Doug Davies, Douglas R. Davies, Navigation Report

Dennis Rawlins

Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2000

Rawlins pretty much rehashes everything of the old Peary arguments. If you are talking about navigation, I am pretty sure I could come well within 20 miles left or right (at the time of year in question) with nothing but a compass and a wristwatch (and someone to carry me, so I didn't have to do any work). 5 miles is either a bit of good luck or a bit of exaggeration. If Peary was a bit lucky, was he required to pretend he wasn't lucky, and make a final 15 mile dash to the right or left?

The real question is why didn't Peary take a sight or two somewhere in the last 5 miles to sharpen things up a bit. Rawlins says because he was already committed to faking, but I think if so, he would have faked a longitude sight or two. I think he believed that Bartlett's noon sight gave him his left-right position within about plus or minus 10 miles, and there wasn't much point in sharpening that, since he would be drifting left or right on the last 135 miles in any event. Bartlett's noon sight should have been about that accurate, but there is no way of knowing if it was.

Why did Peary not take a longitude sight a day or two short of the pole? He thought a longitude sight would be inaccurate at such a high latitude. This conventional wisdom is theoretically correct, but one has to consider that a 10 degree longitude error only amounts to about 6 miles of left-right error at that point. Also, Peary did not realize (because he was not trained in graphical solutions to navigation that sea-going navigators began using in the 1880s) how easy such a sight would be to calculate. (An article in 1907 pointed this out, but I don't believe Peary was aware of it.) I'll draw you a picture sometime. You basically pretend it is a latitude sight, in terms of the calculation, and then plot a line of position on polar coordinate paper. Peary may have relied on the culmination of the sun on his 89-25 latitude sight. Depending on how carefully he did things, this would probably have given him left-right position in the 10-mile range. The calculations for this sight have never surfaced.

Rawlins says Peary didn't take any such sight, based on an answer he gave to the Congressional Committee. However, the sight is reflected in Peary's diary, in the Hampton's article and in his book, all published before the Committee hearing at issue (I think). Peary was being grilled on longitude sights, and after an intense round of questions, was asked, something like "Then from the time you left Bartlett, you took no observations, for longitude or otherwise, until you reached the pole." Peary answered, correct. Any lawyer who has ever prepared a witness for testimony always stresses the importance of listening to the question, and witnesses never do, 100%. I think Peary did not really listen carefully and hear "or otherwise," since the line of questioning really related only to longitude. In any case, Rawlins says "Aha" (his favorite word) so, Peary did not really take this sight at all. In other words, Peary was not willing to lie to Congress about this and so came clean. (Does that mean he did not lie to Congress about anything else?) Maybe.

Of course, if all Peary's sights are fakes, he could have faked one up for this just as well. However, perhaps he figured this was not part of his "proof" and therefore didn't bother. Who knows? Whether he took the sight or not, he apparently "stayed up all night" on the 5th of April, or at least told his family that, based on some correspondence from Marie Peary to Isaiah Bowman. "Night" in this case was the time between about 8:00 a.m., when they arrived at camp, and 8:00 p.m., when they left on the final march. This would have included noon, when Peary could have made the observation. Of course, he didn't tell Henson, and so Henson did not report it. Peary did not want Henson to know the exact distance to the pole, since Peary was planning to abandon him for the final 10 miles. Peary could have watched the sun "all night" on the 5th and got a pretty good idea (or even a very good idea, if he used a sextant or theodolite) of true north based on equal altitudes before and after noon. If he did this, why didn't he say so? Answer - COOK. This could have replaced the Eskimo sundial.

As to the 48 hour return trip, that is not quite right. I think it is more like 48 hours of actual marching. The key to the speed was not so much how fast the sleds went as how little folks slept for that forced march. I'll get some details.

Doug