The Dash For the Pole

Today’s installment concludes The Search for the North Pole,
our selection from The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 20 by Charles F. Horne published in 1914.

If you have journeyed through all of the installments of this series, just one more to go and you will have completed a selection from the great works of eight thousand words. Congratulations! For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in The Search for the North Pole.

Time: 1909
Place: North Pole

The start on the heroic “dash for the Pole” was made from Cape Columbia on Feb. 28, 1909. The expedition, in addition to about twenty Eskimos with their sledges and their many teams of dogs, consisted of seven men from the Roosevelt’s company. Beside Peary and his personal attendant, the negro Matthew Henson, these adventurers were: Captain Bartlett, Peary’s chief lieutenant a Newfoundland sea captain who commanded the Roosevelt on both her voyages, Professor McMillan, the scientific head of the expedition; his assistants, Mr. Marvin and Mr. Borup; and the ship’s physician, Dr. Goodsell. Bartlett led the advance division. Peary himself brought up the rear, starting more than a day behind the first sledge.

The trip was very similar to that of a year before. A few days after starting all parties were held back for a week by a big open “lead.” Beyond this the going much improved. They travelled with eager haste. Dr. Goodsell was sent back with the first return party. Then McMillan, crippled by the cold, turned back with more Eskimos, leaving full food sledges for the rest. Next, Borup was sent back, then Marvin. They were above the eighty-seventh parallel now, above their farthest north of three years before. They were still strong and fresh and well provisioned. Hope was high. At the eighty-eighth parallel Captain Bartlett was sent back. It was hard upon him; Commander Peary himself has declared to the writer of this article that the success of the expedition was due more to the loyal aid of Captain Bartlett than to that of any other of his assistants. But Peary had planned his every move with mechanical precision. Bartlett was sent back; and Peary alone, attended only by his servant Henson and four Eskimo drivers, all equally devoted to him, made his last hurried rush forward. He carried full sledge loads, provisions for forty days, allowing five days for advance and then thirty-five for retreat. Their dogs might make them food for another ten days beyond that; then they must find game, their ship, or die.

This final dash of the one remaining party began April 1st. They had measured their position by the sun before starting. They struggled onward for five days, over old ice mainly, huge-piled and difficult, but sometimes galloping over smoother floes. The wind was bitter, the sky overcast, the cold many many degrees below our Fahrenheit zero. A glimpse of sun came at noon on April 6th and Peary took a hasty observation. It gave their latitude as 89° 57′. A minute in such measuring equals about a mile; they were within three miles of the Pole.

How did they know when they reached it that afternoon? They did not know exactly. Perhaps, indeed, they had already overshot it. They spent thirty hours in the neighborhood, going ten miles beyond and almost equally far to one side, so as to be assured of covering the spot. The sun came out, and Peary searched eagerly with his telescope for land, but found none. Through a crack in the ice he sounded the ocean’s depth below him. The measuring line sank almost two miles and found no bottom. The line broke and was thrown away.

That is the answer to the riddle of the centuries. There is no “Pole.” No man shall ever plant a flag upon its summit, or leave a permanent record there. Above earth’s northernmost point there rolls a mighty ocean. Across its surface sweep mighty masses of ever drifting ice. Peary left records and flags; but will the next explorer find them there, or drifted some hundred miles away? Or will the breaking, shifting ice drop them into the deeps below? It may have done so already. It may carry them unharmed for centuries.

On April 7th the venturesome explorers started their backward flight. As Peary himself says, they seemed to bear a charm. Everything went with smoothness. They followed their own trail back, sleeping in the snow huts they had built on their advance, losing no time anywhere, able to cover almost two days’ trip in one by reason of their lighter load, the trodden path, and the release from extra labor in preparing sleeping- quarters and so on. On April 23rd. they reached the shore of Grant Land not far from where they had started. Peary tells us that his chief Eskimo sat down on his sledge upon the shore and said, “The devil is asleep or having trouble with his wife, or we never should have come back so easily.”

Only one tragedy marred this fortunate expedition. The other return parties had faced much more serious difficulties from ice and weather than had Peary’s. The leader of one of them, Mr. Marvin, was drowned in crossing the “big lead,” the last and latest victim of the lure of the North.

As soon as summer permitted, the Roosevelt, eager to carry the proud news of her victory to the world, broke her way out of the ice at Cape Sheridan, steamed back down those long channels, the “American passage,” to the Arctic Ocean, landed Eskimos at Etah, and sped for home. On September 5th she reached Battle Harbor in Labrador, and Peary telegraphed his now celebrated message, “Stars and Stripes nailed to North Pole.”

This ends our series of passages on The Search for the North Pole by Charles F. Horne from his book The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 20 published in 1914. This blog features short and lengthy pieces on all aspects of our shared past. Here are selections from the great historians who may be forgotten (and whose work have fallen into public domain) as well as links to the most up-to-date developments in the field of history and of course, original material from yours truly, Jack Le Moine. – A little bit of everything historical is here.

More information on The Search for the North Pole here and here and below.

We want to take this site to the next level but we need money to do that. Please contribute directly by signing up at https://www.patreon.com/history