Peary, Robert
ACHIEVEMENT(S): Claimed to be first to reach North Pole
NICKNAME/ALIAS: None
DATE/PLACE OF BIRTH: 6 May 1856, at Cresson, PA
DATE/PLACE/AGE AT DEATH: 20 February 1920, in Washington, D.C. Aged 63
DISCIPLINE: Arctic explorer
FIELD: Exploration
LANGUAGE: English
PARENTS: Charles Peary (1828-58) and Mary Wiley
SIBLINGS: None
SPOUSE: Josephine Diebitsch, married 1888
CHILDREN: One daughter and one son (plus two sons by Inuit woman, Alaqasina)
EDUCATION: Portland High School, 1869-73; Bowdoin College, 1873-77
MAJOR WORK: 'Secrets of Polar Travel', 1917
LIFE AND TIMES:
In 1891, Peary took leave from the Navy, and with his wife organized a privately- financed expedition to North Greenland to find if the ice cap extended to the North Pole. He set sail for Greenland in June 1891, and established his base at the south end of Smith Sound, the channel between Greenland and Ellesmere Island, Canada.
During the summer of 1892, Peary made a three-month-long journey sledging 1,300 miles (2,100 km) to Northeastern Greenland. On his return Peary claimed that he actually reached the East Greenland Sea (this was later disputed), and reported the discovery of a channel (Peary Channel) that separated Greenland from a group of islands to the north (Peary Land), and he later used this claim to promote himself as the "Delineator of Greenland.”
On his return to the U.S., Peary organized a second expedition to Smith Sound (1893-95) with the aim of exploring Greenland and then reaching the North Pole. The expedition was plagued by bad weather and misfortune, and while Peary again visited Independence Fjord he reluctantly returned to the U.S. in 1895.
In 1898, Peary got five years' leave from the navy, and led another North Pole expedition (1898-1902), during which he managed to reconnoiter routes to the pole from Fort Conger, Ellesmere Island, in the Canadian Northwest Territories and from Etah, in Inglefield Land, Northwestern Greenland.
Returning to the U.S. in 1902, Peary found backing for further expeditions from Morris Jesup, a museum patron and president of the Peary Arctic Club, who organized investment from a group of the wealthiest men in America.
Peary left for the North Pole in 1905 in a powerful new ship built to his own specifications, the 'Roosevelt.' His party narrowly avoided starvation before reaching the Greenland coast.
When Peary returned to the U.S. in 1906 he reported that he had reached 87° 06' N and had discovered new land in the Arctic Ocean, northwest of Ellesmere Island. He named this "Crocker Land" after one of financial patrons.
In July 1908, Peary set off on his last expedition to the North Pole, sponsored by the Peary Arctic Club and the National Geographic Society, again establishing his Arctic Ocean base on northern Ellesmere Island. He left Ellesmere on 1 March 1909, and in early April, on the last stage of the trek, the remaining party of Peary, Henson and four Inuit reached (on 6 April 1909) what Peary later claimed was the North Pole.
It soon became clear that Peary's own polar claim was dubious, with no scientific evidence in support of it, and much circumstantial evidence against it. In 1911 Peary was called to testify to Congress on this issue and, in spite of discrepancies in his account, was awarded a gold medal from Congress, due to the strong support given his case by the National Geographic Society. As a result, Peary became universally credited, in textbooks and encyclopedias, as being the first to reach the North Pole.
Most polar authorities now discount Peary's claim to have reached the North Pole, and many of his other alleged discoveries; instead, it is generally believed that, through a combination of navigational mistakes and record-keeping errors, Peary probably advanced only to a point 30-60 miles (50-100 km) short of the Pole, a situation of which he appears to have been well aware.
ASSESSMENT: Despite the fact that these claims have been largely discredited, several of his achievements remain undisputed, including the discovery of the northernmost land in the world. He also designed the 'Roosevelt', a forerunner of the modern icebreaker.
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: A rival explorer was Amundsen*
Funded by Charles Crocker, one of the Big Four who built the Western Transcontinental Railroad.
ONELINER: Robert Peary, who didn’t reach the North Pole
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
EB
Heckathorn, Ted, "Peary, Robert Edwin", in ADNB, OUP, 1999
Herbert, Wally, The Noose of Laurels: The Discovery of the North Pole, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1989