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By Rear Admiral Thomas D. Davies,
U.S. Navy (Retired)
With these words, Robert E. Peary ensured himself a place in history as the first man to have reached the North Pole. At the time, however, he could not have imagined that a team of navigation enthusiasts would still be trying to prove his claim 82 years later.
In 1988, I learned from colleagues at the U.S. Naval Observatory that the National Geographic Society was looking for a qualified person outside government circles to evaluate recent allegations in a Washington Post story that Rear Admiral Robert E. Peary had faked the claim that he reached the North Pole on 6 April 1909. Thus began for me and the board members of an organization 1 had founded in 1981—The Foundation for the Promotion of the Art of Navigation (better known since as the Navigation Foundation)—a year-long research project.
In 1910, a committee of three navigation experts appointed by the National Geographic Society and headed by Rear Admiral Colby M. Chester, U.S. Navy, had ruled in Peary’s favor. Subsequently, the Society had remained his staunch defender until September 1988, when a National Geographic magazine article concluded that, because ot ice drift and navigational errors, Peary had missed the Pole by 30 to 60 nautical miles. Unlike the news story that spurred our investigation, this article had not explicitly labelled Peary a “faker” or his feat a “hoax.”
To Gilbert Grosvenor, the Society’s president, saying that Peary missed the mark was one thing. Accusing him of a hoax was another. Hence, I was commissioned to “assess all the available observational data,” with the advice and assistance of the navigation experts on the Navigation Foundation’s board of directors, and to render a measured judgment as to whether Peary reached the Pole. Mr. Grosvenor emphasized that we were to “leave no unturned stone,” and to “let the chips fall where they may.” He added, “Since 1909 this Society has been criticized for too hasty a verification of the Peary polar data. We do not intend to suffer that charge again."
We accepted the task in the spirit in which it was assigned and set out, to explore 225 cubic feet of documents in the Peary Collection at the National Archives. The principal researchers, in addition to myself, were G. Dale Dunlap, author of five books on navigation; Lieutenant Commander John M. Luykx, U.S. Navy (Retired), navigation consultant, and navigation instructor; and Captain Terry F. Carraway, U.S. Navy (Retired), a naval aviator and Coast Guard-licensed captain.
Our team focused on resolving as promptly as possible the charges that had sparked our investigation. This seemed essential, because the allegations had created an immediate public impression that Peary’s claim had been proved fraudulent. School children were writing to the National Geographic Society, asking whether the “Robert E. Peary” school they were attending should be renamed, and the Peary family was again faced with the necessity of defending a forefather's name.
We were surprised to discover that virtually no new information had been introduced in the succession of critical books and articles since the 1911 congressional hearings
°i Peary’s promotion to flag rank. The controversy has in 'he intervening years simply ted upon itself, evolving "found three charges considered and rejected by the Congress:
^ Peary could not have reached his goal, because he took no longitude observations enroute.
^ The considerable speeds and distances Peary recorded °i his last five marches were unattainable.
^ There were “suspicious” discrepancies in his diary, Sl'ch as an incomplete cover entry reading “Roosevelt to
------- and return,” and a loose page dated 6 April, on
which the words “The Pole at last!!!” were written.
The Congress, in honoring Peary, relied primarily upon his celestial observations. The sights (six double altitudes "nd one single altitude of the sun), as attested by the navigation experts on the National Geographic’s committee, as wdl as two Coast and Geodetic Survey computational expcrts, indicated that at his northernmost position he was within two to five miles of the Pole. But these sights have hcen all but disregarded by the critics, since Peary himself "vknowledged at the hearings (perhaps with Dr. Frederick
Cook, who claimed to have reached the Pole in 1DOH, in mind) that observations can be faked.
In Pursuit of the Pole
In 1905-1906, having been granted an extended leave from the Navy by President Theodore Roosevelt, Peary made his first serious assault on the Pole from an ice-resistant vessel he designed. His wife Josephine christened the ship Roosevelt. The trip began at Cape Hecla but was doomed after several weeks on the ice when Peary found himself separated from his support parties and low on supplies. Fierce westerly winds had driven him far to the east of his intended course, leaving him stranded in a network of treacherous open water leads. With him he had only Matthew Henson, who had accompanied Peary on all his expeditions, and several Eskimos. Nonetheless, he declined to turn back.
With his small party, minimal food supplies, and nearly exhausted dogs, he continued on until he had established a new “farthest north” record of 87°, 6'.
1 r<>ceedines / February 1991
ning this time to use a “pyramid” of supply parties who would return after leaving their payload, best sledges, and best dogs at successive points enroute. But this time he would keep his teams close together and hope for more favorable ice and weather conditions. In late February, the teams began leaving the Roosevelt for their land base at Cape Columbia on Ellesmere Island, somewhat to the west of Cape Hecla.
On 1 March, after all the teams were out on the ice, a fierce wind blew from the east. Party members George Borup and Ross Marvin were sent back to Cape Columbia to reload their sledges with fuel and other needed supplies and found that the upward trail had drifted 17 miles to the west. They were pinned down beside a lead near the base until 10 March and feared that the broken trail on the northern side was being swept even farther west by continuing gales. But on 4 March, Peary, who was well ahead on the ice, observed that the wind direction had changed and was now blowing from the west and moving the ice to the east. When Borup and Marvin were finally able to leave the base, they discovered that the trail was intact and only one mile to the west of its original location.
Peary’s plan was to have his support parties turn back one by one until he and the redoubtable Henson, with their teams of two Eskimos each, would take off on the final spurt to the Pole. On 26 March, Marvin took celestial observations at 86°, 38' north and turned back; he alone would not reach the ship but would drown in an open lead on the return journey (or perhaps be murdered by his Eskimos). On 1 April, party member Bob Bartlett, skipper ot the Roosevelt, took observations and turned back at 87°, 45' north, by his calculations 133 nautical miles from the Pole. In a signed memorandum, he stated; “I leave Commander Peary with five men, five sledges with full loads, and forty picked dogs. Men and dogs in good condition. At the same average as our last eight marches, Commander Peary should reach the pole in eight days.”
But Peary intended to crowd his marches—though he had ample food supplies for 40 to 50 days—and to strive for 25 miles on each. On 2 April, he wrote in his diary; “Going the best and most equable of any day yet.” He estimated 30 miles covered but conservatively called it 25- On 3 April, he estimated 20 miles covered in a forced march that took the party “halfway to 89 degrees.” On 4 April, the party “hit the trail before midnight, after a short sleep.” With the weather holding clear and the “going even better,” he estimated another 20 miles made good. On 5 April, Peary wrote: “Over the 89th!” In ten hours, he noted jubilantly, they had made good 25 miles or more. Peary had the party back on the trail before midnight, and at about 1000 the next morning they arrived at what would be their northernmost camp, Camp Jesup. Peary took observations with his sextant and an artificial horizon (a small pan filled with mercury) and calculated that he was at 89°, 57', or about three nautical miles from the Pole. He then slept for four hours and upon waking, wrote his famous words: “the Pole at last!!! The prize of three centuries, my dreams and ambitions for twenty years. Mine at last. I cannot bring myself to realize it.”
Peary later loaded a sledge lightly and took his navigation paraphernalia north about 10 miles for a midnight reading that showed him to be beyond the Pole. He returned to Camp Jesup at 0600 7 April for another series of observations at right angles to those already made there; from these he calculated that the camp was within four or five miles of the Pole. Once more he left camp, this time to sledge eight miles toward the Pole to be sure of passing over it. He returned for another series of observations at noon; from these he calculated that he was at 89°, 58', north latitude. He was then satisfied. Peary later wrote: “I had now taken . . . thirteen single, or six and one-hall
double, altitudes of the sun, at two different stations in three different directions at four different times. In traversing the ice in these various directions ... I have allowed approximately ten miles for possible errors in my observations, and at some moment during these marches and countermarches I had passed over or very near the point where north and south and east and west blend into one."
At 1600 that afternoon, the party started south, stopping to take a sounding after about five miles. Peary lost most of his sounding wire after reeling out to 1,500 fathoms and finding no bottom. From there, it was one frantic dash tor Camp Bartlett, the point where the skipper had turned back. They reached the camp in three forced marches (as compared to five on the upward journey) with only brief stops for food and rest, following the old trail and utilizing Previously built igloos. When they reached the camp shortly after midnight, 9 April, Peary wrote in his diary: “From here to the Pole and back has been a glorious sprint, with a savage finish. Its results [are] due to hard Work, little sleep, much experience, first class equipment, and good fortune as regards weather and open water.” On 22 April, the party reached land and Peary’s lead Eskimo, Ootah, shrieked with delight: “The devil ITornarsuk] is asleep or having trouble with his wife or we should never have come back so easily.”
The Navigation Foundation Study
In evaluating the question of whether Peary in fact reached the Pole, we addressed first the hotly debated issues of Peary’s navigation and distances. As to the former, We determined that the method of navigation he described to a congressional committee as “dead reckoning” corrected by observation was entirely adequate and appropriate for the polar journey and that conventional longitude sights were unnecessary. He employed, in fact, the same method that would be used by Roald Amundsen in his successful trek to the South Pole in 1911. The peculiar condition close to either pole that makes it appropriate to dispense with conventional longitude observations is the convergence of the meridians. Peary’s technique was to find true north from the sun at “local apparent noon” as °ften as feasible, and to set his course straight for the Pole however he had been diverted by the effects of ice drift, hanging magnetic variation, and detours to avoid water ^ads or insurmountable pressure ridges. In short, he
This image, among others taken just before the expedition left the Pole on 7 April, is labeled Peary’s #G3. With the sun’s altitude about 7° and bearing 43°, it and the other shots allow a “band of location” to be drawn to within 20 nautical miles of the Pole.
“homed” on the Pole much as aviators would do later in homing on navigational radio aids. Then, when he was close to the Pole, according to his estimated mileage from Camp Bartlett, he took sets of celestial observations with the sun bearing 90° apart that gave him his position.
As for the question of whether Peary could have made the mileages he recorded, since we ourselves are not sledgers, we relied upon the distances attained by sledgers other than Peary, and by Peary himself on his earlier expeditions. We determined by statistical analysis that his logged distances were not exorbitant, or even particularly remarkable under the circumstances. He covered the 135 miles (by our calculations) from Camp Bartlett in five marches averaging about 27 miles per march, at an average speed of about 2.5 miles per hour. Peary’s return trip is more frequently the basis for skepticism, for it was made in three marches of about 45 miles each at an average speed of about 2.8 miles per hour. But this is not astonishing when one considers that breaks for food and rest were minimal and that the party was following an established trail and stopping at igloos built on the upward journey. Moreover, there was the motivation to drive on at breakneck speed while the weather held good, since every hour of delay on the sea ice decreased the chances of a safe return.
Thus it cannot be assumed that Peary missed the Pole either because his navigation was lax or because his speeds and distances were unattainable.
The fallacy of the “hoax” theory is that even if Peary’s navigation had taken him to the right or to the left of the Pole, or even if his five marches had left him short of it, he would not have turned back while weather and ice conditions were favorable. He and his men were in good health and he had enough provisions for another 35 to 45 days. Though he was attempting to make the Pole in five forced marches, his more conservative basic plan called for eight, as Bartlett’s memorandum indicates. To have turned back even had he missed his mark and been forced to travel extra days would have been entirely out of keeping with his character. As in 1906, he would have pushed on to the limit of the endurance of himself and his men.
The detached “Pole at last!!!” entry appears to have been written on a page from a notebook identical to the 1909 diary notebook that Peary used on the trail to write messages for his scattered party leaders. He may have utilized the notebook simply because it was more readily available than his diary, which he kept wrapped in a waterproof bag lashed to his sledge. Or he may have deliberately used this separate piece of paper because this entry, unlike his routine entries, was drafted for public consumption. Such an announcement falls in the category of astro
naut Neil Armstrong’s famous “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” This one page would subsequently be reproduced photographically in many news accounts Peary gave of his polar journey, while other pages would not be. ^
The cover entry “Roosevelt to ---- and return
proved insignificant, for we found similar incomplete entries on several covers of journals from earlier expeditions. In any event, such peripheral matters are outweighed by the overwhelming new evidence we uncovered that points to Peary’s having “discovered” the Pole just as he said he did. Our new proofs relate to Peary’s soundings (which could not have been faked in 1911, because no one then knew the contours of the Arctic Ocean bottom); to the natural shadows in the photographs he brought back from the Pole which, for the first time ever, we subjected to photogrammetric analysis; and to the meticulous scrutiny to which we subjected his celestial observations.
We used eight soundings taken by Peary or expedition members between Cape Columbia and the Pole and back that enabled us to plot his track as no one has ever done before. For this purpose we utilized modern data relating to the Arctic Ocean depths along the 70th meridian supplied by the Defense Mapping Agency, including data
gathered by our own and other nations’ submarines. By matching the depths Peary recorded to this data, we noted that if he was close to the meridian he would have twice crossed over the Lomonosov Ridge. Sure enough, a series of deep-shallow-deep soundings by Marvin indicates that the party passed over a southern leg of the ridge, and a “no-bottom” sounding made by Bartlett at 87°15' north indicates that they were then over the canyon just west of the ridge. Between there and the Pole where the party would have crossed the northern leg of the ridge, no soundings were taken. However, Peary’s “no bottom at 1,500 fathoms” sounding at 89°55' on the return trek rules out one position that has been calculated for him at 55 miles to the west (or left) of the Pole. There he would have been over the northern leg of the ridge where he would have hit bottom at less than 1,500 fathoms. Thus we concluded that Peary was very close to his intended course to the Pole throughout his entire journey.
The most exciting and novel facet of our study was our photogrammetric analysis of the photographs Peary brought back from the Pole, utilizing techniques pioneered during World War II and since developed into a fine craft. A technique of close-range photogrammetric rectification can produce the angle of the elevation of the sun from shadows in pictures, and this angle can be compared with the sun angle calculated from the Nautical Almanac to produce a rough “line of position” in the form of a band or area where the sun elevation would agree with that measured. However, certain prerequisites must be met. There must be shadows that begin and end within the frame of an uncropped negative; there must be a horizon to determine the orientation of the camera, and the focal length of the camera must be known. Fortunately, with the assistance of the International Museum of Photography in Rochester, New York, we were able to determine the focal length of the camera Peary used in 1909, and the Peary Collection of the National Geographic’s photographic files produced pictures that met our other criteria. We were able to analyze photographs taken at Camp Jesup, Peary’s northernmost camp, at different times with the camera pointing in different directions.
The resulting bands of location intersected in a pattern which placed Peary close to the Pole and nowhere farther than 20 miles away. Since his celestial sights placed him within the pattern, and our examination of them had shown nothing suspicious, we concluded that Peary was probably within four or five miles of his reported position. To verify our methodology, we consulted a certified expert in “close-range photogrammetry.” Though the data the photographs yielded is less precise than that derived
------------------------------ All Angles---------------------------------
FOR THE FIRST TIME, the principal players in the Peary dispute will meet face to face. On 19 April 1991, Rear Admiral Thomas D. Davies, U.S. Navy (Retired)—opposite, at right, with Navigation Foundation researchers and their published report—will present his case in a special seminar, “All Angles: Peary and the North Pole,” part of the U.S. Naval Institute’s 117th Annual Meeting held at the U.S. Naval Academy. Four outspoken Peary critics also will impress their respective theories upon the debate.
- British polar explorer Wally Herbert at least in part deserves credit lor rekindling the controversy with a National Geographic article in •988. Peary never reached the Pole, says Herbert, because he did not allow properly for drifting ice floes.
^ Lieutenant Colonel William E. Molett, U.S. Air Force (Retired), who wrote a series of articles on the topic in 1990 (or Navigation: Journal of the Institute of Navigation, claims that Peary reached the Pole but that he did not use the navigational methods advocated in the Foundation’s report, “an embarrassment,” says Molett, “to the National Geographic Society.”
- Because of all the mystery surrounding the conquest of the Pole, Ralph Plaisted declares his 1968 snowmobile expedition to have been the first “over ice” trek to the Pole. Plaisted finds Peary’s claims of time <tnd distance to be impossible.
^ Physics and astronomy professor Dennis Rawlins is perhaps the most outspoken and vehement critic of the recent Navigation Foundation investigation. Rawlins has proof, he says, that Peary faked his data, did not reach the Pole, knew he did not, and proceeded to defraud the public.
Serving as moderator will be Dr. Jack Swcetman, distinguished author and professor of history at the U.S. Naval Academy.
Did Robert E. Peary reach the North Pole? Was it the boldest expedition of its time? Or was it one of the biggest hoaxes in American history? You be the judge. “All Angles” promises to be a major international historical event. See the advertisement in this issue for registration information.
Commander Peary (inset) struck an imposing figure bedecked in skins of arctic fox and polar bear. Surely, he would not bas e turned back if the Pole was within reach. A new photograph discovered by the Navigation Foundation shows the , altitude of the sun, thus corroborating previous Foundation findings. But for some, the doubt still lingers, and the dispute may never be resolved.
from Peary’s celestial observations, it is exceedingly important because, while observations can, at least in theory, be faked, nature’s shadows cannot be.
Subsequently, we discovered two 1909 photographs— misfiled as taken in 1906—that included direct views of the sun and the horizon, permitting direct measurement of the angle of elevation. These photographs completely agreed with our shadow analysis and confirmed the accuracy of our photogrammetry.
Finally, the minute examination we made of Peary’s observations for internal integrity left us convinced that they were not faked. A Coast and Geodetic Survey witness, Hugh Mitchell, opined at the congressional hearings: “I believe it is altogether a matter of experience that any dishonesty in observations or computations will show up in the reduction of those observations or computations. ... At some point of the work it will come out.” We agree that careful analysis will very likely detect certain types of anomalies or even “over perfection” in sights which could be the result of counterfeiting. We scrutinized the individual components of Peary’s sights as no one else has attempted to do and determined, among other things, that they showed credible amounts of differential refraction and of “scatter” which only a very sophisticated faker manufacturing a set of sights could be expected to take into account. We also found that they were consistent
ROBERT E. PEARY COLLECTION
in their scatter with other sights taken by Peary on other occasions. The careful recomputation of the sights made by Mitchell and his colleague, Charles Duvall, as explained in the hearings, place Camp Jesup within five miles of the Pole and Peary himself on his excursions to the north and west within two or three miles of it. Even Peary’s severest critics have implicitly conceded that if the sights are genuine, Peary reached the Pole. All “hoax” theories claim that they are counterfeit.
In sum, our conclusion that Peary reached his goal rests not upon any single factor but upon a combination of the major factors we considered: (1) Peary’s method of navigation was an accepted and optimum technique to get him to the Pole; (2) his speeds and distances are credible;
- his soundings place him directly on a track to the Pole;
- the photographs taken at Camp Jesup place him in the immediate vicinity of the Pole; and (5) his celestial observations that place him withim three to five miles of the Pole give every indication of being genuine. We found no evidence to the contrary.
How much we have accomplished in our effort to uncover the truth behind the long process of vilification of an American folk hero remains to be seen. We do think that science and common sense have combined to win an inning, if not the ballgame.