Polar Revisionism and the Peary Claim

Notes1. Donald Whisenhunt and Anita Genger, “A Clash of Egos: Robert E. Peary and John W. Goodsell,”The Historian 42 (August 1980): 598–611. The historiography of the controversy appears in Larry Schweikart, “Evaluating Polar Revisionists: An Examination of Peary's 1909 Polar Claim,”Historicus 2 (Fall/Winter 1980): 88–126.2. All Peary material is in the private papers of Admiral Robert E. Peary, Record Group (RG) 401[1] in the Center for Polar Archives, National Archives. The most significant evidence for this discussion is the recently unrestricted North Pole Diary, 1908–09, No. 7, 22 February to 27 April 1909. Also see John Goodsell's manuscript “On Polar Trails: A Resume of the Polar World and Prospective Polar Aviation with a Narrative of the North Polar Expedition, Auspices Peary Arctic Club in the S. S. Roosevelt, 1908–1909” at the Mercer County Historical Society, Mercer, Pa., as well as his edited and published version, On Polar Trails: The Peary Expedition to the North Pole, 1908–09 (Austin, Tex., 1983). Also see John E. Weems, Race for the Pole (New York, 1960) and Peary: The Explorer and the Man (Boston, 1967); Hugh Eames, Winner Lose All (Boston, 1973); Theon Wright, The Big Nail (New York, 1970); J. Gordon Hayes, Robert Edwin Peary (London, 1929); and Dennis Rawlins, Peary at the North Pole: Fact or Fiction? (Washington, 1973). The controversy is continued in issues of the United States Naval Institute's Proceedings: Dennis Rawlins, “Peary and the North Pole: The Lingering Doubt”Proceedings 96 (June 1979): 32–41; and Edward Peary Stafford, “Peary and the North Pole: Not the Shadow of a Doubt,”Proceedings 97 (December 1971): 45–55. Dr. Cook's account is critically reviewed by Dennis Rawlins in “Evaluating Claims of North Polar Priority,”Norsk Geografisk Tiddskrift 26 (January 1972): 13–40.3. Robert E. Peary, The North Pole (New York, 1910); Matthew Henson, A Negro Explorer at the North Pole (New York, 1969); Matthew Henson. “The Negro at the North Pole,”World's Work 19 (April 1910): 12815–37; Bradley Robinson, Dark Companion (New York, 1947). In the foreward to Henson's book, Herbert Frisby suggests either or possibly both books were ghostwritten (Henson, Negro, vi). The discrepancies between Dark Companion and A Negro Explorer are largely due to gaps in the 81‐year‐old Henson's memory and Robinson's literary style. For a discussion of Peary's controversial choice to take Henson on the final dash rather than Bartlett, see Schweikart, “Evaluating Polar Revisionists,” 105–8. Rawlins makes a number of errors on this subject, which are repeated in Whisenhunt and Genger, “Clash of Egos,” 602.4. Peary, North Pole, chaps. 1,22, passim. Also see supply notes in the Dairy, passim.5. Bartlett was the ship's master and Goodsell the ship's doctor. George Borup was a Yale athlete; Ross Marvin, professor of English at Cornell University; and Donald Mac‐Millan, a Massachusetts teacher. Weems, Race, chap. 3, passim.6. Diary, 3 March 1909, to 22 April 1909.7. Rawlins, Peary, 87. A position may be found by using a sextant to observe the angle of the sun to the horizon. An artificial horizon, usually a pan of mercury, may be used if the natural horizon is not visible. Latitude observations are usually noon (or midnight at the Pole) observations, but longitude observations may be taken at other times.8. Eames, Winner, 156.9. Rawlins, Peay, 107, 127; Wright, Big Nail, 84; Eames. Winner, 88–90, footnote.10. wright, Big Nail, 200; Eames, Winner, 157; Rawlins, Peay, 158.11. Diary, 1 April 1909.12. Rawlins, Peary, 114, 144. Dairy, 3–5 April 1909. Peary, North Pole, 160–61, 257–59, 270, 303, 360, app. 2; Henson, Negro, 118. This rate assumes that, as Henson reported, the party marched eighteen hours a day (Henson, Negro, 140). Peary reported sleeping very little during these marches (North Pole, 302–6). On the way to the Pole, the ordinary day's march was fourteen or fifteen hours, but on the way back Henson said it jumped up to eighteen (“Negro.” 12835).13. House Committee on Naval Affairs, Hearings of the House Committee on Naval Affairs, Subcommittee on Private Bills, 61st Cong., 3d sess., 1911, 42. The hearings of March 4 and 7, and January 7, 10 and 11, 1911 are highly significant. Rawlins, Peary, 102. Some have claimed walking 35 miles per day on snowshoes (Hearings, 47). Henson wrote, “[Peary] kept in the lead and did his work in such a way as to convince me that he was still as good a man as he had ever been” (Henson, Negro, 129).14. Eames, Winner, 160, footnote; Hayes, Robert Edwin Peary, 160. Henrings, 45–46; Amundsen quoted in Roland Huntford. The Last Place on Earth (New York, 1985), 407. Coincidentally, the 412‐mile course is almost exactly the distance of Cape Columbia from the Pole. The evidence overwhelmingly confirms the speeds claimed by Peary. Amundsen later reported covering 20 miles, resting for eight hours, and traveling again. This rate eclipses 40 miles per day See Huntford, Last Place, 421–2215. Wally Herbert, Across the Top of the World (London, 1969), 165.16. Hearings. 38–41. Naomi Uemura, “Solo to the Pole,”National Geographic 154 (September 1978): 316. Compare his record of April 25–26 with that of April 15–18. It should be remembered, though, that Uemura operated much later in the month than did Peary, so many conditions differed. Uemura also was alone and could not possibly average the speeds that Peary did.17. Rawlins, Peary, 113; Uemura, “Solo,” 320–21; Herbert, Across. 166. Compare Uemura's “Solo” pictures on 304, 308, and 316 with those on 320–21.18. Diary. 1–2 April 1909. Robert A. Bartlett, The Log of Bob Bartlett (New York, 1928). Rawlins, Peary, 109, 134. Henson, Negro, 128.19. Rawlins, Peary, 109. Henson, Negro, 129. Henson first desaibed each day's march, then proceeded to comment on Peary's determined nature. Literary style should not be taken for historical fact, and Henson made it clear the party was moving exceptionally fast.20. Diary, 2–5 April 1909. Henson, Negro, 127. Uemura, “Solo,” 317. Twelve miles is roughly 4 percent of the distance they had already traveled. If Peary was correct in this estimation, a southward wind could have subtracted 5 miles from the remaining distance of 133 miles to the Pole. Also see Peary, North Pole, 268, 277, 305–306.21. IDiary, 1–9 April 1909. Henson, Negro, 59; Peary, North Pole, chap. 22, passim. This allotment assumed each sledge would be pulled by at least eight dogs and handled by two men; occasionally this varied. Stefansson reported the same average on his journey. Vilhjalmur Stefansson, The Friendly Arctic (New York, 1969), 137. The group also threw away extra clothing (Hearings, 43). Rawlins (Peary, 124) concedes the sledges would have been lighter by a factor of 5:3, at least. Peary reported using up to 2/3 of the rations (New York American, 20 September 1909).22. Diary, 9 April 1909. Peary, North Pole, 272–91, passim. The one exception was April 4. There is no diary entry for April 8, probably because Peary entered his observations in other notebooks. The Big Lead, also called Styx and the Hudson by Peary, was a huge lane of running water. It had been open a short time on the northward part of the 1909 trip, and in 1906 Peary's party was held up at this lead and nearly starved before it iced over. Peary's concern over the Big Lead is not relevant to the condition of the lead—it was iced over. Rawlins' theory that Peary turned back short of his goal out of fear over a recurrence of the 1906 problem was disposed of by the testimony of the Eskimos, who said they went far north and marched for many days (David Haig‐Thomas, Tracks in the Snow [New York, 19391, 142). Eames erroneously called this book Traces in the Snow (Eames, Winner, 156).23. Wright, Big Nail, 199. George Borup, A Tenderfoot with Peary (New York, 1911), 177–79, passim; Hayes, R. E. Peary, 160. Henson, “Negro,” 12835. Diary, 1–2 April 1909. In Robinson, Dark Companion, 223, Henson notes the change in march time. Henson figures the party covered three upward marches in one southward march (Henson, Negro, 140). Critics often padded mileage figures with allowances for ice drift (Eames, Winner, 160–61; Hayes, R. E. Peary, 144), and another tactic was to change nautical miles to statute miles when convenient. Peary did not report any ice drift. Neither did Uemura, who said, “If I make reasonable speed, it [drift] will not matter” (Uemura, “Solo,” 319). Rawlins made no examination of speeds because he was convinced that Hayes had shown them to be ludicrous. Eames relied a great deal on Hayes as well. Hayes' mileage figures seem large because he assigned inflated time values to Peary's phrases. For example, if Peary wrote he slept for a “few hours,” Hayes assumed that meant Peary slept for six to eight hours. Hayes could not believe a man could march eighteen to twenty hours a day, continuously. Hayes based his book on this kind of evidence. (Hayes, R. E. Peary, 200, chaps. 9–14, passim).24. The former figure assumes an average march to be eleven hours and does not average in days when no march was made, and the latter assumes an average march to be twenty‐one hours long.25. Wright, Big Nail, 198–99. Peary, North Pole, 285. Peary did claim to take a sighting at 89 25′ in his book North Pole, 284. The Eskimos verified a sighting short of the Pole, but it is unclear if it was this observation or the 89 57′ observation (Haig‐Thomas, Tracks, 142). The Diary does not record this sighting; if it occurred, it would disprove Rawlins' theory that Peary intended his last five marches to end a good distance short of the Pole to correct the course by observation (Rawlins, Peary, 114). Unfairly and unrealistically, Peary critics challenge all of his mileage estimates except those at the Pole. Hypothetically, if Peary was 2 miles short on these estimates, his total mileage figures while at the Pole would have been reduced by 8 miles, or three hours' travel time. Either Peary was always inaccurate or always accurate, but not both.26. Wright, Big Nail, 199. Diary, 1–6, 9–22 April 1909. Should Wright's addition be perfected, there is still a problem in that 53, 45, and 32 add up to 130. That would leave Peary 3 miles short of Bartlett's igloos, located 133 miles from the Pole. Peary does not give hours traveled or mileages—only camps—so it is possible his estimates were off on the northward journey, or the wind released the ice 3 miles. It is also possible that Wright's addition is again in error, or that Wright estimated miles.27. Paul‐Emile Victor, Man and the Conquest of the Poles (New York, 1963), 107. Hearings, 112, Representative Engelbright's speech.28. Weems, Race, 165. At the South Pole, Ernest Shackelton's men made marches of 20, 26, and 29 miles on foot, without dogs, dragging their own sledges (Congressional Record, 61st Cong., 3d sess., 1911, 46, pt. 5:4224).29. Uemura, “Solo,” 315, 322.30. Weems, Race, 166. Borup, Tenderfoot, 174.31. IBorup, Tenderfoot, 177–79. Diary, 18–19 March 1909.32. Diary, 2 April 1909. Peary, North Pole, 276, 284; Henson, “Negro,” 12835–38; Henson, Negro, 128.33. Herbert, Across, 171.34. Wright, Big Nail, 192. Henson and Peary were close on the final march; for example, see Eames, Winner, 91.35. Rawlins, Peary, 145; Rawlins, “Evaluating,” 136; P. J. Amaria and A. A. Bruneau, eds., Arctic Systems (New York, 1977), 570. Dead reckoning is “the basis of all navigation” but is ignored at times because it is usually taught as a part of some larger skill (576). Peary was usually quite accurate in his estimates, coming within 10 miles of buried caches after 500‐mile journeys on two separate occasions. On another occasion he came within 100 yards of a cache buried all winter after traveling 40 miles. He located these by pacing, using dead reckoning (Hearings, 100).36. Diary, passim. New York Times, 30 October 1909. 7; Peary, North Pole, 211, 276. Elbert Maloney to Larry Schweikart, 19, 21 November 1978. (Maloney is the co‐author of Piloting, Seamanship, and Small Boat Handling and advisor to the Coast Navigation School in Santa Barbara, California). Congressional Record 46:4226. Rawlins, Peary, 141; Herbert, Across, 172–73.37. Eames, Winner, 156, footnote. Originally published in Geographical Journal [London] 35 (1910): 303–304.38. Maloney to Schweikart, 19 November 1978. Robert Lillestrand, “Letter on the Accuracy of Peary's Position Fix at Cape Morris Jesup, Greenland,”Canadian Surveyor, June 1970. The National Geographic Society (1909). the Royal Geographic Society (1910), the U.S. House of Representatives Naval Affairs Committee (1910), and Weems all have had previous access to Peary's journal and observations. Peary's observations were also examined by a reasonably disinterested X Congresso Internazionale do Geografia, Rome (1913). This fact goes unnoticed by Rawlins, Wright, Eames, and Weems. The New York Times Book Review, 21 April 1935, contained a review by Hugh Mitchell. Mitchell made the original data computations for the congressional hearings (Rawlins, Peary, 237). According to Edward Stafford, Heber D. Curtis also recomputed Peary's original observations, concluding that Peary came within a mile of the Pole (Stafford, “Peary and the North Pole,” 55). Curtis's original report was also published in the United States Naval Institute's Proceedings 65 (January 1939).39. It is also interesting to note that Amundsen reported a peculiar feature of using dogs: they have difficulty running in the white, featureless spaces of the Poles. Peary or Henson almost always ran ahead to serve as a physical target. In contrast to the South Pole, the pressure ridges in the North formed natural points on the horizon for Peary's dogs. See Huntford, Last Place, passim.Additional informationNotes on contributorsLarry SchweikartThe author, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Dayton, would like to thank George B. Noland, Associate Provost and Director of the Research Institute of the University of Dayton, for a special research grant, and Alison Wilson of the Polar Archives, Division of the National Archives, for her assistance

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