Round About the North Pole

by W. J. Gordon

Next year he and his wife were out again to take up their quarters at a house they built at Bowdoin Bay, where, in September, their daughter was born. In March, 1894, he started for another journey across Greenland, with twelve sledges and over ninety dogs, but severe weather drove him back after travelling some two hundred miles. Staying over that winter instead of returning in the Falcon, he set out in the spring, and under almost desperate circumstances managed to reach and return from Independence Bay.

Following this came his expedition of 1898, in which he spent four winters in the Arctic regions and almost met with Petersen's fate by a venturesome winter sledge journey, which resulted in the freezing of his feet and the loss of eight of his toes. Travelling in Grinnell Land he proved beyond doubt that it was continuous with Ellesmere Land, as had been admitted by those who named it. Following Lockwood's track, he continued it up to 83° 54´, along Hazen Land, practically completing the coast-line to Cape Henry Parish, its furthest east, thus rounding the north of the Greenland archipelago, and even there finding traces of Eskimos and a fauna similar to that of other Arctic lands hundreds of miles further south. And striking northwards over the sea from Cape Hecla, with seven men and six dog-sledges, into the breaking, drifting pack, he made a dash for the Pole which ended at 84° 17´.

His next northern venture, though not more remarkable, is destined, perhaps, to be remembered longer. On it he sighted the new land away out in the sea north-west of Grinnell Land, nearer to the Pole than any other land discovered up to then, and where it was expected to be. And out over the ice he went to eclipse his 1902 record by nearly two hundred miles, in the best planned of all his journeys.

In July, 1905, he had left New York in the Roosevelt, a steamship of over six hundred tons and more than a thousand horse-power, rigged complete as a three-masted coasting schooner, able to hold her own almost anywhere in the event of her engines becoming useless. One hundred and eighty-two feet in length, thirty-five and a half in beam, and sixteen and a quarter in depth; sharp in the bow and rounded amidships; treble in framing and double in planking, with sides thirty inches thick, twelve feet of deadwood in her bow, and six feet of false keels and kelsons, she was specially built for the expedition as the strongest and most powerful vessel ever sent on Arctic service, and was launched on the 23rd of May, 1905, Mrs. Peary naming her by smashing a block of ice against her ironclad stem.

A month out from New York, the Roosevelt left Etah laden deep with coal from the Eric that had awaited her there, and having on board over fifty Eskimos, of both sexes and all sizes, and some two hundred Eskimo dogs. Leaving a reserve of provisions at Bache Peninsula, she worked up through open water and occasional ice to Richardson Bay, where the pack looked so threatening that Peary literally rammed his way across to the eastern side, and so continued northwards. When off Cape Lupton the ship received such rough treatment that the rudder was twisted and the head-bands and tiller-rods broken, as she ground along the face of the ice-foot "with a motion and noise like that of a railway-car which has left the rails"; but this was the only time she was in serious danger during her most fortunate run. Resting for six days in Newman Bay to repair damages and make ready for a final effort, she was headed westward to Grinnell Land through the floes, and after a continuous battle of thirty-five hours, reached the ice-foot at Cape Sheridan, a little north of the old winter quarters of the Alert, and found her wintering place, like her, just as the Polar pack closed in against the shore. The endeavour had been to lay up in Porter Bay, twenty-seven miles further north, but the state of the ice made this impossible.

Provisions were plentiful, as no less than two hundred and fifty musk oxen had been shot by the 1st of November, and there were numbers of hares and several herds of the white reindeer first mentioned by Hudson in his second voyage three hundred years ago. During the very mild winter eighty of the dogs died, and when sledging began only twenty teams of six each were available. The plan of the northern advance over the ice was to divide it into sections of about fifty miles each, with snow houses at each station, the nearest station being supplied from the base and supplying the next, and so on, thus keeping up an unbroken line of communication gradually extending nearer to the Pole, the sledges working backwards and forwards, outwards laden and inwards empty, between station and station along the line.

The land was left at Point Moss, north-west of Cape Joseph Henry. At 84° 38´ a lead in the pack stopped the way for six days until the young ice was thick enough to bear, and forty miles further north the vanguard drifted east some seventy miles during a storm for another six days. On the 20th of April a region of much open water was reached, and from midnight to noon next day the last effort was made by Peary, Henson, and a small party of Eskimos, the farthest north, 87° 6´, being attained and immediately left in a rapid retreat for safety.

Thus Peary went nearer to the Pole than Cagni by thirty-two minutes or thirty-seven statute miles, both being stopped by water with apparently similar conditions ahead of them. What the conditions may be along the intervening two hundred miles from Peary's farthest nobody knows; but although a good many things may happen between London and York, which is about the same distance, there is good reason for supposing that, even if there be land somewhere, the road is over a sea more or less packed with ice which is never without its channels.

One thing is clear: the attainment of the Pole is a matter of money. Given the funds, the men and the dogs, and the ships, boats, sledges, and other things will be forthcoming, and the journey accomplished, not by a rush, but on some systematic station-to-station plan; though it is not impossible that it may be done by chance in some exceptional year, for the climate of the north is variable and has a wider range of temperature than that of Britain in its good years and its bad years.