To the Edges of the Earth

by Edward J. Larson

  The lead closed during the early morning of March 30, and the parties were across within hours, now traveling together at their fastest rate yet. “During this march we had crossed a lake of young ice some six or seven miles wide—so thin in places that the ice buckled under us as we rushed on at full speed for the other shore,” Peary wrote on March 30.54 The next day was much the same, with a biting north wind blowing hard in their faces and the temperature below minus 30°F.

  Peary estimated the average advance during these two marches at 20 miles per day, noting that this pace should put the parties “on or close to the 88th parallel” by the end of Bartlett’s last march.55 To ensure that he reached that mark, while waiting to find the latitude by a sun sight at noon on April 1, Bartlett walked 5 or 6 miles ahead of the camp as others resorted the supplies and rearranged the dogs for the final push. When he returned, however, he found a latitude of 87°47', which left him 10 miles shy of the mark even with his morning walk. Peary attributed this shortfall to the southward movement of the ice during the prior two days of strong northerly winds, but it could have come from not marching due north. “It was a tough blow to my pride, but made no real difference,” Bartlett sighed.56 His observation of the sun’s altitude gave the expedition its last undisputed latitude reading. The men stood some 150 miles from the North Pole.

  ALL THE SUPPORT DIVISIONS having departed, the polar party consisted of five sledges, forty dogs, and six men. Peary formed one division with Sigloo, Egingwah, and two sledges. Henson formed another with Ootah, Ooqueah, and three sledges. “It is the time for which I have reserved all my energies,” Peary wrote in his diary on April 1, “and I feel tonight as if I was in trim & equal to the demands upon me of the next few days.”

  Peary estimated that it would take nine marches like the last eight, or six like the last two, to reach the pole. “Up to now I have intentionally kept in the extreme rear, to straighten out any little hitch, or encourage a man with a broken sledge,” Peary added. “From here on I shall take my proper place in the lead.”57 Henson’s accounts suggest that Peary did start off in front many days, marching on foot and leaving the others to break camp, but soon was overtaken and climbed aboard one of his division’s sledges. Because of his damaged feet, Henson explained, Peary “was compelled to ride.”58 According to Henson, his division typically ran somewhat ahead of Peary’s, at least in part to keep Peary from hitching a ride on one of its sledges. “He was very heavy for the dogs to haul,” Henson later recalled. “We wanted him to remain with his own division.”59

  Peary has long been criticized for his decision to send Bartlett back, someone who could reliably use a sextant to verify the party’s position at the pole and whose word as a captain everyone would trust. Peary offered three reasons in defense of choosing Henson.

  First, Peary stated, “Henson was the best man I had with me for this kind of work, with the exception of the Eskimos.”60 On this expedition, however, Bartlett—and arguably Borup and Marvin as well—had distinguished themselves as march leaders, not to mention that independently confirming the party’s position on a shifting polar landscape was a vital component of “this kind of work.” With so much at stake, other polar explorers invariably took along someone who could serve as a creditable witness. Marshall served this role for Shackleton; Mawson for David.

  Second, Peary noted, “I wished to give Henson some return for his many years of faithful service to me.”61 It was true that Henson had accompanied Peary on prior Arctic expeditions, yet even Peary’s supporters acknowledge that ambitious explorers typically put success before sentiment and admit that Peary was more ambitious and less sentimental than most.

  Third and most damning, Peary claimed that Henson could not safely lead a party back to land if he were to be sent back alone. “While faithful to me,” Peary explained in terms that reflected the racial biases of his day, “and when with me more effective in covering distance with a sledge than any of the others, he had not as a racial inheritance the daring and initiative of my Anglo-Saxon friends.”62 Many of Peary’s early critics used racist reasoning to condemn Peary for choosing Henson over Bartlett for the final dash; here Peary used similarly dubious racial reasoning to refute them. And even if true about Henson’s personal abilities, this explanation offered added reason to take along someone capable of getting the polar party back to land should something happen to Peary rather than let the main party and its achievement be lost.

  Once Bartlett left, the expedition record rested with some photographs taken at Peary’s northernmost camp, Peary’s disputed notations of the sun’s altitude, and the sometimes-conflicting testimony of Peary and Henson. Part of the problem lay in that Peary, in stark contrast with virtually every other noted polar explorer of the era, inexplicably never checked his longitude en route, even though he was fully capable of doing so. From the outset, he vowed to march due north along the 70th meridian, which ran though Cape Columbia to the pole. With nationalistic pride, Peary called it his “Columbia meridian,” and it virtually ran through his beloved Eagle Island, Maine, as well.

  On drifting sea ice in perpetual daylight with countless obstacles in the way, Peary’s pioneer party could not reliably maintain a beeline course in any direction, including due north, without checking its longitude. And riding in the rear, Peary simply followed the pioneer party for most of the way. Various members of the expedition later spoke of “the winding trail” north over shifting ice floes and around mountainous pressure ridges, in sharp contrast with Peary’s depiction of a route “nearly, as the crow flies, due north, across floe after floe, pressure ridge after pressure ridge.”63

  Peary never offered a satisfactory explanation of how he maintained his course. A compass could not solve the problem because his parties were marching north of the magnetic pole without certain knowledge of the magnetic variation in the region. “As we got nearer to the Pole,” Henson later confirmed, the compasses were not “much good.”64 Dead reckoning of the distance traveled gave Peary a fair idea of the latitude so long as his divisions stayed on course but could not reveal the longitude if they veered off it. Without any fixed markers on the moving ice pack or ever taking a longitude reading, Peary could only use imprecise methods to navigate northward, such as heading opposite to where the sun stood at noon. “Most of the time I judged direction from the ridges cut by the wind,” Henson later reported about his means of navigation as a pioneer party leader. “Up there, the sastrugi, the ridges, run east and west. So the line due north would cut the sastrugi at right angles.”65 This was a rough gauge of direction at best.

  HAVING FOOD AND FUEL for forty days, or fifty if the dogs were eaten, the two remaining divisions started north from Bartlett’s last camp at 87°47' north latitude shortly after midnight on April 2. “The going was the best of any we had had since leaving land,” Peary wrote. “The floes were large and old, hard and level.” Although some pressure ridges between those floes reached 50 feet high, he noted that “they were not especially hard to negotiate, either through some gap, or up the gradual slope of some huge drift of snow.”66 Peary depicted his final party of five picked men as “an ideal which had now come to realization—as loyal and responsive to my will as the fingers of my right hand.”67 As for himself, he spoke at this point of taking up another hole in his belt, “the third since I left the land,” and being “as lean and flat-bellied as a board, and as hard.”68

  With calm winds and clear skies, Peary claimed to cover an average of more than 25 miles per march over the next five days, or roughly twice the average mileage of prior marches. One east-west lead briefly slowed them, but Peary managed to cross the thin ice “bear style” by spreading his weight and sliding his feet, while two of the Inuits “came over on all fours.”69 The ice gave way, Peary reported, “as the last sledge left it.”70

  The men hurdled across another lead by “jumping from one [ice] cake to another,” Peary wrote, all the while hoping that each “cake would not tilt under the weig
ht of the dogs and sledge.” A north-south lead sped their way for two hours by providing a runway of smooth young ice, with the dogs “galloping along and reeling off the miles in a way that delighted my heart,” he added. “I had not dared to hope for such progress as we were making.” Weaker dogs were shot and fed to stronger ones, further fueling the dash.71

  AT NOON ON APRIL 5, after four remarkable ten-hour marches, Peary reported making the first observation of the sun’s altitude by sextant since Bartlett’s on April 1. “This indicated our position to be 89°25', or thirty-five miles from the Pole,” he asserted.72 These were nautical miles, however. In statute miles, the number stood nearer 40.

  Peary began each of the prior four marches around midnight and ended them before noon. By starting earlier on April 6, he hoped to make a longer march and still end by noon for another sun sight. “I now felt that success was certain,” he wrote.73

  Indeed, Peary had anticipated his triumph for days and filled his diary with jottings about his just rewards. “Have ‘Harpers,’” meaning Harper & Brothers publishers, “take entire matter, book, magazine articles, pictures & story (100). Kane got 75 from his book, Nansen 50 for his,” Peary wrote in terms of the thousands of dollars that he should receive. “Senior Rear Admiral on retired list (with full pay?),” he mused about a promotion from the navy. “England promoted & knighted dozens,” he noted, and “paid Parry $125,000, Phipps 25,000, etc., etc., for their Arctic work.” Turning his attention to the lucrative lecture circuit, Peary wrote about New York’s largest theater, “Look up Thompson Hippodrome proposition, modify perhaps, illustrated lecture with Hippodrome accessories, $15,000 (original amount), make society affair, auction boxes & seats.” He contemplated marketing themed products, such as sleds, coats, and tents. The notes go on for pages, and include his design for a monumental mausoleum to hold his remains. It would have his figure on top, Arctic statuary, and a bronze tableau of the American flag at the North Pole. Dreams of fame and fortune possessed him.74

  With such thoughts propelling him forward, Peary claimed a record distance on April 6. “Notwithstanding the physical exhaustion of the forced marches of the last five days,” he wrote, “I went tirelessly on and on, the Eskimos following almost automatically.” They made 15 nautical miles by lunch, and another 15 after lunch. “In twelve hours’ actual traveling we covered thirty miles,” Peary asserted. “There was no sign of a lead in this march.”75 These were straight-line distances from start to finish, not accounting for any added miles caused by detours. Critics seized on these distances as implausible for sledging in polar conditions, especially after Peary had struggled to make 10 to 15 statute miles per day earlier in the trek. “The story of the conquest of the Pole is what it is, not what someone thinks it ought to be,” Peary countered. A small party of picked men and dogs can move faster than a large one, he stated.76

  If Peary’s latitude reading on April 5 was correct and if his party covered 30 nautical miles on the 6th, then Peary stood within 5 miles of the pole. “Can I wait to cover those other 5?” he asked himself in his diary.77 The igloos built at this site served for the next two days as Peary’s North Pole camp, which he named for his sponsor, Morris K. Jesup.

  Henson would later present an alternative version of the events of April 6. “The trail was so easy that we made much more rapid progress than on any previous day,” he agreed, but he made no mention of Peary taking a sun sight on April 5.78 Relying on his own dead reckoning, Henson thought that the party had reached the pole on the 6th, and always maintained that belief.

  “I stood there at the top of the world,” Henson later crowed.79 Since he was traveling ahead of Peary at the time, it would make him the first at the pole. Henson also reported that a hazy mist barred Peary from taking a sun sight on the 6th to confirm their achievement, and said that the men retired that day uncertain of their precise location.

  ACCORDING TO HENSON, WITH “the Arctic sun shining brightly on the morning of April 7th,” everyone eagerly waited for Peary to make his observations at noon. “The results of the first observations showed that we had figured out the distance very accurately,” Henson wrote, “for when the Flag was hoisted over the geographical centre of the earth, it was located just behind our igloos.”80 This became Henson’s pole of record, and he never wavered from that claim. The photograph of Henson and four Inuits with five flags taken by Peary at this site became the visual record of Peary’s conquest of the pole even though Peary did not appear in it. Thus, as Henson reported it, they reached the pole on the 6th, but Peary did not confirm the position with a sextant reading until April 7.

  Peary’s own narrative differs from Henson’s in key respects. Peary asserted that on April 6, “at approximately local noon, of the Columbia meridian, I made the first observation at our polar camp. It indicated our position as 89°57',” or 3 nautical miles from the pole—not 5, as he had written in his diary. At this point, Peary added, “I was too weary with the accumulated weariness of days of forced marches and nights of insufficient sleep to realize just yet that I had practically achieved my life’s purpose.” After dinner, he wrote, “I turned in for a few hours of absolutely fatigue-compelled sleep.”81 The written recollections of Peary and Henson differ on the date and results of these critical sun sights, and Peary’s diary does not resolve the matter because it says nothing about making solar observations on either April 6 or 7 and only mentions Peary’s April 5 sun sight in a marginal note added to the entry for April 6.

  In his later-published narrative, Peary reported awaking sometime between noon and 6 P.M. on April 6 and writing in his diary the historic words he had wanted to utter for so long. “The Pole at last!!!” he exclaimed. “The prize of 3 centuries, my dream & ambition for 23 years. Mine at last.”82 Those words do not actually appear in his diary for April 6, however, but on an undated sheet inserted into his bound diary after the entry for April 6. The entry itself runs for three pages and includes a phrase suggesting that Peary wrote it in late afternoon. The next two entries in his diary, for April 7 and 8, are blank.

  As he related the story in the published narrative in Hampton’s Magazine, without the benefit of any diary notes, Peary rose by 6 P.M. on April 6 and, with Egingwah, Sigloo, a light sledge, and a double team of dogs, traveled along the 70th meridian for 10 miles. “I was able to get a satisfactory series of observations at Columbia meridian midnight, which observations indicated our position as being beyond the Pole,” he wrote of his latitude readings.83 So long as the sun is above the horizon, as it is in summer near the poles, a trained observer can use a sextant to find latitude just as readily at midnight as at noon. If Peary’s party traveled along the 70th meridian on a straight line connecting the two points of latitude that Peary purportedly found on April 6, one at noon and one at midnight, then he passed directly over the North Pole.

  This became Peary’s “pole by affirmation,” and he did not share it with Henson. “Going back along the trail, I tried to realize my position,” Peary wrote. “That every direction was south; that every breeze which could blow upon me, no matter from what point of the horizon, was a south wind; that a day and a night were a year, and that a hundred days were a century.”84

  Hurt by his exclusion from this outing, Henson blamed it on the commander’s anger at Henson’s having hauled in ahead to the pole. Reasserting his claim to have gotten there first, Henson wrote in 1910, “For the crime of being present when the Pole was reached Commander Peary has ignored me ever since.”85

  Peary repeated this process of marking the pole on April 7. Although observers usually take sun sights at noon to determine latitude, with somewhat more effort and less precision they can make their observations at 6 A.M. or 6 P.M. Peary reported taking his next series of sights from camp at six o’clock in the morning of the 7th. Finding the camp to be 4 or 5 miles from the pole, he then traveled for 8 miles directly toward the sun, which would be due east of him at that time. Again leaving Henson behind, Peary took along Eging
wah and Ootah to assist with the sledge and dogs.

  Returning to camp by noon, Peary made another series of sights. “I had now taken thirteen single, or six and a half double, altitudes of the sun,” he affirmed, “and to allow for possible errors in instruments and observations, had traversed in various directions an area of about eight to ten miles across. At some moment during these marches and countermarches, I had for all practical purposes passed over the point where north and south and east and west blend into one.”86 This remained Peary’s defining claim. He never wavered from it.

  “The objects of these various excursions being to cover the region in the vicinity over an area equal or greater than the probable error of my observations,” he later declared in a certificate submitted to substantiate his claim.87

  WHILE PEARY’S EFFORTS AND evidence satisfied his partisans then and ever after, they left his critics demanding more. From the outset, those critics homed in on Peary’s asserted mileage to argue that the polar party could not have gone so far so fast after Bartlett’s division turned back. Yet by his own reported sun sights, Peary reached the pole. The discrepancy left no plausible options other than that he made it all the way or knowingly lied. This left the controversy surrounding Peary’s achievement entirely different from that over the claims to the south magnetic pole of Mawson and David, who readily admitted the various uncertainties of their record. During the 1980s, the National Geographic Society invited explorer Wally Herbert to reexamine Peary’s claims with an eye toward reaffirming them, only to have Herbert conclude that, even if Peary went the distance, he still missed the mark by roughly 60 miles due to veering off course by not knowing his longitude and then deliberately falsifying the record to cover his error and claim the pole.88 The society, Peary’s steadiest institutional backer, vacillated in its stance even as the New York Times, an expedition sponsor, retracted its long-standing endorsement of Peary’s claim.