Peary, Robert Edwin

Peary, Robert Edwin (1856–1920), American naval officer and Arctic explorer who, for much of the 20th century, was generally acknowledged as being the first white man to reach the North Pole.

Peary was born at Cresson, Pa., and after studying engineering he joined the civil engineer corps of the US Navy in 1881 with the rank of lieutenant. He was always ambitious and in a letter to his mother wrote: ‘remember, mother, I must have fame.’ In 1886 he obtained leave of absence for a trip to Greenland and in 1891 organized an expedition there when he crossed the ice cap and proved for the first time that Greenland was an island. Over the next few years Peary continued his explorations, establishing that a polar ocean lay to the north of Greenland and reaching the highest latitude yet achieved in the western hemisphere. In 1903 he supervised the construction of the Roosevelt, the first ship to be built specifically for Arctic exploration, and in April 1906 reached a latitude of 87° 6- N., beating his previous record by nearly 274 kilometres (170 mls.). In August 1908 the Roosevelt set sail again for Greenland, and in March 1909 Peary and his party set off on sledges to make another attempt to reach the North Pole. This time he apparently believed he had succeeded when with his servant, Matthew Henson, and four Inuit, he reached his goal on 6 April 1909.

A week before Peary returned to make public his success Dr Frederick A. Cook (1865–1940), who had accompanied Peary on his 1891 expedition before becoming a distinguished explorer in his own right, reappeared from the Arctic and claimed that he had reached the North Pole on 21 April 1908. He had accompanied an expedition to the Pole in 1907, but as nothing had been heard of him since his departure, it was thought that he had perished. A bitter controversy followed, but in December 1909 a committee of scientists decided Cook's evidence was not sufficient to prove he had reached the Pole, and ruled in favour of Peary. Cook's later life cast further doubts on his veracity; his claim to have climbed Mt McKinley was refuted, correctly as it turned out decades later, by his companion on that expedition; and he also served five years in prison for the fraudulent promotion of an oil company's stock, though he was granted a Presidential pardon for this a few months before he died. Peary, on the other hand, was lauded as a hero. He was thanked by the US Congress for his work and in 1911 was placed on the retired list with the rank of rear admiral.

Examination of Peary's papers when they were made available in 1984 and those of Cook, which were opened to scrutiny for the first time in 1990, probably show that neither reached the North Pole. If this is correct, then the first person to set foot there was Lt-Colonel Joseph Fletcher who climbed out of a US Air Force C-47 plane after it landed at the Pole in 1952. Both Peary and Cook still have their ardent supporters, and their detractors, but it seems likely that their rival claims will never be finally settled.

See also exploration by sea; north-west passage.

Bibliography

Bryce, R. , Cook & Peary: The Polar Controversy, Resolved (1997).