On May 6, 1856, Robert E. Peary, who claimed discovery of the North Pole, was born in Cresson, Pennsylvania. As a child, he read Elisha Kent Kane's accounts of Arctic travel and was inspired with the dream of exploring the 'roof of the world.' During the first years of the twentieth century, the conquest of the North and South Poles became the object of fervent international competition. Teams from Russia, Norway, France, Italy, Germany, and the United States vied to be the first to fly their nation's flag at the summit of the world. Many expeditions, such as the failed Ziegler Expedition pictured above, sought to explore the Arctic from the northernmost point of Russia, Franz Josef Land. Robert Peary, convinced that the North Pole could not be reached successfully from Russia, set his sights on Greenland as the launching ground of a northward dash to the pole.
Peary received his degree in civil engineering from Bowdoin College in 1877 and went to work for the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey before obtaining a commission in the U.S. Navy Civil Engineers Corps. His first assignments took him to tropical, rather than arctic climates. In 1884 and again in 1887, Peary was chief assistant surveyor responsible for charting a route for a Pan-American canal through the jungles of Nicaragua. On his second trip to Nicaragua, he was accompanied by his assistant, African American Matthew Henson, who was to be Peary's trusted companion throughout his Arctic explorations.
In 1886, Peary obtained a six month leave from the Corps and set out to explore the Greenland ice cap. This was the first of a series of trips to Greenland, during the years 1886-1897, in which Peary mapped the northern coastline of Greenland and gathered data regarding meteorological and tidal patterns of the Arctic Ocean. Perhaps most important, Peary made friends with the Inuit tribes of northern Greenland, learning their language and customs. From the Inuit, Peary learned techniques of survival in the Arctic.
Peary developed a number of practices that led to his reaching the farthest point north, including the establishment of support bases and shelters, a backup supply line using a method of relay teams, and the construction of a ship made to withstand the Arctic ice. He combined these innovations with the use of traditional Eskimo methods such as seal-fur clothing, igloo-building, sled-building, hunting, and the use of dogs, both for transportation and for food supply.
Peary had powerful support for his project in the enthusiasm of President Theodore Roosevelt and the financial backing of the National Geographic Society. With the Society's support, Peary was able to finance the building of the S.S. Roosevelt to his specifications:
The Roosevelt embodies all that a most careful study of previous polar ships and my own years of personal experience could suggest. With the sturdiness of a battleship and the shapely lines of a . . . schooner, I regard her the fittest icefighter afloat. As I write these lines, I see her slowly but surely forcing a way through the crowding ice. I see the black hull hove out bodily onto the surface of the ice by a cataclysm of the great floes. I see her squeezed as by a giant's hand against a rocky shore till every rib and timber is vocal with the strain. And I see her out in the North Atlantic lying to for days through a wild autumn northeaster . . . with damaged propeller, and shattered stern post, . . . a scrap of double reefed foresail keeping her up to the wind, riding the huge waves like a seagull till they are tired out.Robert Peary, Secrets of Polar Travel (New York: The Century Co.,1917), pages 28-31.
On July 16, 1905, Robert Peary sailed north with the newly constructed polar ship, but his vision proved all too accurate. His team failed to reach the pole in the 1905 voyage and returned to New York with an ice-damaged ship. Significant repairs to the ship postponed another attempt until 1908. It was on this trip that Peary reported success. On March 1, 1909, Peary and Henson, along with a party of 24 companions, 19 sledges, and 133 dogs, set out from their camp at the tip of Ellesmere Island to reach the pole. At the end of March, the last supporting team turned back.
