into the ice foot closer to shore this time. The dogs and most of the supplies went ashore, three packing-crate huts went up, and the party settled in for the winter. All told, the encampment consisted of sixty-nine people, forty-nine of them Inuits, and two hundred forty-six dogs. “I had the dogs, the men, the experience,” Peary wrote at this point in his narrative, “and the end lay with that Destiny which favors the man who follows his faith and his dream to the last breath.”41 It was as close as Peary ever came to a religious declaration.42

  Once settled in, Peary spent the remaining weeks of waning autumnal daylight moving supplies 90 miles northwest along the Arctic Ocean coast from his winter quarters to Cape Columbia, where he planned to depart from land for the pole. “The tractive force was, of course, the Eskimo dogs,” Peary wrote, “and sledges were the means of transportation.”43 Any supplies moved to Cape Columbia in the fall would not have to be taken there in the spring. Peary set up a relay system with six roughly spaced camps. Sledge teams moved back and forth among the camps until everything needed for the polar trek was deposited at Cape Columbia. The first team left Cape Sheridan on September 16 and the last one returned from Cape Columbia on November 5. By then, full winter darkness had descended and would continue until late February.

  During the fall, Peary also dispatched hunting parties for fresh meat, with musk oxen being their easiest prey. Herds of the large, cowlike animals lived in the region and stood out sharply against the white landscape. “For myself,” Peary wrote, “I never associate the idea of sport with musk oxen,” but others got in the spirit and felled them by the dozens.44 Some reindeer and polar bears were also shot, as well as small game. For his part, Peary remained at the ship throughout the fall and winter except for one eight-day sledge journey in October with three Inuits and thirty dogs to explore and map Ellesmere Island’s largest fjord, Clements Markham Inlet. Although he had not gone to hunt, Peary returned with more than a ton of fresh meat after his party felled fifteen musk oxen, a deer, and, following a spirited chase, one massive polar bear.

  “If there is anything that starts the blood lust in an Eskimo’s heart more wildly than the sight of a polar bear, I have yet to discover it,” Peary wrote. “I was thrilled myself.” All set off in rapid pursuit of the bear, but finding that his feet (or “stumps,” as he termed them) could not tolerate the pounding, Peary fell back and let the Inuits have the kill.45

  LIKE SHACKLETON, PEARY RECOGNIZED the importance of keeping members of his expedition meaningfully occupied over the long polar night, even if that meant inventing meaning. The sledging and hunting trips served this purpose during the fall. After the sun set for the last time in late October, except for hunting trips during the full moons, the explorers kept mainly to the ship. “Much material in the rough had been carried along in order to keep everybody busy working it into shape for use,” Peary noted. Throughout the winter, “every member of the expedition was almost constantly engaged in work that had for its object the completing of preparations for the final sledge journey in the spring.”46 The Inuits were kept especially busy, with the women sewing new fur clothing for the men and the men building sledges and caring for the dogs.

  Living arrangements reinforced working conditions. The Inuits resided communally in family groups on the ship’s curtained forward deck and ate separately from the non-Inuits. Seen as a distinct race, they were treated as an inferior one suited for particular tasks. Even Henson viewed them as doomed for extinction in the modern world.47 For the expedition’s twenty non-Inuit members, Peary imposed a light routine with two set meals each day and two ship’s bells, one at 10 P.M. for all quiet and one at midnight for lights out. “Commander Peary was an officer in the United States Navy,” Henson noted, “but there never was the slightest military aspect to any of his expeditions.”48 Yet he was all about work. It was the main topic of conversation when Peary was present. Holidays were celebrated, including Thanksgiving, the winter solstice, and Christmas. MacMillan kept regular tide records, sometimes aided by Marvin and Borup. Goodsell charted the temperature. By far the oldest person on board, at fifty-two, and over twice the age of some, Peary spent most of his time alone in his large, private cabin when not giving directions and dined there on Sundays. He had a more aloof leadership style than Shackleton, but like his British counterpart, he pushed himself harder than he did anyone else on his expeditions.

  In mid-November, violent onshore winds coupled with a flood tide drove a tumbled mass of ice blocks and floe bergs against the ice foot at the Roosevelt’s anchorage, tilting the ship toward shore and threatening to lay it on its side. The tide turned in time to prevent the worst outcome, but the Roosevelt remained akilter until spring. The fiercest winds came from shore, however. “Falling off the highland of the coast with almost the impact of a wall of water, [they] are unequalled, I believe, anywhere else in the arctic regions,” Peary wrote. “On deck it is impossible to stand or move, except in the shelter of the rail; and so blinding is the cataract of snow that the lamps, powerful as are their reflectors, are absolutely indistinguishable ten feet away.”49

  Much like the 1905–06 venture, this expedition suffered a continual and unexplained loss of dogs at winter quarters. Over a fifth of the original two hundred forty-six had died by early November and another fifth by the end of that month. “It looked for a time as if we should lose the whole pack,” Henson reported, “but constant care and attention permitted us to save most of them, and the fittest survived.”50 Beyond seeing the Darwinian process at work, Peary again attributed the losses to diet and found that switching to walrus meat helped. “Had an epidemic deprived us of these animals, we might just as well have remained comfortably at home,” Peary wrote. No one could reach the pole without them, he believed.51 Drawing on experience, Peary had taken twice the number needed, and that proved adequate. He never mentioned the reactions of the Inuits to the losses, but given their attachment to their dogs and their expectations of getting their surviving ones back after the expedition, it must have been severe. “Dogs are a valuable asset to this people,” Henson noted. They depended on them.52

  ON FEBRUARY 15, 1909, with a faint glow of daylight beginning to brighten the southern horizon at midday, the first sledge party left winter quarters for Cape Columbia. “It was still so dark that we had been obliged to use a lantern in order to follow the trail northward along the ice foo
t,” Peary noted.53 “The route to Cape Columbia is through a region of somber magnificence,” Henson added. “Huge beetling cliffs overlook the pathway; dark savage headlands, around which we had to travel, project out into the ice-covered waters of the ocean; and vast stretches of wind-swept plains meet the eye.”54 Bartlett led the first party; Goodsell the next. The trail had been cut over the fall and winter by supply and hunting parties. By February it was a well-established route. A party led by Henson departed on the 18th, as did one led by MacMillan. Each included three Inuits, four sledges, and twenty-four dogs. Peary had it nearly down to a science: small parties composed of three or four men, with most men driving a sledge pulled by six or more dogs and each party led by “a member of the expedition,” as Peary termed the non-Inuits who had sailed north with the Roosevelt.55 Parties led by Marvin and Borup followed over the next days, with one led by Peary drawing up the rear on February 22. Peary’s party included only two Inuits and two sledges. Presumably Peary rode much of the way, though he never said so in his accounts of the trip.

  The seven parties rendezvoused at Cape Columbia, with Peary’s reaching there on February 26. Because the trip from winter quarters took each party four or five days, the others arrived before Peary. Henson enjoyed this interlude in a snug igloo with few chores beyond moving supplies from their depot on the cape to the shore. Although the temperature dipped to 57°F below zero, the sun, while not yet rising above the horizon, gave sufficient light to see from late morning to early afternoon. “With the coming of the daylight a man gets more cheerful,” Henson noted. “The snows covering the peaks show all the colors, variations, and tones of the artist’s palette.” It was not the sort of observation that Peary would make, and the spell was quickly broken when he arrived and began issuing orders. “From now on we must be indifferent to comfort,” Henson wrote; “we must always be moving on.”56 Each member of the expedition received new fur clothing to replace the furs worn previously. Since the so-called Peary System of Arctic travel involved close contact with dogs and having all persons in each sledge party sleep huddled together fully dressed, the old furs had become infested with lice and bugs. At least everyone started for the pole clean. As an added precaution, each member had his hair shaved before leaving the ship.

  Bartlett and Peary mounted the bluff at Cape Columbia on the morning of February 28, 1909, to survey the way north. The sun would not rise for another week, but there was a waxing quarter moon, and the full moon was only six days away. This was the date that Peary had chosen to begin his final push north. Bartlett’s party would go first, breaking the trail. Borup’s party would follow that day and the other five at intervals on March 1, with Peary’s party again leaving last. Six more dogs had died since arriving at Cape Columbia, leaving one hundred thirty-three, and two Inuits had become incapacitated, leaving seventeen. The expedition departed the Cape with twenty-four men and nineteen sledges traveling in seven separate parties. From the bluff, Bartlett and Peary saw a ragged jumble of broken shore ice as far ahead as they could see, but no open water. That encouraged Peary. The temperature stood at minus 50ºF. A vicious wind was blowing from the east, kicking up snow from the surface. Given his age, Peary knew it would be his last chance to reach the pole. He felt ready, and had crossed the glacial fringe onto the Arctic Ocean sea ice by midday.

  Chapter 8

  Poles Apart

  THE TURN OF THE season that brought winter darkness to Peary’s expedition at Cape Columbia in October 1908 bestowed summer daylight on Shackleton’s men at Cape Royds. Focused in purpose and eager to begin, they had two poles in sight. By September, Shackleton had settled on who would go on each journey. He would lead a party of four men with four ponies and four sledges south over the Ross Ice Shelf toward the south geographic pole. Shackleton still believed his pole lay on that flat, stable shelf some 850 miles away—a brutal but achievable pony march. In contrast, David would lead a party of three men hauling two sledges west over the Ross Sea’s frozen surface, then north along Victoria Land’s icebound coast, and finally over the Western Mountains and Great Ice Plateau to the south magnetic pole. Six decades earlier, James Clark Ross had determined that the magnetic pole lay beyond those mountains, which Scott’s Discovery Expedition found to front a 2-mile-high ice sheet.

  Beyond these rough outlines, no one knew what lay ahead for either party. Among the few certainties was that both destinations, though storied, were but unmarked abstractions on featureless ice fields. Reaching them had no practical value: at the time, Shackleton depicted them as “ungilded by aught but adventure.”1 Adventure, however, mattered and gilded them beyond measure for the Gilded Age.

  Shackleton planned for both teams to start in October, with David’s so-called northern party leaving on October 1 and his own southern party about four weeks later. Because of weather conditions, neither party could safely start sooner. Both groups were to return by March 1909 for the voyage home. The Nimrod could not remain in the Antarctic beyond that month without the risk of being frozen in for the winter. Anyone not returning by then would be left behind.

  Before setting off in mid-September with five others to lay advance depots for his southern sledge journey, Shackleton gave his final written instructions to David for the northern party, which included Mawson and Forbes Mackay. Somewhat muddled and wildly overambitious, these orders set forth three tasks. Paragraph (1) directed the party to take observations to determine the location of the magnetic pole and, “if time permits,” to reach it. Second, the party was to survey the Victoria Land coast running north, collecting geological specimens as it went, but not at the cost of “time that might be needed to carry out the work noted in paragraph (1).”2 Logically, the party would do this work on the way to the pole, before turning inland, and the instructions seemed to permit skimping on it. They knew the rough distances: sledging from Cape Royds across McMurdo Sound and north along the coast on sea ice would cover about 250 miles, with another 250 miles inland from the coast to the pole, most of it uphill. To this point, the orders were clear, though Shackleton probably did not anticipate just how much resolve the Victorian-minded David would bring to the task of reaching the pole at the expense of all else, even the party’s safety. But there was more.

  Shackleton’s third instruction showed that he did not yet appreciate either the challenge posed by man-hauling sledges in polar conditions or the vast distances involved. On its return journey, he directed David’s party to stop at Victoria Land’s ice-free Dry Valley, located roughly across McMurdo Sound from Cape Royds, and look for gold or other valuable minerals. David and Mawson had a well-earned reputation for finding coal and mineral deposits in Australia. Before leaving, David had hinted of the prospect of finding another Klondike in the Antarctic, which piqued widespread interest in the immediate aftermath of a gold rush that had drawn a hundred thousand prospectors to the Arctic. Shackleton bet on there being valuable rocks in Antarctica too.

  Here, Shackleton’s instructions became confusing. On the one hand, they authorized the party to delay returning to the Dry Valley if lengthening the northern journey would allow it to reach the pole. On the other hand, they stated that a “thorough investigation of the Dry Valley is of supreme importance.”3 Further, Shackleton knew that the sea ice might break up before the northern party could return to Cape Royds, because his instructions speak of the Nimrod retrieving it at some undetermined point on the coast around February 1. If the sea ice was out when the men arrived back at the coast from the pole, they could not get to the Dry Valley. Cliffs and coastal glaciers rendered the shoreline itself impassable. When time proved too short for both reaching the pole and prospecting in the Dry Valley, the orders gave David grounds for pushing on toward the pole over the initial objections of Mawson, who wanted to prospect in the Dry Valley, and the later pleas of Mackay, who lost all faith that they could reach the pole.

  The magnetic poles held a strong attraction for scientists and explorers during the Victorian era, though
this had weakened by the turn of the twentieth century. Shackleton and Mawson were men of a new era; David was not. During the nineteenth century, scientific organizations and governments across Europe and in the European colonies had launched a global crusade to map the curved lines and shifting patterns of terrestrial magnetism to their convergences at the magnetic poles. It became the largest shared scientific enterprise to date, with three magnetic observatories erected with British funds in Australia alone. Navigation by compass had always required knowledge of the variation between the magnetic and geographic poles, but the discovery in the early 1800s of a relationship between current electricity and magnetic fields added to the interest in terrestrial magnetism. Physicists thought that it might affect electrical transmission. Early in the 1830s, James Clark Ross became a British national hero for leading the first party to reach the north magnetic pole; a decade later, he sailed in search of the southern one. It was his Antarctic expedition that first navigated through the pack ice to discover the Ross Sea, Victoria Land, and the Great Ice Barrier, but determined that the magnetic pole was out of reach beyond Victoria Land’s Western Mountains.

  In Ross’s day, because of their supposed scientific and economic importance, the magnetic poles attracted more attention than the geographic poles. By 1900, however, with the press feeding popular interest in the geographic poles as the last two great unreached destinations on earth, goals shifted. Although the official instructions for Scott’s 1901–04 Antarctic expedition stressed magnetic research over geographic discovery, for example, Scott reversed the emphasis and received the most acclaim for his farthest south. Yet many in Britain and its colonies remembered the mystique surrounding the magnetic poles, and so, at the outset, Shackleton named the south magnetic pole as his expedition’s second objective. When pressed by Scott to shift his intended winter quarters from the ice barrier’s western to its eastern sea edge, the magnetic pole seemed beyond reach, and Shackleton dropped it from his plans. With David and Mawson joining the expedition in Australia and Shackleton opting to winter on Ross Island after all, the magnetic pole was back in play. Hastily organized, the northern party took up where Ross left off.