American History Hit - The Race for the North Pole

Episode Date: November 7, 2022

On April 6th 1909, deep inside the Artic Circle after months on the ice, Robert Peary, Matthew Henson and their four Inuit guides reached what they thought was the North Pole. But, as Edward J. Larson tells Don, Peary’s measurements and the speed of their journey were immediately called into question. Nonetheless, Congress voted to recognise Peary’s expedition as the first to reach the North Pole, dismissing a rival's claim to have done it a year earlier.Produced by Benjie Guy. Mixed by Aidan Lonergan. Senior Producer: Charlotte Long.For more History Hit content, subscribe to our newsletters here.If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts, and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. It is April 6th, 1909. Somewhere deep within the Arctic Circle

explores Robert Piri, Matthew Henson, and their four Inuit guides on five sledges pulled by 40 dogs are headed north across a frozen landscape. Their objective? To reach the furthest north, where there is no east, no west, and the only direction is south. They seek to become the first known humans to reach the North Pole.

The expedition holds, and Matthew Henson is dispatched ahead to scout what Piri believes to be the North Pole. Upon his return, Henson states, I think I'm the first man to sit on top of the world. This was almost certainly not the case. Piri's measurements and the speed of his journey were immediately called into question. Nonetheless, Congress voted to recognize Puri's expedition as the first to ever reach the fabled North, dismissing arrival's claim to have done so a year or last.

here. A couple weeks ago, a friend sent me a book in the mail and suggested it for an episode. You know, something's working with your podcast when friends are volunteering their books. I knew the author, of course. He's published for decades on a whole range of subjects, won the Pulitzer Prize. But I hadn't read this one, and I certainly had never considered the particular year the book focuses on, or the year's remarkable place in the annals of human endeavor. The title says it all, to the edges of the earth. 1909, the race for three polls and the climax of the age of exploration. The author is Edward J. Larson, and he joins us today.

Hello, Ed Larson. Big thrill to meet you. Oh, it's wonderful to be on your show. Thank you very much for having me. I don't know how I missed this book. I mean, frankly, it came out just a couple years ago. I am your target market. I love exploration stories.

I love this period of American history. We're coming out of the Gilded Age. Teddy Roosevelt is the president. delicious, chewy stuff. I just hadn't realized how much came to pass in one particular year, 1909. Was it just coincidence or was something in the water? Well, it was something in the water. It was the height of the Gilded Age. We're talking about just as new technology, steel ships, steamships, icebreakers, better camp stoves, the work that Nansen had been doing and others had made it tractors, had made it possible,

to get places and do things that had never been able to be done before, like trying to climb the highest mountain in the world or get to the North or South Pole. Also, having come off of the Guild of Lage, you had an enormous amount of wealth that could back such enterprises, excess wealth, as it were. You also had with technology and printing, the advent of the so-called penny press,

where you had people in America like Hearst and Pulitzer, are similar groups in England, similar groups in Europe, in France, and Italy that broadened the audience and people didn't want the partisan press anymore. So celebrity first grabbed hold with photographs and things. So you had the first celebrities, true celebrities, as we think of them. And extreme expedition reaching places that had not yet been reached because the conventional valuable places had already been reached. In remarkable efforts, they'd crossed Africa, they'd gone into Central Asia. They'd crossed Australia. They'd, of course, crossed the American West so that they'd gone into the River of Doubt and they were heading into the River of

Doubt. They'd gone into much of South America. So new extreme exploration, celebrity journalism, the possibility of fame through that. They were the rock stars of the day. So it would fit the time. Yeah. Give me the general overview of the book. Who were these explorers and what were they going for? Well, it was the coincidence of the same year that struck me, because I had earlier written Empire of Ice about science in the Antarctic. And the coincidence, because that book really raises Shackleton up, Shackleton's Nimrod expedition, which was the 1909 one, aimed toward the South Pole, almost getting there, but actually getting to the South Magnetic Pole, which at the time was almost equal in interest. and exploring the polar plateau. But at the same time, the Duke of the Abruzi, who had earlier tried to make the North Pole

and set a new furthest north record, Deeding Nansen's old record. He was an adventurer extraordinaire, and so he was heading to what was thought to be the highest mountain up K2 in the world. He'd already climbed the highest mountain on three continents. He was a truly amazing Arctic explorer, but also truly amazing mountaineer. From the Savoy district, he was the son of a king and the cousin of

the king of Italy at the time, grandson of the Italian king. And they had come from the Savoy, which is the Piedmont, the northern region where the mountains are, Matterhorn and the others, Turin. And then, of course, so he was aiming that way. And the North Pole was Robert Peary, who had tried and tried and tried for 20 years to reach the North Pole and was on the North Pole. and was on his 50 years old on his final great push to reach the North Pole. It's a really engrossing concept for a book, I have to say, highly readable, too. You jump back and forth between these different missions and the struggles these guys were facing and how each differed in their own approach.

And there are three different types of individuals. I mean, you have, we'll leave the American for last, Ernest Shackleton, who's kind of a working-class hero type. Luigi Amadeo is the manner you were just speaking of, who is, you know, can't be any more aristocratic than he is. He's the Italian Duke of Abruzzi, whatever that means. But he comes from that kind of ancestry. They are all trying to get to three different places.

Shackleton, South Pole, Amadeo, trying to get to the third pole. And Pira's go over for the North Pole. Tell me about the Uber objective here. Were they going for pure glory? Or was this a time of, where there are more stakes at hand, nationalistic, imperialistic? What was the world thinking about these guys? Great question.

And, you know, you have to unpack each person individually. And when you throw in the other great explorers of the time, Nansen and Nordenskoll and Scott, of course, Robert Falkin Scott, everybody's a little different. But certainly fame and celebrity, certainly money, because they all went, except for the Duke of the Burzzi, which, of course, he had unlimited funds. The rest all had advanced contracts, both for books, for newspaper release, and first exclusive, and for magazines. So they were all doing it for money, but I think they were also personally all doing it to challenge themselves. Again, differ a little bit, but wanting to see if they could do this enormous endeavor. Of course, many of them were womanizers, and it really like a soccer stuff. Oh, and I should have named, of course, Amundsen among the group, Ronald Amundsen, probably the greatest of the bunch, actually, from Norway.

But then, yes, you lay on nationalism in the sense that this was the pinnacle of the age of empire. World War I really breaks the age of empire. But in the period from the mid-18, well, maybe from 1800s, mid-1800s, until World War I, every nation, including the United States and Germany got into the game, were seeking global empires, Japan as well, at least regional empires. And it was felt that the way to glory for a country was a worldwide empire with sources of raw materials and sources of agricultural wealth all over distributed. And so this was pushing the edges of empire. And there was interest in Antarctica thought there might be minerals down there. And there was interest in the Himalayas. what wealth might be there. So those were factors, but it was more the sense. Just like going to the

moon for the United States, when Kennedy said, we'll be to the moon in 1960s, he didn't really think that there was going to be wealth on the moon, as we think now, that there might be lithium or other minerals. But rather that in a global competition with the Soviet Union, that would boost our spirits, would show we were superior in science, would show we were superior in adventure. And going to the poles and climbing the highest mountains carried that nationalistic. This is a time of extreme nationalism, of empire building. It would carry that, would boost the national spirit. It would show superiority of their particular nation.

And so that was definitely wrapped up. You can see that in Teddy Roosevelt and why he embraced these people while he embraced Perry. But he was also, of course, he had had the Duke of the Abruzzi over to the White House. That's where he met the woman he fell in love with. He greatly admired this sense of adventure, and that was bully America. And so that was definitely part of it. So we're going to focus on Robert Peary. It is, after all, American history hit we're talking about here.

Good. He made it his personal cause to claim the North Pole. If the Duke is an aristocrat shackled in the working class hero, this man is the Navy man from Maine with an incredible mustache. He certainly was. He was as much as showman. as any of them. But he was driven, certainly he wanted wealth, certainly he wanted a comfort of life, because he didn't come from that. He came from a sort of a working class, upper working class family. His father had died when he was young. He had been raised by his mother. He'd been educated. He went to

Bowden College. And he joined as an engineer. He joined the Navy. So he wasn't like a sailor or he wasn't like a captain. He was in the engineering service. Indeed, his service had been down in Nicaragua where he had trying to figure out where a canal could be built. So you're tied into the Teddy Roosevelt era. They didn't know if Panama or Nicaragua was the best place for a canal, and he'd been assigned to the Panama route engineering that possibility in Nicaragua. And he would write to his mother. He was very much a mother's boy, and he loved his mother almost in a driven sense. And he had written to her one time, I don't want to live and die without

accomplishing anything or without being known beyond a narrow circle of friends. I would like to acquire a name which shall be an open sesame in the circles of culture and refinement anywhere. It is a name that would make my mother proud. He didn't care how he was

going to do it. He wanted to make her proud, but he also coming from this past where his father had died, where money was tight, where his mother took care of him, from Maine, going to a good school. He really hungered after this glory and this fame that would be an open sesame, as he puts it in the world's upcultural. What's an open sesame now? I suppose a rock star has it. Bono got that open sesame. A soccer star like Beckham gets it now. And that's an open sesame.

For him, he discovered that polar exploration, which is not what he was going to be as a Navy engineer. That would be his avenue. And so he had. adopted polar exploration, not necessarily because he loved it. In that, he was like Shackleton. Shackleton didn't like really being in the Antarctic. Perry, he was after that welcome he got. He sees Greenland as his door into this world, a logical step, of course, right off of Canada and all that. Greenland was a totally misunderstood geography. I mean, there were many people who thought that was a land connected to the North Pole, whatever that was going to prove to be. He becomes one of the first to disprove that. Greenland is his first feature. We're talking now way back in the 1880s.

As Swedish explorer, a great Swedish explorer named Nordenskull, Eric Nordenskull, or Adolf Eric Nodenskull, had tried to cross Greenland. Greenland had never been crossed, at least probably not by the Inuits, certainly never by a European or an American. You know, the ships had mostly gone around it. And in this ability, this new ability to challenge cold places, the new tents, the new equipment, Norden Skull had tried and failed. And when he tried and failed in the mid-1880s, it made an enormous story. Norden Skull became famous. He did many more things later.

So Perry, on a leave from the Navy, tried it. Norden Skoll had tried to take with him semi from his native Scandinavia. these are people who live in the Lapland. And Perry tried to do it with local Inuits, which he insisted on calling by the America named Eskimo, even though that's not what they're called in Greenland. And he did enough because America, we went right after the Civil War, America was hungry for heroes. We had people like Powell, try to put us in context.

Think of how famous Powell is even now for going down the Grand Canyon. So he came back, even though he failed, even though he didn't really make it very far, he had to turn around, he came back as something of a minor celebrity in Washington, D.C., where he was based at that time, and he did start getting that entry into circles. And so that's when he fixed on this. But before he could try to go across Greenland again, Nansen, the great Norwegian explorer, managed to cross Greenland, managed to achieve that end. That was an end, totally impractical, but, you know, people make up objectives, like going to the moon. And going across, the Northwest Passage, which Amundsen was the first to do right at this time. We're talking about

right at 1890s. And Nansen, going across Greenland, it was sort of like a Livingston finding the head of the Nile or going across to Australia. The press, remember, the press is hungry for sales of these newspapers, these now at this penny press. And so these totally arbitrary objectives are picked up. Not that they don't have any economic value, really. They're just objectives, goals, You know, like winning a marathon. Yeah, exactly. And it became kind of a, I don't even know if it's friendly competition, but it was a competition. Really battled out in the newspapers, for the most part.

That's where people were reading about it anyway. I love your point of whether it's friendly. It depends on the character of the individual. A person like Nansen, everybody loved and respected. A person like Scott, almost everybody hated. And partly it depended on how they played the game. There was a certain style to this game of exploration. and did you play it fairly or did you play it not fairly?

And Amundsen, Nonson, Shackleton, the Duke of the Abruzzi, were noted for playing it fairly. And so they tended to be a friendly competition. But it was a cutthroat competition, just like top soccer players or top football players. It's a cutthroat competition. And so when Greenland had been crossed by Nonson, Piri, if he wanted that fame, had to refocus. So he refocused to the point you raised, testing how far north Greenland goes because nobody knew how far it went. Because you couldn't get a ship up, you could get a ship up, a steel ship pretty far up on good ice years, all the way to the top of what we now know is Greenland. But you didn't know if it continued to go north because you couldn't get very far.

That's on the West Coast above the United States. On the east coast, you couldn't even get that far. because that's still today, there's no towns. On the west coast of Greenland, there's a series of Inuit villages all the way up, and then over the top of what's now Canada. It doesn't happen. And of course, the Northwest Passage, ships had made it partway over from both sides, and then finally Amundsen the hallway. So they knew that side, the west coast. They don't know the east coast. And so he begins trying a series of expeditions to find the top of Greenland. with the hope that it went all the way to the poll. It becomes a process. I mean, this is what I'm learning from you here and also in the book, is that we're talking about decades here. This is a, it begins for Piri in 1886, I guess,

is when his first venture out as an explorer, a young man, goes out over towards Greenland. But then becomes this multiple expeditions all to determine how far he could possibly get. He developed something called the Piri Way, which is a chapter of your book. Describe to me how he comes up with his plan and his method to do what he does. What his way was, was it sort of has two parts. First, there's the building up support in America. And Perry gets the New York Times as a backer. He also gets the Explorers Club

in New York and the National Geographic Society in America because he's the one true American player and eventually, critically, he brings in Teddy Roosevelt. So he gets financial backing from these wealthy East Coast Americans, PR in the Times, regular publishing in the Times. Meanwhile, Bennett's papers and the Hearst papers and the Pulitzer papers. I mean, they're just trying to run him down because they're competitors. And so they want to weaken Perry. But Perry gets these East Coast backers who will supply the money, the ships. Eventually, it'll be Roosevelt, but others who get his leaves from the Navy. So he continues to get his naval salary while doing these totally individual expeditions. Of course, a lot of people want to sign up to participate,

and so he takes the rich Ivy Leaguers whose dads have a lot of money, his families have a lot of money to support what he's doing. And then what he does when he gets to the spot is he takes these people up, he gets a ship each time. It can be different ships. But he gets a sturdy ship that'll carry him as far north as possible, and then he'll head off across Greenland. Or once he determines that Greenland doesn't go, he shifts over to the old British route. The British have forsaken this for the South Pole because they think there's possibly more down there. And it's close to Australia, which then is a British dominion or colony. So they can do it out of New Zealand and Australia. So they shift to the South Pole because they realize the North Pole's nothing but

floating ice. That leaves Perry up. So he goes to the British route, which is up through Canada, to Ellesmore Island. That is, if you go up from Greenland, if you get this map on your mind, Greenland is sailing up this channel. Greenland is sailing up. Greenland will be on your right, and Ellsmore Island be in your left. And it proves that Ellsmer Island is a somewhat better route, which the British had figured out with their expeditions. They had basically petered out by 1880s, but they had been trying since before that. So he follows out. So sail as far north as you can, which depends on how the ice is that year. Some years you can sail to the very end of Greenland or Ellsmer Island. Some years you can only make it halfway up through that channel. And you're

stopped by ice that even an icebreaker can't break through, the icebreakers of the day. So then he works, what his way is, is to learn the Inuit ways, or as he called them, the Eskimo ways, and travel with local Inuits who he recruits in these northern villages and loads on his ship and takes with them. Because they know how to mush dogs, and they know how to go with sledge. And they know how to travel light. So he doesn't take, he's got to travel light because unlike the South Pole, unlike Shackleton or Scott going South Pole or Amundsen, where you can lead depots on your way and come back and get them. That is, you can take a whole bunch of food. You leave some partway, you leave some more partway, you leave some more partway. So you can have it coming back. Because the North Pole is

constantly moving because it's floating ice, you can't leave anything. So you got to carry everything. So that means you can't travel with much food. And there's, you know, you can get lucky and maybe get a seal. Maybe you can get a walrus, something coming out of the ice, but you can't count on it. Or you can get a polar bear or polar bear can get you. If you're way down, you can get mushocks. And they're the easiest. They're like shooting a cow. So yeah, he takes the dogs to pull his sleds and Inuit's to mush. And he goes along with them. And then rather than taking tents. He builds eglues at every stop. Using local technology, he builds eglues. He goes as he moves north. He doesn't carry enough fuel to warm anything but a cup of tea, whereas the other explorers carry

enough to have warm food. So he's traveling really light. He's sleeping in his clothes. He's wearing Inuit outfits. He's not wearing British-issued garments as Scott and Shackleton were wearing them. he was wearing furs as the Inuits would wear, and then he'd sleep in those. So he didn't make keeping bags. He didn't need to take tents. He didn't have to take much in the way of fuel. He didn't have to take much in the way of food. He would travel extremely alight, and he was so tough, and he was using the locals. He would push as far north as he could, taking readings. He was the only one able to take the readings. They didn't have geopositioning devices. You basically had to use a sexton and feel where the sun was. Of course, if you make it to the North Pole, you know, the sun circles around. You're going a course. You can only go in the spring. It's a funny thing. In the South Pole, you go in the middle of summer and you have the whole summer. Remember, the sun never set. So you can go all day in Antarctica or the Arctic summer. You can go all day because the sun's just circling overhead. I've been in that. I've seen that. I've been to the South Pole. It's amazing experience. But in the North Pole, by the

summer, the ice breaks up and certainly the fall, so you can't make it back. It doesn't break up completely, but it breaks up enough that you either have to go all the way around or you get doused. Nansen always traveled. When he took his furthest north, he carried kayaks with him. And when he reached this, he'd kayak across. Perry didn't do that. And so he had to go up with first light. When it was still pretty cold, he'd have to leave and get as far as he could, but turn around before the ice broke up. So he had a spring season every year. So you'd have to go up the year before. You'd have to winter over and be ready to go as soon as spring came.

Then you head north and then you head back. And remember, there are no radios. So once you get past the last telegraph wire, which is Labrador, you're out of communication for over a year until you come back. You've referenced a couple times the culture that all this is happening within. I'm fascinated by these sort of checkpoints of history and the comparisons. This is the age of the newspaper. We are pre-radio. we are all just barely in the film at this point. Of course, no radio and television coming down the way. And so the storytelling process is in text and orally. I mean, a lot of these guys would come back from these trips and then do these circuits, these Lyceum circuits, where they would, you know, make money. The same thing that Dickens was doing in Oscar Wild. It was just a very popular thing to do in the gilded age. What comes out of that eventually is vaudeville, you know, the whole circuit of this sort of thing happening. But this is the culture that this is.

What Piri and Scott and all the rest of them, wherever they are, represent are the blockbusters. These are the big deal things. I mean, people are showing up at the wharves to see their ships go off. I imagine there's cannon fire. I mean, it's just like a big time event. I love the idea. It happens twice for him, I believe you said, in 1905 and then later on in the 809 one, that he stops off at Teddy Roosevelt's house in Sagamore Hill. You know, as a stopping point along Long Island before he leaves.

and there's this whole celebration of this thing. I just find that amazing. There's a great private letter that Roosevelt once wrote to a friend. He said, because he met with Perry regularly. He says, I meet with these. And then he mentions a couple of the big Carnegie and a couple of the incredible wealthy businessman at the time. And remember, Roosevelt came from money but wasn't transfixed by money. And he says, I met with, you know, Carnegie. And I met with Rockefeller. But, you know, the person who really is the American that's going to make America great, it's the Perry. Give me the Perry. because he's the adventurer, that's our future, that's our greatness, not these wealthy people who were just spoiled. And there was that sense. You captured, there's a mass following. And when these three expeditions, for example, you can capture it. The expeditions that go out in 1909, 1908 or 1909, four simultaneously, the one from Shackleton's heading toward the South Pole. He meets with the king. The king comes. The queen comes. In fact, on to his tiny, little dinky Nimrod ship, three successive kings, that is the current king, the son and the grandson,

all of whom are going to be king of England, with the queen, come on to this ratty little ship, the Nimrod, this is what he took to the pole, because he just has to get down to Ross Island and then he goes overland. They all came on, huge, as you said, cannons were firing. The whole England turned out. He had that again in New Zealand. Huge turnout outside Christchurch when he's last stop. Same way with the Duke of the Abruzzi, the king of Italy comes out and sends him off to the Himalayas, to K2. And here in New York, enormous crowds, enormous events in New York. And then he stops at Sagamore Hills, and up comes Teddy Roosevelt and his family, traipsing around on board his ship, front page press coverage. And Perry was different. You mentioned, certainly this is, you write these up for

newspapers. And how good a writer affects effects. And the truth is that both Scott and Shackleton were amazing writers. I mean, they were writers before they were explorers. That's what Shackleton had done for a living. He was a writer. And boy, you read Shackleton South. You read, you don't need to read Lansing's endurance. Just read the original Shackleton or in the heart of the Antarctic, the one to the Nimrod expedition. These are gripping reads. Scott was the same way. Perry was not so good a writer. They were bestsellers. He was like Amundsen. Amundsen was matter of fact. And so their books were bestsellers, number one bestsellers, but they don't have that amazing skill that Shackleton and Scott had, but Perry sure was going to write it up. But the

difference is Scott and Shackleton, and to a lesser extent Amundsen, could travel with more weight. And therefore, they brought along with them on Scott's Discovery Expedition and his Teranova expedition, which he makes to the South Bull and doesn't make back, and Shackleton's Nimrod expedition, he had the best photographers in the world along. The Duke of the Abruzzi had literally, the person who taught Mirr how to take his pictures in the mountains, the best mountain photographer who ever lived was with him, with these enormous cameras and these glass frames. And they took some of the greatest pictures, photographs ever taken, because they were going to illustrate the books and the articles. And also,

So, Shackleton and Scott and Duke of the Brusey took along movie cameras. And they brought top moviemen and they made films and you can watch the films. Perry, because of his way, because of the way he had established before, earlier, the 1880s, rather than pioneered it 10 years later, he had no weight to carry any but a crappy little camera. And so his photographs are really poor and he had no movie cameras. So he didn't come back with the sort of gripping visual evidence that the others came back, which probably heard him. His big plus was he was the only American. So he carried the American market.

Now, Amundsen was good in America. So there were a lot of Norwegians in America and Scandinavians hungry for some support from, you know, their ethnicity. So Amundsen was a true hero in America as well as Norway. But Perry was all we had. So let's cut to the chase, or rather let's cut to the race, the race to the North Pole. We're talking to 1908 and 1909. This is a man who has been disappointed at least once in a time that he thought he would make it to the North Pole. He collects the money, he does the circuit, he gets itself all backed up. Teddy Roosevelt's right in line. Everybody knows this is the one that's going to count. And off he goes, by his side is a man who's been there all along, a man named Matthew Henson, an unusual individual in every possible way.

How did he meet Matthew Henson? Well, Matthew Henson, and it was his valet. He picked him up before he went down to Nicaragua. He needed a assistant. This is back in the days of Jim Crow. And often naval officers, and he was a naval officer, would have personal valets. And Matthew Henson was African American. They meet in D.C. in a clothes shop.

In a clothing shop. And he was impressed by the attention that this particular clerk was giving him. and Henson always looked, and this was ears of Jim Crow back then, and he thought he was rising up. He'd already done his first Greenland expedition, and he thought Henson would be a good personal assistant. So he hired him as a ballet, and for Henson, this was a chance. He had greater ambitions. He couldn't read or write. He'd never been properly schooled, but he was smart and he was ambitious.

And so he thought this was a great opportunity to move from being a store clerk to being a personal assistant or a valet, a rising, minor celebrity, naval officer. And so he goes with him, and Perry becomes very reliant on this particular assistant, who then rises with him when he starts making his polar expedition, goes along and actually learns to speak some Inuit, unlike Perry, so he can actually talk with the Inuits that Perry is recruiting to assist him. And he becomes the key go-between between the Inuit and Perry, sort of the, he doesn't become the organizer in the sense of organizing the expedition heading out. But once they get in the field, he becomes a key manager of working with the Inuits and making the expedition work. He becomes indispensable, as far as I could

tell, and figures into the Peary way. I mean, he controls his own crew, and he's leading the way, really, all the way up to pull. So what happens that Peary and his team is able to get through this time. Well, no one knows if they got through. But Perry has, you know, has a team. So as with the other expeditions, as the Perryway was, is you start off, you win or over in the base, you have a whole team of Inuits, male and female, the females making clothes, processing food, taking the furs and turning them into clothing for the people. Then you have a long, wealthy Ivy League kids who want the adventure whose families have contributed a lot of money for the expedition. So you have a few of them on the ship at the most northerly base, because wherever the ship can get you, you go as far north as you can,

based on the ice. And then you have the captain of the ship. He used Barnett, who was an exquisite captain, because Perry didn't know how to run a ship, because he had a special steel ship that would take him as far north as possible. So you have all these, you know, many of whom stay at the base, all of whom are getting paid in usually they're given pots and pans and things like that for their service. And so then you set off with a bunch of sledge, each with dogs, and they would go as far as they could, and they'd be eating off the food and supplies and fuel that were on, first on one of the sledges. Then when they went as far as they could so that that sledge could just get back, one would turn back. remaining five would go further. And then they'd be eating off the next one to turn back until that one

was down to just the supplies they needed to get back. And then four, and then three, and then finally down to just two, because you always needed a reserve, one with Perry on it. And because on an earlier expedition, he had lost, his frostbite had taken his toes. He usually had to ride because he couldn't walk. So he had less on his sledge because there was him on it, and the Inuits were driving it, and the dogs were pushing, the Inuits were mushing the dogs. So he would usually be riding. Anne Henson's, those would be the only, the final turnback point. Well, along the way, he would have people, certainly his captain, Bart was as good in a user of the sexton and the instruments as Perry. And they would be taking sightings and soundings, how deep it was,

mapping, doing some mapping, taking samples of the water, and they would be plotting exactly where they were. But once Bartlett turned back, there was no one else but Peary who could use the Sexton and determine their location. So once Bartlett turns back, and they're down to just the two, Henson's, Sledge, and the Inuits with him, and Perry's and the Inuits with him, and we're talking about three Inuits with each of them. So a four-person party or a five-person party with each sledge, heading north, were totally left with Perry's record. Up until then, we had the corroboration. Now, by the way, one thing that Shackleton always did, one thing that Amundsen always did, and of course Scott and the rest, Nancy, they always took along other Europeans or Americans

who were just as good or better because the only authority you had is your own reading with the Sexton, and, you know, these are just numbers. Anybody can't make them up. And you'd have witnesses that way. You have witnesses. And typically it'd be a rival. Typically, it'd be somebody who had independent credibility, like Perry's captain. He has his independent status that, you know, that you'd trust. Shackleton always took along a rival. Perry took along Shackleton the first time, who was certainly a rival on the Discovery Expedition. And so you had the credibility. Amundsen, the entire team could do it. All of his five-person team were excellent. at Norwegian navigators and could use the sexton. And so you'd have independent corroboration,

which, you know, I guess they could all lie, but it would take quite a scheme. And the only person who really got the fame was the leader. So Perry, the problem with Perry is the captain turned back. He only had him and Matthew Henson. And, you know, the racism, this was a very racist period. We're talking about 1909. And we're talking about the period 1890s. That's the height of Jim Crow. That's the height of scientific racism. Well, Henson didn't carry any credibility at that time. And indeed, his critics, and Perry's critics were Legion because they were backed by the other three major newspapers. You automatically, any criticism of Perry, the Hearst paper, the Pulitzer papers would just pick up on.

That's the reason he's taking Henson. The reason he's taking Henson is somebody under his complete control and dominance, and there's no one else to give credibility, because nobody can find the The Inuits. Once they get back to camp, they've disappeared. We don't even know who they are barely. I mean, they're in pictures. Well, let me get a framework here. So you leave in the spring. He leaves in the spring. Winter's over, then begins when the ice is ready to be traveled upon and the light is lasting. How long does it actually take for them to reach the pole? I mean, are we talking weeks or months? You're talking about in between that, five weeks, six weeks, it depends on how many obstacles you encounter. But we're talking about certainly more than a month. Up to two months, hopefully you can get back quicker because you've got more daylight when you're coming back. You can actually start in late winter because remember by the first day of spring, you've got half light, half dark.

But you really want to get back before June because you're going to run into troubles in late June and July. You simply might not make it back after that period. So you're on a dead race from that time. What I find fascinating, and you point this out many times, is that the, and you've said so in this conversation, the ice is moving. There's a gigantic pack movement that is really tangible. And so they have to be very careful on their readings to take that into consideration, I suppose.

Is that the right way to say it? That's where Perry is amazing, because the British had tried this. The NAR's expedition had gone up in the early 1880s. And they had every total support of the British government and British newspapers. And Markham was a – and it was a disaster because these ice floats are moving. And what they do is you have these pieces of old ice that have been around many years. And you also have the new ice in between it. Well, the old ice, once it breaks up in the summer, the old ice, these big ice flows

ram into each other. and then they hit each other and they drive up literally hummocks, which can be 30, 40, 50 feet or more, between the ice flows. And then when the next year winter, they freeze in place. And so you're going across, and certainly you meet open areas that you have to go around. And they could grow bigger or narrower and you could sit there and wait a few days and hope they come back together and cross. And sometimes they do that if it looks too far. You can explore both ways, but you also are into these hummocks of ice where you literally have to use an axe to try to chop a hole through because you've got to get your sledge pulled by dogs. You can't get over it. You have to go through it. So you have to dig a hole through it or go around it. So you not only have open flows, but you have these hummocks where two ice flows have come together in the last summer and then frozen. So you have old ice, which has one feel to it. And then new ice, which has a whole different feel to it. And then you go.

got snowstorms. It's unthinkable, really, that this could even be done, let alone dared to be done. You know, why would someone choose to do it, much less many different times? Losing almost all of his toes in the process. I mean, I don't want to understate this fact. You have 10 toes. He lost eight of them. There were little ones were left over. That's all. Disgusting, really, to think of. As a result, he had to shuffle or have shoes made specially so that he didn't have to, you know, shift around in them and all the rest of it. Incredible. And then he decides again to go back. I mean, impossible to imagine this man having a personal life, but he was married with children at home and then had a few things on the side. Well, he had a family in the Arctic, an Inuit family in the

Arctic, his regular mistress who he started having children with when she was a young teenager. But he was driven in the way that his motto was, and you can see it on his house, you can visit his house. It's on an island. He owned it a small island in Maine, Eagle Island. It's a wonderful visit, but he borrowed it from the Stoics, from the Roman Stoics, I shall find a way or make it. And I think this drive that he drives back is captured in one of his letters to his mother after a few trips. He writes, remember, mother, I must. He underlined the word must in the letter. I've seen the letter. Remember, mother, I must have fame and cannot reconcile myself to years of commonplace drudgery. And to him, the avenue, the reason why

why he could go to the White House, the reason why he could go to the finest salons in New York or Philadelphia was because he was doing this. And so he had to keep going back. I said that kind of thing to my wife this morning. She told me I still had to go pick up the dry cleaning today. Well, you don't have a henson to go pick up the dry clean. That's right. How do they determine that they actually reach the poll? And that remains a controversy to this day, am I right? Well, it's a controversy for Perry. It's not a controversy for the others. It's really quite simple. If you're at the pole, the sun literally goes around you in a 24 hours at exactly the same level. And so when I've been at polls, it's just the sun. It just goes around

in a perfect circle. You can sort of tell that with your eyes. But of course, if you have a sexton and Perry was good with a sexton, you can measure. So if it's not going exactly around you, if it's going at a little kilter or so, you see it lower in the horizon at one time of day, and 12 hours later it's higher in the horizon, you know exactly how far off the center. But when you actually get to the pole, it's really rather easy to determine. When Amundsen made it to the South Pole, he stayed for a couple days and just kept all of his team kept taking readings, and they would shift by a mile this way or 80 feet. that way till they got right smack dab where it was going perfectly around. And you could tell how

close you were by how much it was tipped. It's simple geometry, but you've got to make sure you see the sun at the right place in the sky because the sun's a rather big thing. And remember, it's up 24 hours a day. A sexton is a simple, you know, been around for hundreds of years device that you could do that. And that's the way you determine if you're actually at the South Pole or exactly where you are. So measuring longitude is hard, but you could do it if you have a good clock. You have a watch that you can trust because you can see how far off. But latitude's a pretty easy thing to do. They've been doing that since medieval times. But there is some controversy as to whether his claim was true. Where does that controversy come from? Well, the controversy started right at the beginning. What had happened is there was another American polar explorer who is pretty much forgotten now, though he has his supporters. Don't get me wrong. He's got a whole museum at Ohio State University. Frederick Cook. Frederick Cook had been along with the first Antarctic expedition. He was American doctor along with Amundsen, who was first mate, in the first expedition that wintered over in the South Polar regions, a Belgian expedition.

And he gained some fame from that. And then he becomes the doctor for Perry's early expeditions, and he gains a little more fame. But then he had a falling out with Perry. And he goes, north. He's leading tours of the north where he takes along rich people and he shows them northern things because he's known. He saw a second tier. He claimed to have been the first person to climb Mount McKinley. It was later shown it was totally not true. His pictures, they figured out where his pictures of the top of Mount McKinley was. Mount McKinley, now called Donali, was thought to be the highest, was the highest point in Alaska. And so he sets out on his own at the same time Perry does. And he leaves behind his, he wasn't aiming for the pole in theory, and he leaves behind his wealthy

people traveling with him on the tour, and heads out on his own with a few Inuits, basically apparently just goes around somewhere on Ellsmore Island. But he gets back before Perry, and he claims he made it to the North Pole. How do you tell? Because of the ships, he has to cut back on his own, he doesn't have his own ship anymore, because the ship has gone back. He gets on a ceiling boat, I think it was, or a whale boat, and ends up in Denmark. and in Denmark he's hailed, I've made it to the North Pole, and they give attention to him in Denmark, and he's a hero, and he goes back to the United States. Well, by the time, remember, there's no radio then, so he's back first.

Then Perry gets back, and Perry says, I've made it to the North Pole. Well, Bennett's newspaper in New York had picked up and paid a big sum of money to cook for Cook's exclusive story. Perry has already signed up with the Times, and the Times, when he gets back, they make a big thing, and a dispute develops who was first to the North. The initial dispute was who from the North Pole. And so Perry starts and Perry's team, the National Geographic Society, and is systematically dismantling and discrediting the various claims of Cook. That Cook couldn't have made it.

There's no way he could have done it. His pictures don't show it. None of this. It doesn't make sense. He's traveled in a circle around Ellsmer Island. But then Cook's supporters, and Cook has his own, followers and his newspapers who back him start using the same arguments against Perry and says, well, wait, how do you know you made it? And what it happened is the earlier questions was

Perry, everything is clear until the captain Bartlett turns back and up to Bartlett's last camp. They have ample records, they have ample sightings, and they know exactly where they are, and they know how fast they've gone. Well, suddenly after Bartlett turns back, and he does. He doesn't have any other, he's just got the Inuits and Henson, so he's got no basis except his own writings. Suddenly, he's going twice as fast. Even though Henson, when he describes what has happened, he says orally, he says, the road keeps getting rougher. He's telling the story because Henson becomes his own star in his own way, and he travels mostly the American Black community has a series of lectures, but a little bit beyond that. He does some radio.

and he tells the story, and as he tells it, gets tougher and tougher and tougher as they go further north, and they encounter more obstacles. Yet Perry's record has them going over twice as fast, going up after the captain turns back, after the record becomes his. And then on the way back, four times as fast. So you're really down to his word on it. And they won't release National Geographic Society and the various under the rules with which it gets placed in, that National Archives, where I've seen it, all of these documents were not open to public inspection until the 1980s, so long after the expedition. And it was only checked by supporters, because the National Geographic Society was behind it, Teddy Roosevelt was behind it,

Taft ends up endorsing it. They have a congressional hearing, and the congressional hearing splits between the Cook supporters and the Perry supporters. And so the congressional report is split. Some of them saying Perry made it, other one's saying he couldn't have made it and Cook made it. Congress is divided, but eventually with Taft, the American government gets behind because they want the credit of America making the North Pole. But no European Denmark has stayed by Cook for a while, and finally the Denmark's, and remember, Denmark owns Greenland, so they're very credible in this area. They never backed Perry. None of the European Geographic Society's back Perry's claim, and finally, more recently, both the National Geographic Society, the New York Times, has pulled back in the last two decades, endorsement that Perry had made it.

And if you go to, as I did just before the pandemic, if you'd go to Eagle Island, the sign there, the big sign, and visit Perry's home, the big sign has been changed. It used to say the first person to reach the North Pole. Now, the big historic marker simply says that Perry was the greatest. American polar explorer of the day. And so they've changed their claims. And so it remains uncertain. It depends on who's telling the story. Yeah. And Cook still has his supporters. Interesting. I want to read a quote from Perry, which was given at a speech at the International Geographical Society that you cite, I am after the poll because it is the pole, because it has value as a test of intelligence, persistence, endurance, determined will, and perhaps courage.

qualities characteristic of the highest type of manhood. That is a statement I'm going to take into my day. That captures Perry. That's why the poll was valuable. Talk to me about Piri's relationship with the Inuit culture that was there. I mean, this was a big deal for him. He made great use of these people. It's almost like the Sherpas of the Himalayas, I suppose. You go and hire a crew, and they know the landscape so much better than you. And so they're incredibly indispensable, really, but he really intersected with that culture. Well, he lives with him. Perry and his team would come up the prior year. He got to know certain ones.

Because remember, he goes back nine times. And he stops at the same villages and he picks up a team and they become reliant because they're living literally without any technology. And suddenly from Perry, they could, rather than having to use Flint for fires or use knives carved from rocks, he can give them real knives and real pots and real pans and things like that. He's the first person who's bringing that all up to him. And so he works with the same group and he builds a relationship and he knows them by name and Henson can talk to them and they go up with them. They join the ship. They go up with him and then he lives with him through the winter.

And obviously he has his mistress among there, probably multiple, but one he's most devoted to. He has children, children by both Henson and by Piri, continue to live with the Indianian. He doesn't bring them back. When time his wife does come up and she meets the other wife, the mistress, and she meets Perry's other children. But these children, by Piri or by Henson, become polar explorers themselves. And they do reach the North Pole later with later explorers. So he has a very complex relationship.

He is utterly reliant on them. and their dogs to get them where he goes. But he treats them rather paternalistically, and he always needs to bring Brack prizes, like the asteroid that he's found, that he took from them, which is where they were getting their hardened metals. So he would literally take it back

and gave it to the American Museum of Natural History in New York. But he also brought back Inuits, who will put on display. And many of the most of them died because of diseases, but live Inuits, and then they were mummified, and their bones were captured, part on the display that became very controversial.

And if there was one thing more than anything that Perry was attacked for, except the question of the claim of getting to the poll, the rival newspapers, the Hearst paper, and the Pulitzer papers would just rip into Perry for bringing back these live Inuits. Well, at some point, he even kind of lies to them and tells him that he's bringing them back

to this wonderful weather and it's going to be a great time for them. And he brings back, I don't know, six of them, I suppose. and they're told they'll live in plush accommodations. They're actually kept in the basement of the Natural History Museum, which is a moment of shame for that place. They don't do well, and they get ill from tuberculosis and die. You know, these are, it reminds you of the Native Americans from the West bring brought east to Washington, D.C.,

that whole episode of America becoming familiar with these other cultures and so forth. It was just a different time. I want to ask you one last thing. Why do you call this the climax of the age of exploration? What's ahead is the moon and perhaps Mars. What was definite about this period? Well, this was the end of the old-fashioned, what we know was the age of exploration.

We usually don't call what happens after World War II, the age of exploration. It's a different sort of exploration. But basically, the ends of the earth had been reached. They thought they'd reached the North Pole. They'd reached the South Pole. The North Pole no longer becomes a destination. They reached deep into the Himalayas. The Duke of the Mersia had reached the new highest altitude ever.

And so the world had been discovered. Of course, people have read about Roosevelt going down the River of Doubt into South America, all these places. And with World War I, the empires, these global European empires begin breaking down. And then the Depression comes and then World War II. And the world becomes a fundamentally different place. So when we think of the age of exploration beginning, European exploration is what we're talking about, beginning with people like Columbus, people like Prince Henry the Navigators, sailors going down the

African coast and then around to India, Magellan. When you think of that as the age of European exploration, this was the end of that, but part and parcel of it was fundamentally like what Columbus and Magellan and Livingston or Cook and Burton. It was fundamentally like what they were doing. and they had reached the edges of the earth. Ed, let's explore our days today. I think the attitude that you've written about is something that can be carried forth in life despite there is no more earth to discover.

I intend to do that with the rest of my days. Thank you for writing this book. Thank you so much. And by the way, close on that, when Perry comes back, the headline and the story in the New York Times was, now all the world has been discovered. There's a whole lot to the story

the way these explorations intersected is fascinating. Thank you so much for writing it and your great work ever since and before. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode of American History Hit. I hope you enjoyed it. Please don't forget to like, review, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. I'll see you next time. This podcast includes music from Epidemic Sound.