Secrets of Polar Travel

by Robert E. Peary

This method also worked for instant efficiency in case of emergency, as a man could seize a case of sugar or coffee to throw over the ship’s side or out of a crushed boat without any false motions.

All these points were worked out rather carefully, and in my opinion are so valuable that they never should be omitted in preparing the supplies of a polar expedition.

Material for equipment of my expeditions (lumber for sledges, webbing for dog harnesses, furs for clothing, tin for making utensils, etc.) was always taken in bulk and in the rough, partly for economy in space, partly for economy in cost, and largely to give occupation to members of the party during the long winter night in making the finished articles.

It can readily be seen that in stowing the ship for the northern voyage, oak and hickory boards for sledges would stow much more compactly than the sledge itself, and be less subject to injury. So, too, with sheets of tin as compared with utensils made from the tin. With furs the same, for made up into clothing they would require double the space taken up by bales.

This method as regards sledge material is particularly valuable during the upward voyage, when, as happened much of the time, the ship was sometimes delayed by the heavy character of the ice, and would have to lie motionless, with banked fires, several days in one place. At such times sledge material was brought on deck, and crew and Eskimos set to work in the best of light, in comfortable temperatures, to make and assemble the sledges. In this way every one was kept occupied and interested instead of loafing and fretting at the delay, and the sledges, as completed, were in readiness for instant use as soon as we reached winter quarters for the ship. And they were also valuable for an emergency, in the event of the loss of the ship, to transport provisions over the ice to the shore.

The stowing of supplies on board the ship was done in accordance with a plan worked out almost as carefully as would be the builders’ plans of the blocks in a granite building, so that every item could be located, and the essential supplies and items of equipment for an emergency—tea, coffee, sugar, ship’s biscuit, oil, guns, rifles, ammunition, hatchets, fur clothing—were on top and instantly accessible. When navigating in ice, tea, coffee, sugar, ship’s biscuit, and oil were stowed in continuous lines on deck and just inside the bulwarks of the ship throughout the waist, quarter-deck, and on both deck-houses in such a way that one active man could throw a ton of provisions out on the ice in a few minutes. This was in addition to having the whale-boats, as they hung at the davits, stowed and fitted with rifles, shot-guns, ammunition, hatchets, oil-stoves, matches in waterproof packages, together with several days’ rations of tea, coffee, sugar, milk, ship’s biscuit, and oil.

This was in rather striking contrast to an earlier American expedition, where, it is stated in the official report, nearly the entire cargo had to be overhauled in order to get at some particular item—guns and ammunition, if I remember aright. Such experiences as this are striking examples and illustrations of what my friend Stefansson has described very effectively in an article entitled “Incompetence as a Literary Asset in Arctic Matters.”

In two particular items of supplies my expeditions have been an antithesis of other expeditions. In the case of one item in its absence, in the case of the other in its great abundance. These two items were meat and flour. As a result of my plan from my earliest expedition to depend upon the country itself for my fresh meat supply, I have never carried any of this in the ship’s stores. On the other hand, having been most fortunate in my later expeditions, when I had my own ship, in having a steward (Charles Percy) who was a blue-ribboner in making bread and cooking meat, I have carried large quantities of flour. Some idea of the amount of this can be obtained by the fact that in my last north polar expedition, during the eleven months that the Roosevelt was lying at Cape Sheridan, Percy baked some 18,000 pounds of bread.

The members of an Arctic party that have fresh meat and fresh bread regularly can never have scurvy, regardless of whether they see a vegetable or a fruit or lime juice from one year’s end to another. My work, extending over a period of twenty-three years, during which no symptoms of scurvy ever developed, has shown conclusively that white men can remain in the highest latitudes for a period of years with complete immunity from the dreaded scourge.