Just before we reached the Stepping Stone Light, Mrs. Peary, the members and guests of the Peary Arctic Club, and myself were transferred to the tug Narkeeta and returned to New York. The ship went on to Oyster Bay, Long Island, the summer home of President Roosevelt, where Mrs. Peary and I were to lunch with the President and Mrs. Roosevelt the following day.
Theodore Roosevelt is to me the most intensely vital man, and the biggest man, America has ever produced. He has that vibrant energy and enthusiasm which is the basis of all real power and accomplishment. When it came to christening the ship by whose aid it was hoped to fight our way toward the most inaccessible spot on earth, the name of Roosevelt seemed to be the one and inevitable choice. It held up as ideals before the expedition those very qualities of strength, insistence, persistence, and triumph over obstacles, which have made the twenty-sixth President of the United States so great.
In the course of that last luncheon at Sagamore Hill, President Roosevelt reiterated what he had said to me so many times before, that he was earnestly and profoundly interested in my work, and that he believed I would succeed if success were possible.
After luncheon the President and Mrs. Roosevelt, with their three sons, came on board the ship with Mrs. Peary and me. Mr. Bridgman was on deck, to welcome them in the name of the Peary Arctic Club. The Roosevelt party remained on board about an hour; the President inspected every part of the ship, shook hands with every member of the expedition present, including the crew, and even made the acquaintance of my Eskimo dogs, North Star and the others, which had been brought down from one of my islands in Casco Bay, on the coast of Maine. As he was going over the rail, I said to him: "Mr. President, I shall put into this effort everything there is in me—physical, mental, and moral." And he replied, "I believe in you, Peary, and I believe in your success—if it is within the possibility of man."
The Roosevelt stopped at New Bedford for the whale-boats, and also made a short stop at Eagle Island, our summer home on the coast of Maine, to take aboard the massive, steel-bound spare rudder, which we carried as a precaution against disaster in the coming battle royal with the ice. On the former expedition, when we had no extra rudder, we could have used two. But, as things turned out this time, when we had the extra rudder we had no occasion to use it.
Our departure from Eagle Island was timed so that Mrs. Peary and I should arrive by train at Sydney, Cape Breton, the same day as the ship. I have a very tender feeling for the picturesque little town of Sydney. Eight times have I headed north from there on my arctic quest. My recollections of the town date back to 1886, when I went there with Captain Jackman in the whaler Eagle, and lay at the coal wharves for a day or two filling the ship with coal for my very first northern voyage, the summer cruise to Greenland, during which journey the "arctic fever" got a grip upon me from which I have never recovered.
Since that time the town has grown from a little settlement of one decent hotel and a few houses, to a prosperous city with seventeen thousand inhabitants, many industries, and one of the largest steel plants in the western hemisphere. My reason for choosing Sydney as a starting point was because of the coal mines there. It is the place nearest to the arctic regions where a ship can fill with coal.
My feelings, on leaving Sydney this last time, though difficult to describe, were different from those at the start of any previous expedition. I felt no uneasiness once the lines were cast off, for I knew that everything had been done which could be done to insure success, and that every essential item of supplies was on board. On former journeys I had sometimes felt anxiety, but through the whole of this last expedition I allowed nothing to worry me. Perhaps this feeling of surety was because every possible contingency had been discounted, perhaps because the setbacks and knock-out blows received in the past had dulled my sense of danger.
The Roosevelt having coaled at Sydney, we crossed the bay to North Sydney to take on some last items of supplies. When we started to leave the wharf over there we discovered that we were aground, and had to wait an hour or so for the tide to rise. In our efforts to move the ship, one of the whale-boats was crushed between the davits and the side of the pier; but after eight arctic campaigns one does not regard a little accident like that as a bad omen.
We got away from North Sydney about half past three in the afternoon of July 17, in glittering golden sunshine. As we passed the signal station, they signaled us, "Good-by and a prosperous voyage"; we replied, "Thank you," and dipped our colors.