February 19, 2021 • 44 mins
Peary and Henson had one more shot at the North Pole in them. With their trusted Inughuit partners in Greenland, they spent months in the Arctic preparing for their dash to the Pole in spring 1909. And after traveling over hundreds of miles of dangerous ice, they believed they had reached their goal: They were the first men to stand at the top of the world. Or were they? Before Peary could claim his laurels, another explorer declared that he had conquered the Pole almost a year before Peary. Henson would help establish Peary’s preeminence. But whom would the world believe?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
The Quest for the North Pole is a production of
I Heart Radio and Mental Floss. It's April six and
Robert E. Peary and his assistant Matthew Henson are settling
in at yet another camp during their third attempt to
reach the North Pole. It's something they've done countless times
(00:24):
during the course of their journeys together, but on this
otherwise unremarkable stretch of ice, their once elusive goal is
now within reach. As they and the new Wheat guides
unpacked their supplies, tend to the dogs, and begin food preparations,
Peery unfurls an American flag that his wife Josephine, had
sewn for him years earlier. He fastens it to the
(00:46):
top of the camp's igloo. Henson watches as the star
spangled silk springs to life on a polar breeze, a
symbol of their triumph. When Peery takes the first measurements
of their location, his instruments give him a position of
eighty nine degrees fifty seven minutes north. They're just a
(01:07):
hair's breadth away from true north at ninety degrees. It
won't be long now. With success all but secured, Henson
seeks a well earned moment with Perry. Henson later remembers
feeling that the time had come, I ungloved my right
hand and went forward to congratulate him on the success
of our eighteen years of effort. But a gust of
(01:30):
wind blew something into his eye or else. The burning
pain caused by his prolonged look at the reflection of
the limb of the sun forced him to turn aside,
and with both hands covering his eyes, he gave us
orders not to let him sleep for more than four hours.
There's still more measurements to be taken, and Perry is
seemingly in no mood to delay his work with platitudes.
(01:53):
And as for the spurned handshake, well, this isn't the
first time Perry refuses to share his victory with his
most valued assistant. It's a pattern that will color their
working relationship for the rest of their lives. After traveling
around the area and taking more readings, Perry returns to
camp on April seven and makes the official announcement, we
(02:15):
will plant the stars and stripes at the north Pole.
Pera's American flag is placed at the proper location near
true North, and the group gathers for a photo to
capture the moment. They are now the first men to
reach the top of the world, or so they believe.
For Robert Perry and Matthew Henson, it was the culmination
(02:37):
of seven polar expeditions together nearly two decades of trying
for a barely tangible spot on the icy landscape. In
this episode, we'll look at how they did it. From
(02:58):
Mental Floss and I our radio. This is the Quest
for the North Pole. I'm your host Cat Long, science
editor at Mental Floss and this is episode six third
Times the Charm. In July, Robert E. Peary was fifty two,
(03:23):
Matthew Henson was forty one. Both had been battling the
Arctic in search of icy glory for almost twenty years.
Each time they had traveled to the harsh region to
attack the North Pole, they had failed, and when they
had returned home it had taken them longer to regain
their physical and mental strength. Still, they weren't ready to
give up the quest. As Peery later wrote, I realized
(03:47):
that the project was something too big to die. Pierry
convinced his rich donors in the Perio Arctic Club that
he would succeed this time. Failure was inconceivable. All of
the hard won experience and knowledge from his earlier polar
forays had led to this moment, pointing the way toward
(04:07):
his achievement and for the donors a namesake island or glacier.
The club's president, Morris K. Jessup, assured Perry he would
be given the means for another trip north Perry recalled
his promise meant that I should not have to beg
all the money in small sums from a more or
less reluctant world. Maybe the fact that Perry had named
(04:30):
what was thought to be the northernmost point of land
in the world, Cape Morris Jessup had something to do
with it. Peery's less than successful attempts to reach the
North Pole had dried up other funding streams, but Arctic
fever still raged among the public. Pierry signed a deal
with the New York Times to break the story of
his success. When the time came, and other newspapers breathlessly
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reported the preparations for Perry's journey. This was the era
of the penny press, when an explosion and of cheap
newspapers competed for content like a gilded age Netflix or Amazon.
They also created exciting stories to drive their circulations through
the roof. Here's Edward J. Larson, historian and author of
(05:14):
most recently, To the Edges of the Earth, the Race
for the Three Polls, and the climax of the Age
of Exploration. So one thing that would give them content
that was enormously popular were tales of daring do which
polar exploration stood right at the top. They were pushing
(05:35):
these expeditions because there was such a popular interesting And
then it was the cycle. People are interested in it
because they're told they're interested in it, they read about it.
You know, you get going in a cycle. So this
was in many ways an artificial goal, but not a
meaningless gold in the sense that it tested the explorer
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and it proved the worthiness, you'd say, of a country
in a highly nationalistic period, and this was part of
showing that prowess. It's like countries compete today to win
the most Olympic medals on the idea that somehow that
showed something. This was the same sort of thing. This
was the Olympic gold of the day, and no one
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took more pride in their expedition than the President of
the United States, Theodore Roosevelt. Pierry and Roosevelt were two
of a kind. They believed in the value of rugged
pursuits for building man and country. Pierry even named his
custom designed expedition ship after t R. The Roosevelt departed
from the pier at East twenty four Street on July six,
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in the middle of a deadly heat wave. Peery wrote
about the weather and his journal, noting it was an
interesting coincidence that the day on which we started for
the coldest spot on Earth was about the hottest which
New York had known in years. But New Yorkers weren't
the type of people to let blistering heat slow them down.
That pisens lined up to watch the Roosevelt sail up
(07:02):
the East River, with Pierri's handpicked team waving from the deck.
Matthew Henson would again serve as Pirie's senior assistant and
right hand man. Robert Bartlett returned as the Roosevelt's captain.
Ross Marvin signed on as Pieri's secretary for the second time,
and three other members of the ship's crew rejoined. New
(07:23):
members included Donald McMillan, a Bowden College graduate and teacher,
and Yale grad George Borup as Perie's assistants. As the
vessel made its way up the river, factories blew their
whistles to see them off. Theodore Roosevelt's presidential yacht, the Mayflower,
followed suit. Even the prisoners at Blackwell Island lined up
(07:44):
outside the penitentiary to cheer them on. The Next day,
the Roosevelt docked at Oyster Bay, on the north shore
of Long Island, where tr had a summer home. Roosevelt
treated Peery, his wife Josephine, and members of the Perie
Arctic Club to lunch. The President was a curious adventurer
and much the same mold as Peery, and it's easy
(08:05):
to imagine t R himself tagging along on the expedition
if he hadn't had a country to run. Roosevelt, a
fan boy of big ships if there ever was one,
took this lunch as an opportunity to inspect every inch
of his namesake vessel before it departed. Decked Out in
an all white suit, he spent an hour shaking every
(08:26):
hand he came across, powering through the engine room, petting
all of the sleddogs on board, and admiring Peery's cramped
yellow pine cabin, complete with its library of Arctic books
and equipment. At the end of the lunch, Peery all
but promised Roosevelt that he would reach the North Pole.
No matter what, Mr President, I shall put into this
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effort everything there is in me, physical, mental, and moral,
he said. Roosevelt replied, I believe in you, Perry, and
I believe in your success if it is within the
possibility of in Peery felt no qualms about what lay ahead.
He and his team had made every preparation and taken
(09:07):
every possible obstacle into account. Everything they had to do
was done, he wrote. Perhaps this feeling of surety was
because every possible contingency had been discounted. Perhaps because the
setbacks and knockout blows received in the past had dulled
my sense of danger. Whether it was enough to get
(09:28):
them to the North Pole this time would be up
to fate. From Oyster Bay, the Roosevelt traveled the familiar
route to Sydney, Nova Scotia, for its convenient proximity to
coal supplies that the ship took on board. By July seventeenth,
the Roosevelt had cleared North Sydney, and on August one,
they made it to Cape York, Greenland, an area Peery
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described as the dividing line between the civilized world on
one side and the Arctic world on the other. But
to put it in perspective, Peery wrote that Cape York
is farther from the North Pole than New York City
is from Tampa, Florida. There was still a long way
to go. Just a few weeks earlier, throngs of well
wishers had cheered the expedition on as they cut through
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New York's East River, one of the world's busiest arteries
of commerce. Now, as the Roosevelt approached the tree Less Cape,
the explorers were greeted by a handful of the new
wheat and kayaks. But these tiny communities at the edge
of Greenland's ice sheet would make or break Pierri's dream.
Pierri's men bartered with the inw wheat for the essential
(10:34):
equipment they couldn't get back home. Additional dogs, bear skins,
sealskin whips, and walrus blubber. From Cape York, they traveled
north to Eta, a village that Henson and Pierri had
visited on previous expeditions, where they greeted the inw wheat
families who had helped them on so many of their
Arctic efforts. Henson was delighted to see old friends who
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had nicknamed him Marie Paluk, the kind one. Utah, his
most trusted and new wheat assistant, was the leader of
the dozens of hunters in his community. The people looked
up to him and followed his advice. If Utah agreed
to help Pierry and Henson, others would too. As he
had before, Peery hired the in New wheat men to
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hunt and drive sledges, and the men's wives to sew fur,
clothing and prepare food. Whole families clambered onto the Roosevelt's
deck for the adventure. The new wheats familiarity with the
polar conditions, their survival skills, and their willingness to work
hard was invaluable to Peery. In return, Peary paid them
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in trade goods that were otherwise hard to come by
in Greenland. Their relationship was transactional. He respected them, but
you know he was also using them. That's Susan Kaplan,
professor of anthropology and director of the Pierry McMillan Arctic
Museum and Arctic Studies Center at Bowden College. They were
(12:00):
also using him because, first of all, he would go
to northwest Greenland and ask people to join his expedition.
But what he knew who he had got in return
were tremendous amounts of Western goods such as rifles and
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ammunition that they really valued. For instance, with the rifle,
here was a piece of technology that they could use
very effectively, and so they went home. And Peery's payment
to both the men and the women who were on
the expedition made them very wealthy, well off individuals in
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their own community. So Peery certainly used them, but they
were not without agency themselves. Despite being skilled hunters and
infamiliar terror tory, the a New Wheat weren't immune to
the anxieties of a mission like this. In their normal,
everyday lives, A New Wheat had no reason to venture
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far from land over sea ice, since the sea mammals
they hunted for food tended to hang out close to shore.
But Peery was asking them to leave land behind and
march hundreds of miles across the frozen ocean. From what
we can gather, they thought it was kind of crazy,
and they certainly got more and more nervous. The further
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out on the Polar Sea, Peery ventured and had them go.
They traveled on the Polar Sea, but close to shore.
The further out you get on the Polar Sea, fewer
marine mammals are going to be around, and the more
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dangerous it is because leads will open up and you
may get stuck in not be able to get back
to land. So they got very, very nervous, and there
are instances in the journals where you can see that
people like Donald McMillan is having to distract them and
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cajole them to continue going north. They didn't see the
point After Eta, the expedition's next stop was Cape Sheridan.
To get there, the Roosevelt had to cut through miles
of treacherous ice, some of which may have been eighty
to one ft thick. For most ships at the time,
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it would have been impossible to survive the maze of ice,
but the Roosevelt was designed to deal with these exact
types of obstacles. The ship barreled through the unforgiving waters
for weeks, finally arriving at Cape Sheridan on September five.
This would be the location of their winter base camp,
for the next few months. Cape Sheridan lies on the
(14:59):
north eastern coast of Canada's Ellesmere Island, located just a
few miles from modern day Alert, the northernmost permanently inhabited
place in the world. Sir George Strong Naires whom we
met in our third episode, wintered at Cape Sheridan, and
Perry made it his jumping off point on his previous
two expeditions. Now the plan was to set up a
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winter camp at the Cape. It wasn't a time to
rest and conserve strength for the final push to the
North Pole, though Perry expected everyone to prepare supplies, build equipment,
and get ready for victory at the camp. Henson again
proved invaluable to Parry. He joined New Wheat hunters on
two ten day excursions out in the elements to provide
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the camp with fresh meat, and when he wasn't out
on dog sleds, he was at the base camp building
over two dozen sledges and handling any other tasks that
came his way. But Henson was much more than just
someone who could manage physical tasks. He acted as a
liaison between Peery and the New Wheat on the voyage
and as the New Wheat People became more important to
(16:05):
Peri's organization, so too did Henson. Here's kaplan. Matthew Henson
becomes an absolutely indispensable part of Peri's expeditions. From what
we can tell, also a very charismatic individual, a lovely individual,
(16:27):
and also linguistically talented. He learns enough to the language
spoken by Inuit. From that perspective, you know, he's able
to communicate more effectively. Peery knows some language, but not
the way that Henson does. But also I think a
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combination of his charisma and also his race, the Intuit
look at him and they go, Okay, he's not like
these other Westerners who are white. His skin is darker.
It certainly isn't like ours, but it's he's sort of
more like us. And I think that he had an
easier acceptance with them. But he certainly was infolded into
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their community. He had a wonderful relationship with the in
New Weeds, and Peery counted on that relationship. The sledges
that Henson and the other members of the party built
were then used to move supplies and equipment miles from
Cape Sheridan to Cape Columbia. The northernmost point in all
of Canada. This is where the final push to the
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poll would begin. Let's take a break here, we'll be
right back. M On their way towards the North Pole
from Cape Columbia, Robert Peery and his entire team would
carry all of the equipment and supplies they need on sledges.
(18:00):
Pulling those sledges was the other vital part of the operation,
the dogs themselves. There is evidence of humans using sled
dogs as far back as nine thousand, five hundred years ago,
and for the Inuite it was a way of life.
They had taught hens in the skills years earlier. It
was the only way anyone would make it to the
North Pole and more importantly, back to safety. Henson described
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the animals as more wolf like than doglike. There were
over one hundred of these dogs on the period expedition,
and caring for them was a community effort. Henson in
particular became intimately familiar with dogcare. He fed them, kept
them stimulated, broke up fights, and observed their behavior. He
wrote at length about the troubles the men had with
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loose dogs rummaging through the camps. Provisions on previous expeditions,
and how there would be constant fights to break up
among the pack if the dogs weren't tied down. But
he also praised their intelligence and loyalty, later, writing without
the Eskimo dog, the story of the North Pole would
remain untold. Among Pieri's men. Only Henson could drive dog
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teams as well as the native people. Only Henson had
spent the time and effort in learning the skills. For
that reason, Peery probably decided early on, without revealing his
thoughts to anyone, that Henson would accompany him in the
Polar Party, the final group in Pierrie's relay system, the
only party that would stand at the North Pole. According
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to the Peery system, advanced parties set out from Cape
Columbia to break the trail and set up the temporary camps.
Peery appointed Henson, Bartlett, Borup, McMillan, and Marvin to lead
advance parties, each with two or three new wheat assistants
and four dog slids. Bartlett left first to break the trail,
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followed by others to build igloos and carry supplies to
the temporary camps. Peer's team would bring up the rear
after the trail had been smoothed and the camps established.
This strategy reduced the amount of gear Pierry needed to
carry and allowed him to increase his pace over a
prepared trail. Pierry had developed the system over his years
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in the Arctic. He had tried various methods of polar
travel and refined his plan down to be as energy
efficient as possible, but it was still dangerous and riddled
with potential pitfalls. He certainly took risks, but they were
calculated risks. He was not interested in risk taking forwards
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the thrillivance. People might say that just going to the
North Pole as a risk that seems crazy to take, though,
but he spent years trying and refining his equipment and
his techniques to do it. He experimented with every kind
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of sledge design you can imagine. He just planned everything.
We found when we were going through his papers in
the National Archives, that drafts of letters. There were these
little doodles in the margins where he's trying to design
the most perfect camp stoves that will burn the least
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amount of fuel as fast as possible, to turn ice
into boiling water so that his crews could have tea
and warm up I mean, he was just so meticulous
in his training and over the years just refined it
and refined it. And the same with decisions as to
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where he was going to leave the land and venture
out onto the polar seat. He was adjusting his approaches
and his locations, and he realized that he was trying
to get to the North Pole was too many people
and too much equipment, and so he paired that down.
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He was a student of how to get there, and
so he left as little to chance as he could.
On February, while darkness still enveloped the landscape, Bartlett's team
was the first to depart the Roosevelt. They went ahead
to break the trail for the advanced parties that followed.
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Peery's party left last, abandoning the safety of the ship
on February. All of the personnel rendezvous at Cape Columbia
on the last day of February, where Peery arranged the
dogs into nineteen teams of seven dogs apiece. From Cape Columbia,
Bartlett's and Borreps teams left first. Peer he wrote, One
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by one, the divisions drew out from the main army
of sledges and dog teams took up Bartlett's trail over
the ice and disappeared to the northward in the wind haze.
This departure of the procession was a noiseless one, for
the freezing east wind carried all sounds away. Peary, the
last man in the chain, found relatively easy traveling conditions
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thanks to his men's hard work. After three days of traveling,
he saw that Borip was on his way back to
Cape Columbia. Pierry sent Marvin's team back to join him,
with instructions to fetch additional fuel at Cape Columbia and
then rejoin the line of advanced parties. Everything was going
according to plan until he reached the big Lead, the
unpredictable stretch of black water that had blocked his way
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on his previous attempt at the pole. His team now
caught up to the remaining advanced parties, including Bartlett's pioneer
party that had also been stopped at the edge of
the water. No more progress could be made until they
could cross the lead. The five days of forced inaction
took a psychological toll on the men. I think that
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more of mental wear and tear was crowded into those
days then into all of the rest of the fifteen
months we were absent from civilization. Perry recalled. Once they
crossed the lead, the teams could travel twenty five miles
on a good day. Barip and Marvin reappeared with the
supplies of fuel. Again. The team spread out in a
chain across miles of ice, each building eigloos or laying
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caches of supplies, but with temperatures as low as fifty
degrees below zero and high winds and other calamities popping
up without warning, progress was not guaranteed. In mid March,
Pierry had to send McMillan and his dog team back
to base camp due to frostbite, but the others remained
in formation. At certain points, ice had built up in hummocks,
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forcing the men to break it up with pick axes
in order to move the sledges. As they worked to
clear the trail, the dogs would curl up and fall asleep.
As frustrated as Henson was about chipping away at ice
for hours at a time, he was even less enthusiastic
about having to wake up sleeping, temperamental dogs to get
back to work. He wrote, we would have to come
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back and start them, which was always the signal for
a fight or two. On March Ninete Peery told the
remaining team leaders Marvin, Bartlett, Borup, and Henson his plan
for the rest of their journey. After the next day's march,
Boraps team would turn back. Five marches after that, Marvin
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would turn around, and five marches after that, Bartlett's team
would return to base camp, leaving Peary, Henson, and the
four new wheat assistants Utah, a, Gingwa, Seaglu, and Uquia
to actually go to the North Pole. We'll talk more
about Perry's reasons for this decision in a later episode.
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The men who had traveled this far and had suffered
such extreme conditions were surely devastated that they would not
ultimately go to the pole themselves. They hid their true feelings, however,
and did not try to argue their case with Perry.
Laurap later remarked that I would have given my immortal
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soul to have gone on. As a matter of fact,
the commander lugged some of us a good deal farther
than necessary, knowing our feelings, but they stuck to the plan.
Around March twenty, according to protocol, Laura turned back, followed
by Marvin. On march. On April one, after reaching eighty
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seven degrees forty eight minutes north, Bartlett was told the
head back to base camp. That meant Peery, Henson, and
the four drivers were on their own for the final
one hundred and thirty nautical miles to the pole. Henson
would often be the one at the front of the party,
breaking the trail, so Peery and the new Wheat could
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follow from behind. Peery could barely walk at times due
to the pain in its feet, where frostbite had claimed
eight toes during his eight expedition. It's unclear when or
how often Peery had to ride on a sledge rather
than walk. Henson later wrote, the memory of those last
five marches from the farthest north of Captain Bartlett to
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the arrival of our party of the poll is a
memory of toil, fatigue, and exhaustion. But we were urged
on and encouraged by our relentless commander, who was himself
being scourged by the final lashings of the dominating influence
that had controlled his life. Though the fulfillment of a
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dream may have been in sight for Perry, the team
was soon reminded how little the polar world cares about
the goals of men. On April third, the team was
traveling through a section of moving ice, where flows could
crash against each other or suddenly pull away to leave
lanes of open water. As the men traveled over the
shifting floes, Pierry setting the pace half an hour ahead
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of the five other men, Henson struggled to get his
dog sled across a patch of ice. Suddenly, the ice
slipped from beneath Henson's feet and he plunged through the
crack into the freezing waters below. Henson knew it wouldn't
take long for waters like this to become an icy
tomb partially in the water. He struggled frantically to pull
(28:19):
himself up, but his gloved hands couldn't make purchase on
the ice. In just a few seconds, his heavy fur
clothing would become saturated with water and drag him beneath
the surface forever. Suddenly, Henson felt himself being grabbed at
the nape of the neck. With one hand, Utah pulled
Henson upward and back onto the solid surface, and with
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the other hand guided Henson's dogs and sled across the
fragile ice. Utah had undoubtedly saved Henson's life and their
chance of reaching the pole. That quick thinking heroism probably
didn't come as much of a shock to Perry or Henson.
Utah was already the expedition's most trust to guide and
a personal favorite of Perry. He'd proven himself more than
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capable during the n six expedition, and Pierry knew that
if he wanted to stake his claim at the Big Nail,
he'd need Utah by his side on occasions just like this.
Once out of the water, Henson acted quickly beating the
eyes out of his pants and changing into dry boots.
He and Utah continued on until they caught up with
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the rest of the party on April six nine. After
traveling more than four hundred miles over the frozen Arctic Sea,
the crew settled down to make camp, as they had
so many times before. When Henson asked what the name
of this camp would be, Pierry responded it would be
called Camp Morris k Jessup, after Peri's Arctic Club President,
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the last and most northerly camp on Earth, Henson recalled
as their leader, took his first round of observations that day.
Anticipation among the men grew, could they already have reached
their goal? Perious observations indicated that they were at eighty
nine degrees fifty seven minutes north, just three short nautical
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miles from the top of the earth. The North Pole
was all but theirs. After a few hours sleep in
his igloo, Perry wrote the famous words in his journal,
the poll at last, the prize of three centuries, my
dream and ambition for twenty years mine at last. I
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cannot bring myself to realize it. It seems all so
simple and commonplace. He also couldn't bring himself to even
write the word we, or team or us once in
his journal on that night. For Perry, it was his goal,
his journey, his achievement. Those selfishness is one explanation for
(30:52):
perious behavior, there could be another reason. According to the
account Henson told after the expedition, he was actually the
one who stepped foot on the North Pole first, not Peery.
As the lead driver. Most of the way, Henson was
forty five minutes ahead of period times, and when Peerry
reached eighty nine degrees fifty seven minutes north, three miles
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from the pole, his assistant had already beaten him. To it,
and then some that couldn't have made Peery happy. I
didn't know it at the time, Henson said in a
n interview, but I was in the lead breaking trail
that final morning, as I had been through the whole
last dash, and when Peery took his sights, we found
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out we had overshot the mark a couple of miles.
We went back. Then, Yes, sir, these here feet were
set down where no human being had ever put his
feet before. Though we may never know for sure who
actually took those first steps, we do know that on
the morning of April seven, Peary took an additional measurement
at the camp with a sexton and pan of mercury,
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lying flat on his stomach on the ice. When Perry
stood up with a resolute squaring of his jaws, Henson wrote,
I was sure that he was satisfied. Now. Henson moved
forward to congratulate his long time commander, knowing what the
achievement of his life's dream meant to him. With the
temperature at minus twenty nine degrees fahrenheit, Henson removed his
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warm fur glove and went to shake Peery's hand. Pierry
turned away. Perry spent the rest of the day, traveling
beyond the pole in different directions and taking more measurements
of their position. Upon returning to camp, Perry confirmed to
Henson and the others that they had indeed made it
to the pole. Together, the six men convened at ninety
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degrees north and built a mound of snow to mark
the spot. The flags were raised, pictures were taken, and
only after Henson and the new Wheat gave three cheers
for their leader did Peery shake each man's hand. History
had been made. We'll be right back. The irony of
(33:18):
spending almost twenty years trying to reach the North Pole
is that Perry didn't want to spend an extra second
more than absolutely necessary there. In fact, they were only
there for thirty hours. The men would soon face what
Henson would describe as seventeen days of haste, toil, and
misery as cannot be comprehended by the mind. Despite the
(33:42):
sheer physical test of the return trip, it was as
uneventful as a four d mile trek through thirty below
temperatures could possibly be. As the team finally got off
the frozen sea and back onto solid ground, Utah remarked
the devil is asleep or having trouble with his life,
or we should never have come back so easily. The
(34:05):
fact that their return went as smoothly as it did
is a credit to perious planning. The team was traveling
over trails that the relay sledges had already established, and
they reused the igloos they had built for their Polard journey.
Here's James Edward Mills, freelance journalist, independent producer, an author
of the book The Adventure Gap Changing the Face of
(34:25):
the Outdoors. Well, I mean it's all really high level reconnaissance.
I mean it was you know it also, you know,
just building to the technology. And when I say technology,
I mean like how much food, over how much time,
how big of a party to eat? I mean, in frankly,
it's not unlike how explorers trained for Everest or some
(34:48):
of the other big mountains you know around the Himalaya,
or even being able to make a good climb of
Denali or Korak and Cagla. I mean, like there's all
of these things that you need are and at the
turn of the century no one really knew how to
do it. That's a really good point. Yeah, I feel
like people kind of try and then they get to
a certain point, and then the next person tries and
(35:10):
they learn something new, and then it's kind of a
cumulative effort. Oh absolutely, you know, And that's I mean,
in many ways, it's kind of how it turns into
a race. And I think that, you know, we're there's
all this romantic pressure to be the first. But sadly,
you know, sometimes people get to where they're going out
of sheer blind luck as opposed to thoughtful, deliberate skill
(35:35):
and working really hard and establishing the things that they
need in order to be successful. In my opinion, that's
one of the main reasons why people die climbing big
mountains because of exposure, you know, and often rock falls happen,
but sometimes things happened simply because you're so wrapped up
in the summits that you forget that the goal was
(35:57):
to get back safely, you know, not just to make
it to the top. One of the things that I
really have to credit Pincidentarry for they took the time
to figure out how to do it right, they were
able to make it back safely. In April, at six am,
Peary was back at Cape Columbia. He was alive, and
he had reached his ultimate goal. He wrote in his diary,
(36:21):
my life work is accomplished. The thing which it was
intended from the beginning that I should do, the thing
which I believed could be done, and that I could do.
I have done. I have got the North Pole out
of my system. After twenty three years of effort, hard work, disappointments, hardships, privations,
(36:43):
more or less suffering, and some risks, I have won
the last great geographical prize, the North Pole, for the
credit of the United States. This work is the finish,
the cap and climax of nearly four hundred years of effort,
loss of life, and expenditure of fortunes by the civilized
(37:03):
nations of the world. And it has been accomplished in
a way that is thoroughly American. I am content. But
their celebration was soon tempered by tragedy. When they returned
to the Roosevelt, still stationed at Cape Sheridan, the crew
greeted them with terrible news. Ross Marvin, Puri's secretary assistant
(37:25):
and well liked advanced party leader, had drowned on his
return trip to base camp. Marvin had apparently gone ahead
of his two and new Wheek drivers during their journey.
As the men traveled to catch up to him, they
came across a break in some thin ice. They glimpsed
the top of Marvin's fur jacket under the water, but
(37:45):
nobody could be seen. They couldn't retrieve Marvin. With the
precarious ice and the lack of visibility, any attempt could
have led to them slipping through two, wrote Henson. He
it alone, and he passed into the great unknown alone,
bravely and honorably. He is the last of Earth's grade martyrs.
(38:08):
He is home, His work is done. He is where
he longed to be. The sailor is home in the sea.
There must have also been an added bitter sweet feeling
for Henson, who was celebrating his team's incredible accomplishment aboard
the Roosevelt, having narrowly avoided Marvin's fate just a few
weeks earlier. While Borup and McMillan conducted scientific work, Henson
(38:33):
and Perry remained on the Roosevelt, and Perry's attitude towards
his loyal assistant took a strange turn. He barely acknowledged
their achievement, much less expressed as gratitude for the work
Henson had helped make possible. I would catch a fleeting
glimpse of Commander Perry, but not once in all that
time did he speak a word to me, Henson wrote.
(38:55):
Then he spoke to me in the most ordinary, matter
of fact way, and ordered me to get to work.
Not a word about the North Pole or anything connected
with it. Simply there's enough wood left, and I would
like to have you make a couple of sledges and men,
the broken ones. I hope you're feeling all right. As
the ice broke up in summer, the Roosevelt set a
(39:16):
return course home. On Augustine, they stopped in Eta to
drop off the new wheat families and pay them. Utah
received a rowboat, a rifle, a knife, a sledge, tobacco,
and a few other Western items for his year of work.
After two decades of getting to know the native people,
(39:37):
their customs, and their stories, Peery knew he'd probably never
see them again. In Ita, Peery also found Harry Whitney,
a wealthy American big game hunter who had come up
the previous year on the Roosevelt supply ship. During the
intervening months, he had lived with the inu wheat and
(39:58):
tried to bag polar bears, walrus and musk ox for
his trophy room. Whitney told Perry news that must have
come as an utter shock. Frederick Cook, the surgeon on
a couple of Perry's early expeditions, was about to announce
to the world that he had reached the North Pole,
and he said he had done so on April one,
(40:21):
almost a full year before Pierry. Whitney said he had
run into Cook on April eighteenth nine, struggling over the
ice from Ellesmere Island. He had two young and new
wheat guides. It took a shoe and appella with him.
When Whitney met up with the group, Cook said he
had reached the North Pole the previous year. Whitney was
(40:44):
certainly stunned too. Unlike Peery's huge send off from New York,
there had been little publicity in advance of Cook's voyage.
Cook left his journals from the trip with Whitney and
then raised south to catch a ship to Copenhagen, where
he told the world of his triumph. But Henson and Peery,
after experiencing the excruciating journey themselves and hearing Whitney's account.
(41:07):
I thought there was just no way Cook could have
done it, Hanson recalled. We knew Dr Cook and his abilities.
He had been the surgeon on two of Perry's expeditions,
and aside from his medical ability, we had no faith
in him whatsoever. He was not even good for a
day's work, and the idea of his making such an
(41:28):
astounding claim as having reached the pole was so ludicrous
that after our laugh we dropped the matter altogether. Peary
said little, but when Whitney attempted to bring some of
Cook's records and other possessions on board the Roosevelt for
the journey home, he forbade it. On August, the Roosevelt
(41:50):
left Cape York, and on September five they docked in
Indian Harbor, Labrador. There was a telegraph station there, and
this was Peary's first chance to get the word of
his accomplishment out to the wider world. His first message
was to his wife Josephine, simply saying half made good.
At last, I have the pole, am well. The next
(42:13):
one to hl Bridgeman of the Perie Arctic Club, which
just read son. This was Peri's code word for successfully
reaching the Pole. Another lengthier message was more theatrical stars
and stripes snailed to the North Pole. The Roosevelt continued
down to Battle Harbor, where two reporters from the Associated
(42:35):
Press arrived for the sensational story. Twenty three newspaper correspondents followed.
All there was left for Peri to do was rest
on his laurels, or so he thought. The Quest for
(43:05):
the North Pole is hosted by Me cat Long. This
episode was researched by Me and written by j Sarafino,
with fact checking by Austin Thompson. The executive producers are
Aaron McCarthy and Tyler Klang. The supervising producer is Dylan Fagin.
The show is edited by Dylan Fagin and Lowell Berlante.
Thanks to our experts Edward Larson, Susan Kaplan, and James
(43:27):
Edward Mills for transcripts, a glossary, and to learn more
about this episode, visit Mental Flaws dot com slash podcast.
The Quest for the North Pole is a production of
I Heart Radio and Mental Floss. For more podcasts from
my heart Radio, check out the I heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. For more
(44:02):
podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
The Quest for the North Pole is a production of
I Heart Radio and Mental Floss. It's April six and
Robert E. Peary and his assistant Matthew Henson are settling
in at yet another camp during their third attempt to
reach the North Pole. It's something they've done countless times
(00:24):
during the course of their journeys together, but on this
otherwise unremarkable stretch of ice, their once elusive goal is
now within reach. As they and the new Wheat guides
unpacked their supplies, tend to the dogs, and begin food preparations,
Peery unfurls an American flag that his wife Josephine, had
sewn for him years earlier. He fastens it to the
(00:46):
top of the camp's igloo. Henson watches as the star
spangled silk springs to life on a polar breeze, a
symbol of their triumph. When Peery takes the first measurements
of their location, his instruments give him a position of
eighty nine degrees fifty seven minutes north. They're just a
(01:07):
hair's breadth away from true north at ninety degrees. It
won't be long now. With success all but secured, Henson
seeks a well earned moment with Perry. Henson later remembers
feeling that the time had come, I ungloved my right
hand and went forward to congratulate him on the success
of our eighteen years of effort. But a gust of
(01:30):
wind blew something into his eye or else. The burning
pain caused by his prolonged look at the reflection of
the limb of the sun forced him to turn aside,
and with both hands covering his eyes, he gave us
orders not to let him sleep for more than four hours.
There's still more measurements to be taken, and Perry is
seemingly in no mood to delay his work with platitudes.
(01:53):
And as for the spurned handshake, well, this isn't the
first time Perry refuses to share his victory with his
most valued assistant. It's a pattern that will color their
working relationship for the rest of their lives. After traveling
around the area and taking more readings, Perry returns to
camp on April seven and makes the official announcement, we
(02:15):
will plant the stars and stripes at the north Pole.
Pera's American flag is placed at the proper location near
true North, and the group gathers for a photo to
capture the moment. They are now the first men to
reach the top of the world, or so they believe.
For Robert Perry and Matthew Henson, it was the culmination
(02:37):
of seven polar expeditions together nearly two decades of trying
for a barely tangible spot on the icy landscape. In
this episode, we'll look at how they did it. From
(02:58):
Mental Floss and I our radio. This is the Quest
for the North Pole. I'm your host Cat Long, science
editor at Mental Floss and this is episode six third
Times the Charm. In July, Robert E. Peary was fifty two,
(03:23):
Matthew Henson was forty one. Both had been battling the
Arctic in search of icy glory for almost twenty years.
Each time they had traveled to the harsh region to
attack the North Pole, they had failed, and when they
had returned home it had taken them longer to regain
their physical and mental strength. Still, they weren't ready to
give up the quest. As Peery later wrote, I realized
(03:47):
that the project was something too big to die. Pierry
convinced his rich donors in the Perio Arctic Club that
he would succeed this time. Failure was inconceivable. All of
the hard won experience and knowledge from his earlier polar
forays had led to this moment, pointing the way toward
(04:07):
his achievement and for the donors a namesake island or glacier.
The club's president, Morris K. Jessup, assured Perry he would
be given the means for another trip north Perry recalled
his promise meant that I should not have to beg
all the money in small sums from a more or
less reluctant world. Maybe the fact that Perry had named
(04:30):
what was thought to be the northernmost point of land
in the world, Cape Morris Jessup had something to do
with it. Peery's less than successful attempts to reach the
North Pole had dried up other funding streams, but Arctic
fever still raged among the public. Pierry signed a deal
with the New York Times to break the story of
his success. When the time came, and other newspapers breathlessly
(04:52):
reported the preparations for Perry's journey. This was the era
of the penny press, when an explosion and of cheap
newspapers competed for content like a gilded age Netflix or Amazon.
They also created exciting stories to drive their circulations through
the roof. Here's Edward J. Larson, historian and author of
(05:14):
most recently, To the Edges of the Earth, the Race
for the Three Polls, and the climax of the Age
of Exploration. So one thing that would give them content
that was enormously popular were tales of daring do which
polar exploration stood right at the top. They were pushing
(05:35):
these expeditions because there was such a popular interesting And
then it was the cycle. People are interested in it
because they're told they're interested in it, they read about it.
You know, you get going in a cycle. So this
was in many ways an artificial goal, but not a
meaningless gold in the sense that it tested the explorer
(05:56):
and it proved the worthiness, you'd say, of a country
in a highly nationalistic period, and this was part of
showing that prowess. It's like countries compete today to win
the most Olympic medals on the idea that somehow that
showed something. This was the same sort of thing. This
was the Olympic gold of the day, and no one
(06:18):
took more pride in their expedition than the President of
the United States, Theodore Roosevelt. Pierry and Roosevelt were two
of a kind. They believed in the value of rugged
pursuits for building man and country. Pierry even named his
custom designed expedition ship after t R. The Roosevelt departed
from the pier at East twenty four Street on July six,
(06:41):
in the middle of a deadly heat wave. Peery wrote
about the weather and his journal, noting it was an
interesting coincidence that the day on which we started for
the coldest spot on Earth was about the hottest which
New York had known in years. But New Yorkers weren't
the type of people to let blistering heat slow them down.
That pisens lined up to watch the Roosevelt sail up
(07:02):
the East River, with Pierri's handpicked team waving from the deck.
Matthew Henson would again serve as Pirie's senior assistant and
right hand man. Robert Bartlett returned as the Roosevelt's captain.
Ross Marvin signed on as Pieri's secretary for the second time,
and three other members of the ship's crew rejoined. New
(07:23):
members included Donald McMillan, a Bowden College graduate and teacher,
and Yale grad George Borup as Perie's assistants. As the
vessel made its way up the river, factories blew their
whistles to see them off. Theodore Roosevelt's presidential yacht, the Mayflower,
followed suit. Even the prisoners at Blackwell Island lined up
(07:44):
outside the penitentiary to cheer them on. The Next day,
the Roosevelt docked at Oyster Bay, on the north shore
of Long Island, where tr had a summer home. Roosevelt
treated Peery, his wife Josephine, and members of the Perie
Arctic Club to lunch. The President was a curious adventurer
and much the same mold as Peery, and it's easy
(08:05):
to imagine t R himself tagging along on the expedition
if he hadn't had a country to run. Roosevelt, a
fan boy of big ships if there ever was one,
took this lunch as an opportunity to inspect every inch
of his namesake vessel before it departed. Decked Out in
an all white suit, he spent an hour shaking every
(08:26):
hand he came across, powering through the engine room, petting
all of the sleddogs on board, and admiring Peery's cramped
yellow pine cabin, complete with its library of Arctic books
and equipment. At the end of the lunch, Peery all
but promised Roosevelt that he would reach the North Pole.
No matter what, Mr President, I shall put into this
(08:47):
effort everything there is in me, physical, mental, and moral,
he said. Roosevelt replied, I believe in you, Perry, and
I believe in your success if it is within the
possibility of in Peery felt no qualms about what lay ahead.
He and his team had made every preparation and taken
(09:07):
every possible obstacle into account. Everything they had to do
was done, he wrote. Perhaps this feeling of surety was
because every possible contingency had been discounted. Perhaps because the
setbacks and knockout blows received in the past had dulled
my sense of danger. Whether it was enough to get
(09:28):
them to the North Pole this time would be up
to fate. From Oyster Bay, the Roosevelt traveled the familiar
route to Sydney, Nova Scotia, for its convenient proximity to
coal supplies that the ship took on board. By July seventeenth,
the Roosevelt had cleared North Sydney, and on August one,
they made it to Cape York, Greenland, an area Peery
(09:49):
described as the dividing line between the civilized world on
one side and the Arctic world on the other. But
to put it in perspective, Peery wrote that Cape York
is farther from the North Pole than New York City
is from Tampa, Florida. There was still a long way
to go. Just a few weeks earlier, throngs of well
wishers had cheered the expedition on as they cut through
(10:12):
New York's East River, one of the world's busiest arteries
of commerce. Now, as the Roosevelt approached the tree Less Cape,
the explorers were greeted by a handful of the new
wheat and kayaks. But these tiny communities at the edge
of Greenland's ice sheet would make or break Pierri's dream.
Pierri's men bartered with the inw wheat for the essential
(10:34):
equipment they couldn't get back home. Additional dogs, bear skins,
sealskin whips, and walrus blubber. From Cape York, they traveled
north to Eta, a village that Henson and Pierri had
visited on previous expeditions, where they greeted the inw wheat
families who had helped them on so many of their
Arctic efforts. Henson was delighted to see old friends who
(10:56):
had nicknamed him Marie Paluk, the kind one. Utah, his
most trusted and new wheat assistant, was the leader of
the dozens of hunters in his community. The people looked
up to him and followed his advice. If Utah agreed
to help Pierry and Henson, others would too. As he
had before, Peery hired the in New wheat men to
(11:17):
hunt and drive sledges, and the men's wives to sew fur,
clothing and prepare food. Whole families clambered onto the Roosevelt's
deck for the adventure. The new wheats familiarity with the
polar conditions, their survival skills, and their willingness to work
hard was invaluable to Peery. In return, Peary paid them
(11:38):
in trade goods that were otherwise hard to come by
in Greenland. Their relationship was transactional. He respected them, but
you know he was also using them. That's Susan Kaplan,
professor of anthropology and director of the Pierry McMillan Arctic
Museum and Arctic Studies Center at Bowden College. They were
(12:00):
also using him because, first of all, he would go
to northwest Greenland and ask people to join his expedition.
But what he knew who he had got in return
were tremendous amounts of Western goods such as rifles and
(12:23):
ammunition that they really valued. For instance, with the rifle,
here was a piece of technology that they could use
very effectively, and so they went home. And Peery's payment
to both the men and the women who were on
the expedition made them very wealthy, well off individuals in
(12:48):
their own community. So Peery certainly used them, but they
were not without agency themselves. Despite being skilled hunters and
infamiliar terror tory, the a New Wheat weren't immune to
the anxieties of a mission like this. In their normal,
everyday lives, A New Wheat had no reason to venture
(13:09):
far from land over sea ice, since the sea mammals
they hunted for food tended to hang out close to shore.
But Peery was asking them to leave land behind and
march hundreds of miles across the frozen ocean. From what
we can gather, they thought it was kind of crazy,
and they certainly got more and more nervous. The further
(13:34):
out on the Polar Sea, Peery ventured and had them go.
They traveled on the Polar Sea, but close to shore.
The further out you get on the Polar Sea, fewer
marine mammals are going to be around, and the more
(13:54):
dangerous it is because leads will open up and you
may get stuck in not be able to get back
to land. So they got very, very nervous, and there
are instances in the journals where you can see that
people like Donald McMillan is having to distract them and
(14:15):
cajole them to continue going north. They didn't see the
point After Eta, the expedition's next stop was Cape Sheridan.
To get there, the Roosevelt had to cut through miles
of treacherous ice, some of which may have been eighty
to one ft thick. For most ships at the time,
(14:36):
it would have been impossible to survive the maze of ice,
but the Roosevelt was designed to deal with these exact
types of obstacles. The ship barreled through the unforgiving waters
for weeks, finally arriving at Cape Sheridan on September five.
This would be the location of their winter base camp,
for the next few months. Cape Sheridan lies on the
(14:59):
north eastern coast of Canada's Ellesmere Island, located just a
few miles from modern day Alert, the northernmost permanently inhabited
place in the world. Sir George Strong Naires whom we
met in our third episode, wintered at Cape Sheridan, and
Perry made it his jumping off point on his previous
two expeditions. Now the plan was to set up a
(15:21):
winter camp at the Cape. It wasn't a time to
rest and conserve strength for the final push to the
North Pole, though Perry expected everyone to prepare supplies, build equipment,
and get ready for victory at the camp. Henson again
proved invaluable to Parry. He joined New Wheat hunters on
two ten day excursions out in the elements to provide
(15:44):
the camp with fresh meat, and when he wasn't out
on dog sleds, he was at the base camp building
over two dozen sledges and handling any other tasks that
came his way. But Henson was much more than just
someone who could manage physical tasks. He acted as a
liaison between Peery and the New Wheat on the voyage
and as the New Wheat People became more important to
(16:05):
Peri's organization, so too did Henson. Here's kaplan. Matthew Henson
becomes an absolutely indispensable part of Peri's expeditions. From what
we can tell, also a very charismatic individual, a lovely individual,
(16:27):
and also linguistically talented. He learns enough to the language
spoken by Inuit. From that perspective, you know, he's able
to communicate more effectively. Peery knows some language, but not
the way that Henson does. But also I think a
(16:47):
combination of his charisma and also his race, the Intuit
look at him and they go, Okay, he's not like
these other Westerners who are white. His skin is darker.
It certainly isn't like ours, but it's he's sort of
more like us. And I think that he had an
easier acceptance with them. But he certainly was infolded into
(17:15):
their community. He had a wonderful relationship with the in
New Weeds, and Peery counted on that relationship. The sledges
that Henson and the other members of the party built
were then used to move supplies and equipment miles from
Cape Sheridan to Cape Columbia. The northernmost point in all
of Canada. This is where the final push to the
(17:37):
poll would begin. Let's take a break here, we'll be
right back. M On their way towards the North Pole
from Cape Columbia, Robert Peery and his entire team would
carry all of the equipment and supplies they need on sledges.
(18:00):
Pulling those sledges was the other vital part of the operation,
the dogs themselves. There is evidence of humans using sled
dogs as far back as nine thousand, five hundred years ago,
and for the Inuite it was a way of life.
They had taught hens in the skills years earlier. It
was the only way anyone would make it to the
North Pole and more importantly, back to safety. Henson described
(18:24):
the animals as more wolf like than doglike. There were
over one hundred of these dogs on the period expedition,
and caring for them was a community effort. Henson in
particular became intimately familiar with dogcare. He fed them, kept
them stimulated, broke up fights, and observed their behavior. He
wrote at length about the troubles the men had with
(18:47):
loose dogs rummaging through the camps. Provisions on previous expeditions,
and how there would be constant fights to break up
among the pack if the dogs weren't tied down. But
he also praised their intelligence and loyalty, later, writing without
the Eskimo dog, the story of the North Pole would
remain untold. Among Pieri's men. Only Henson could drive dog
(19:09):
teams as well as the native people. Only Henson had
spent the time and effort in learning the skills. For
that reason, Peery probably decided early on, without revealing his
thoughts to anyone, that Henson would accompany him in the
Polar Party, the final group in Pierrie's relay system, the
only party that would stand at the North Pole. According
(19:32):
to the Peery system, advanced parties set out from Cape
Columbia to break the trail and set up the temporary camps.
Peery appointed Henson, Bartlett, Borup, McMillan, and Marvin to lead
advance parties, each with two or three new wheat assistants
and four dog slids. Bartlett left first to break the trail,
(19:53):
followed by others to build igloos and carry supplies to
the temporary camps. Peer's team would bring up the rear
after the trail had been smoothed and the camps established.
This strategy reduced the amount of gear Pierry needed to
carry and allowed him to increase his pace over a
prepared trail. Pierry had developed the system over his years
(20:13):
in the Arctic. He had tried various methods of polar
travel and refined his plan down to be as energy
efficient as possible, but it was still dangerous and riddled
with potential pitfalls. He certainly took risks, but they were
calculated risks. He was not interested in risk taking forwards
(20:36):
the thrillivance. People might say that just going to the
North Pole as a risk that seems crazy to take, though,
but he spent years trying and refining his equipment and
his techniques to do it. He experimented with every kind
(20:59):
of sledge design you can imagine. He just planned everything.
We found when we were going through his papers in
the National Archives, that drafts of letters. There were these
little doodles in the margins where he's trying to design
the most perfect camp stoves that will burn the least
(21:22):
amount of fuel as fast as possible, to turn ice
into boiling water so that his crews could have tea
and warm up I mean, he was just so meticulous
in his training and over the years just refined it
and refined it. And the same with decisions as to
(21:45):
where he was going to leave the land and venture
out onto the polar seat. He was adjusting his approaches
and his locations, and he realized that he was trying
to get to the North Pole was too many people
and too much equipment, and so he paired that down.
(22:07):
He was a student of how to get there, and
so he left as little to chance as he could.
On February, while darkness still enveloped the landscape, Bartlett's team
was the first to depart the Roosevelt. They went ahead
to break the trail for the advanced parties that followed.
(22:28):
Peery's party left last, abandoning the safety of the ship
on February. All of the personnel rendezvous at Cape Columbia
on the last day of February, where Peery arranged the
dogs into nineteen teams of seven dogs apiece. From Cape Columbia,
Bartlett's and Borreps teams left first. Peer he wrote, One
(22:52):
by one, the divisions drew out from the main army
of sledges and dog teams took up Bartlett's trail over
the ice and disappeared to the northward in the wind haze.
This departure of the procession was a noiseless one, for
the freezing east wind carried all sounds away. Peary, the
last man in the chain, found relatively easy traveling conditions
(23:14):
thanks to his men's hard work. After three days of traveling,
he saw that Borip was on his way back to
Cape Columbia. Pierry sent Marvin's team back to join him,
with instructions to fetch additional fuel at Cape Columbia and
then rejoin the line of advanced parties. Everything was going
according to plan until he reached the big Lead, the
unpredictable stretch of black water that had blocked his way
(23:37):
on his previous attempt at the pole. His team now
caught up to the remaining advanced parties, including Bartlett's pioneer
party that had also been stopped at the edge of
the water. No more progress could be made until they
could cross the lead. The five days of forced inaction
took a psychological toll on the men. I think that
(23:58):
more of mental wear and tear was crowded into those
days then into all of the rest of the fifteen
months we were absent from civilization. Perry recalled. Once they
crossed the lead, the teams could travel twenty five miles
on a good day. Barip and Marvin reappeared with the
supplies of fuel. Again. The team spread out in a
chain across miles of ice, each building eigloos or laying
(24:21):
caches of supplies, but with temperatures as low as fifty
degrees below zero and high winds and other calamities popping
up without warning, progress was not guaranteed. In mid March,
Pierry had to send McMillan and his dog team back
to base camp due to frostbite, but the others remained
in formation. At certain points, ice had built up in hummocks,
(24:44):
forcing the men to break it up with pick axes
in order to move the sledges. As they worked to
clear the trail, the dogs would curl up and fall asleep.
As frustrated as Henson was about chipping away at ice
for hours at a time, he was even less enthusiastic
about having to wake up sleeping, temperamental dogs to get
back to work. He wrote, we would have to come
(25:06):
back and start them, which was always the signal for
a fight or two. On March Ninete Peery told the
remaining team leaders Marvin, Bartlett, Borup, and Henson his plan
for the rest of their journey. After the next day's march,
Boraps team would turn back. Five marches after that, Marvin
(25:27):
would turn around, and five marches after that, Bartlett's team
would return to base camp, leaving Peary, Henson, and the
four new wheat assistants Utah, a, Gingwa, Seaglu, and Uquia
to actually go to the North Pole. We'll talk more
about Perry's reasons for this decision in a later episode.
(25:50):
The men who had traveled this far and had suffered
such extreme conditions were surely devastated that they would not
ultimately go to the pole themselves. They hid their true feelings, however,
and did not try to argue their case with Perry.
Laurap later remarked that I would have given my immortal
(26:10):
soul to have gone on. As a matter of fact,
the commander lugged some of us a good deal farther
than necessary, knowing our feelings, but they stuck to the plan.
Around March twenty, according to protocol, Laura turned back, followed
by Marvin. On march. On April one, after reaching eighty
(26:31):
seven degrees forty eight minutes north, Bartlett was told the
head back to base camp. That meant Peery, Henson, and
the four drivers were on their own for the final
one hundred and thirty nautical miles to the pole. Henson
would often be the one at the front of the party,
breaking the trail, so Peery and the new Wheat could
(26:51):
follow from behind. Peery could barely walk at times due
to the pain in its feet, where frostbite had claimed
eight toes during his eight expedition. It's unclear when or
how often Peery had to ride on a sledge rather
than walk. Henson later wrote, the memory of those last
five marches from the farthest north of Captain Bartlett to
(27:14):
the arrival of our party of the poll is a
memory of toil, fatigue, and exhaustion. But we were urged
on and encouraged by our relentless commander, who was himself
being scourged by the final lashings of the dominating influence
that had controlled his life. Though the fulfillment of a
(27:35):
dream may have been in sight for Perry, the team
was soon reminded how little the polar world cares about
the goals of men. On April third, the team was
traveling through a section of moving ice, where flows could
crash against each other or suddenly pull away to leave
lanes of open water. As the men traveled over the
shifting floes, Pierry setting the pace half an hour ahead
(27:58):
of the five other men, Henson struggled to get his
dog sled across a patch of ice. Suddenly, the ice
slipped from beneath Henson's feet and he plunged through the
crack into the freezing waters below. Henson knew it wouldn't
take long for waters like this to become an icy
tomb partially in the water. He struggled frantically to pull
(28:19):
himself up, but his gloved hands couldn't make purchase on
the ice. In just a few seconds, his heavy fur
clothing would become saturated with water and drag him beneath
the surface forever. Suddenly, Henson felt himself being grabbed at
the nape of the neck. With one hand, Utah pulled
Henson upward and back onto the solid surface, and with
(28:41):
the other hand guided Henson's dogs and sled across the
fragile ice. Utah had undoubtedly saved Henson's life and their
chance of reaching the pole. That quick thinking heroism probably
didn't come as much of a shock to Perry or Henson.
Utah was already the expedition's most trust to guide and
a personal favorite of Perry. He'd proven himself more than
(29:04):
capable during the n six expedition, and Pierry knew that
if he wanted to stake his claim at the Big Nail,
he'd need Utah by his side on occasions just like this.
Once out of the water, Henson acted quickly beating the
eyes out of his pants and changing into dry boots.
He and Utah continued on until they caught up with
(29:24):
the rest of the party on April six nine. After
traveling more than four hundred miles over the frozen Arctic Sea,
the crew settled down to make camp, as they had
so many times before. When Henson asked what the name
of this camp would be, Pierry responded it would be
called Camp Morris k Jessup, after Peri's Arctic Club President,
(29:47):
the last and most northerly camp on Earth, Henson recalled
as their leader, took his first round of observations that day.
Anticipation among the men grew, could they already have reached
their goal? Perious observations indicated that they were at eighty
nine degrees fifty seven minutes north, just three short nautical
(30:09):
miles from the top of the earth. The North Pole
was all but theirs. After a few hours sleep in
his igloo, Perry wrote the famous words in his journal,
the poll at last, the prize of three centuries, my
dream and ambition for twenty years mine at last. I
(30:30):
cannot bring myself to realize it. It seems all so
simple and commonplace. He also couldn't bring himself to even
write the word we, or team or us once in
his journal on that night. For Perry, it was his goal,
his journey, his achievement. Those selfishness is one explanation for
(30:52):
perious behavior, there could be another reason. According to the
account Henson told after the expedition, he was actually the
one who stepped foot on the North Pole first, not Peery.
As the lead driver. Most of the way, Henson was
forty five minutes ahead of period times, and when Peerry
reached eighty nine degrees fifty seven minutes north, three miles
(31:14):
from the pole, his assistant had already beaten him. To it,
and then some that couldn't have made Peery happy. I
didn't know it at the time, Henson said in a
n interview, but I was in the lead breaking trail
that final morning, as I had been through the whole
last dash, and when Peery took his sights, we found
(31:35):
out we had overshot the mark a couple of miles.
We went back. Then, Yes, sir, these here feet were
set down where no human being had ever put his
feet before. Though we may never know for sure who
actually took those first steps, we do know that on
the morning of April seven, Peary took an additional measurement
at the camp with a sexton and pan of mercury,
(31:57):
lying flat on his stomach on the ice. When Perry
stood up with a resolute squaring of his jaws, Henson wrote,
I was sure that he was satisfied. Now. Henson moved
forward to congratulate his long time commander, knowing what the
achievement of his life's dream meant to him. With the
temperature at minus twenty nine degrees fahrenheit, Henson removed his
(32:22):
warm fur glove and went to shake Peery's hand. Pierry
turned away. Perry spent the rest of the day, traveling
beyond the pole in different directions and taking more measurements
of their position. Upon returning to camp, Perry confirmed to
Henson and the others that they had indeed made it
to the pole. Together, the six men convened at ninety
(32:46):
degrees north and built a mound of snow to mark
the spot. The flags were raised, pictures were taken, and
only after Henson and the new Wheat gave three cheers
for their leader did Peery shake each man's hand. History
had been made. We'll be right back. The irony of
(33:18):
spending almost twenty years trying to reach the North Pole
is that Perry didn't want to spend an extra second
more than absolutely necessary there. In fact, they were only
there for thirty hours. The men would soon face what
Henson would describe as seventeen days of haste, toil, and
misery as cannot be comprehended by the mind. Despite the
(33:42):
sheer physical test of the return trip, it was as
uneventful as a four d mile trek through thirty below
temperatures could possibly be. As the team finally got off
the frozen sea and back onto solid ground, Utah remarked
the devil is asleep or having trouble with his life,
or we should never have come back so easily. The
(34:05):
fact that their return went as smoothly as it did
is a credit to perious planning. The team was traveling
over trails that the relay sledges had already established, and
they reused the igloos they had built for their Polard journey.
Here's James Edward Mills, freelance journalist, independent producer, an author
of the book The Adventure Gap Changing the Face of
(34:25):
the Outdoors. Well, I mean it's all really high level reconnaissance.
I mean it was you know it also, you know,
just building to the technology. And when I say technology,
I mean like how much food, over how much time,
how big of a party to eat? I mean, in frankly,
it's not unlike how explorers trained for Everest or some
(34:48):
of the other big mountains you know around the Himalaya,
or even being able to make a good climb of
Denali or Korak and Cagla. I mean, like there's all
of these things that you need are and at the
turn of the century no one really knew how to
do it. That's a really good point. Yeah, I feel
like people kind of try and then they get to
a certain point, and then the next person tries and
(35:10):
they learn something new, and then it's kind of a
cumulative effort. Oh absolutely, you know, And that's I mean,
in many ways, it's kind of how it turns into
a race. And I think that, you know, we're there's
all this romantic pressure to be the first. But sadly,
you know, sometimes people get to where they're going out
of sheer blind luck as opposed to thoughtful, deliberate skill
(35:35):
and working really hard and establishing the things that they
need in order to be successful. In my opinion, that's
one of the main reasons why people die climbing big
mountains because of exposure, you know, and often rock falls happen,
but sometimes things happened simply because you're so wrapped up
in the summits that you forget that the goal was
(35:57):
to get back safely, you know, not just to make
it to the top. One of the things that I
really have to credit Pincidentarry for they took the time
to figure out how to do it right, they were
able to make it back safely. In April, at six am,
Peary was back at Cape Columbia. He was alive, and
he had reached his ultimate goal. He wrote in his diary,
(36:21):
my life work is accomplished. The thing which it was
intended from the beginning that I should do, the thing
which I believed could be done, and that I could do.
I have done. I have got the North Pole out
of my system. After twenty three years of effort, hard work, disappointments, hardships, privations,
(36:43):
more or less suffering, and some risks, I have won
the last great geographical prize, the North Pole, for the
credit of the United States. This work is the finish,
the cap and climax of nearly four hundred years of effort,
loss of life, and expenditure of fortunes by the civilized
(37:03):
nations of the world. And it has been accomplished in
a way that is thoroughly American. I am content. But
their celebration was soon tempered by tragedy. When they returned
to the Roosevelt, still stationed at Cape Sheridan, the crew
greeted them with terrible news. Ross Marvin, Puri's secretary assistant
(37:25):
and well liked advanced party leader, had drowned on his
return trip to base camp. Marvin had apparently gone ahead
of his two and new Wheek drivers during their journey.
As the men traveled to catch up to him, they
came across a break in some thin ice. They glimpsed
the top of Marvin's fur jacket under the water, but
(37:45):
nobody could be seen. They couldn't retrieve Marvin. With the
precarious ice and the lack of visibility, any attempt could
have led to them slipping through two, wrote Henson. He
it alone, and he passed into the great unknown alone,
bravely and honorably. He is the last of Earth's grade martyrs.
(38:08):
He is home, His work is done. He is where
he longed to be. The sailor is home in the sea.
There must have also been an added bitter sweet feeling
for Henson, who was celebrating his team's incredible accomplishment aboard
the Roosevelt, having narrowly avoided Marvin's fate just a few
weeks earlier. While Borup and McMillan conducted scientific work, Henson
(38:33):
and Perry remained on the Roosevelt, and Perry's attitude towards
his loyal assistant took a strange turn. He barely acknowledged
their achievement, much less expressed as gratitude for the work
Henson had helped make possible. I would catch a fleeting
glimpse of Commander Perry, but not once in all that
time did he speak a word to me, Henson wrote.
(38:55):
Then he spoke to me in the most ordinary, matter
of fact way, and ordered me to get to work.
Not a word about the North Pole or anything connected
with it. Simply there's enough wood left, and I would
like to have you make a couple of sledges and men,
the broken ones. I hope you're feeling all right. As
the ice broke up in summer, the Roosevelt set a
(39:16):
return course home. On Augustine, they stopped in Eta to
drop off the new wheat families and pay them. Utah
received a rowboat, a rifle, a knife, a sledge, tobacco,
and a few other Western items for his year of work.
After two decades of getting to know the native people,
(39:37):
their customs, and their stories, Peery knew he'd probably never
see them again. In Ita, Peery also found Harry Whitney,
a wealthy American big game hunter who had come up
the previous year on the Roosevelt supply ship. During the
intervening months, he had lived with the inu wheat and
(39:58):
tried to bag polar bears, walrus and musk ox for
his trophy room. Whitney told Perry news that must have
come as an utter shock. Frederick Cook, the surgeon on
a couple of Perry's early expeditions, was about to announce
to the world that he had reached the North Pole,
and he said he had done so on April one,
(40:21):
almost a full year before Pierry. Whitney said he had
run into Cook on April eighteenth nine, struggling over the
ice from Ellesmere Island. He had two young and new
wheat guides. It took a shoe and appella with him.
When Whitney met up with the group, Cook said he
had reached the North Pole the previous year. Whitney was
(40:44):
certainly stunned too. Unlike Peery's huge send off from New York,
there had been little publicity in advance of Cook's voyage.
Cook left his journals from the trip with Whitney and
then raised south to catch a ship to Copenhagen, where
he told the world of his triumph. But Henson and Peery,
after experiencing the excruciating journey themselves and hearing Whitney's account.
(41:07):
I thought there was just no way Cook could have
done it, Hanson recalled. We knew Dr Cook and his abilities.
He had been the surgeon on two of Perry's expeditions,
and aside from his medical ability, we had no faith
in him whatsoever. He was not even good for a
day's work, and the idea of his making such an
(41:28):
astounding claim as having reached the pole was so ludicrous
that after our laugh we dropped the matter altogether. Peary
said little, but when Whitney attempted to bring some of
Cook's records and other possessions on board the Roosevelt for
the journey home, he forbade it. On August, the Roosevelt
(41:50):
left Cape York, and on September five they docked in
Indian Harbor, Labrador. There was a telegraph station there, and
this was Peary's first chance to get the word of
his accomplishment out to the wider world. His first message
was to his wife Josephine, simply saying half made good.
At last, I have the pole, am well. The next
(42:13):
one to hl Bridgeman of the Perie Arctic Club, which
just read son. This was Peri's code word for successfully
reaching the Pole. Another lengthier message was more theatrical stars
and stripes snailed to the North Pole. The Roosevelt continued
down to Battle Harbor, where two reporters from the Associated
(42:35):
Press arrived for the sensational story. Twenty three newspaper correspondents followed.
All there was left for Peri to do was rest
on his laurels, or so he thought. The Quest for
(43:05):
the North Pole is hosted by Me cat Long. This
episode was researched by Me and written by j Sarafino,
with fact checking by Austin Thompson. The executive producers are
Aaron McCarthy and Tyler Klang. The supervising producer is Dylan Fagin.
The show is edited by Dylan Fagin and Lowell Berlante.
Thanks to our experts Edward Larson, Susan Kaplan, and James
(43:27):
Edward Mills for transcripts, a glossary, and to learn more
about this episode, visit Mental Flaws dot com slash podcast.
The Quest for the North Pole is a production of
I Heart Radio and Mental Floss. For more podcasts from
my heart Radio, check out the I heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. For more
(44:02):
podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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