 fter
12 months of what we believe to be the most exhaustive examination of
documents relating to the Peary polar expedition of 1909 ever undertaken,
the Navigation Foundation has concluded that then Commander Robert
E. Peary and his companion Matthew Henson, along with the Smith Sound
Eskimos Ootah, Egingwah, Seegloo, and Ooqueah, reached the near vicinity
of the North Pole on April 6, 1909.Peary’s observations of the sun during a 30-hour period in and around his final camp, named Camp Jesup, showed that within the probable error of his navigation instruments (about five miles), the party had reach the pole, as Peary, Henson, and the Eskimos all maintained for the rest of their lives. On the way to our conclusion, my colleagues at the Foundation and I have combed through 225 cubic feet of papers in the Peary collection at the National Archives and reviewed relevant papers of Peary’s and other expedition members in the collections of the American Geographical Society, the National Geographic Society, the Explorers Club in New York, the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Studies Center at Bowdoin College, and many other institutions. From his own correspondence and papers from his Arctic journeys, we determined that: 1) Correct Navigation: Peary’s method of navigation was by compass corrected by noon observations of the sun--a method appropriate to polar latitudes. Then, in addition to scrutinizing Peary’s North Pole observations, we also examined the observations of expedition members Professor Ross Marvin of Cornell and Newfoundlander Capt. Robert Bartlett of the Roosevelt, which provided independent checks on direction and distance covered up to latitude 87 45', where the final dash to the Pole commenced. 2) Correct Ocean Depth Records: With the cooperation of the United States Navy we compared the ocean-depth soundings recorded by the expedition with modern profiles of the Arctic Ocean floor and found that these support Peary’s account of his entire trek to the Pole and, incidentally, rule out the westerly displacement of Peary’s track and thus the location of Camp Jesup suggested by British author and explorer Wally Herbert in NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC (September 1988). We also examined patterns of ice drift in the Arctic Ocean and the expedition members’ accounts and concluded that the initial drift westward noted by Herbert was offset by a subsequent rapid eastward movement of the ice that he apparently overlooked. 3) Correct Sun Angle In Photos: Finally, and most convincingly, we applied modern methods of close-range photogrammetry to a number of photographs that Peary identified as taken around Camp Jesup and determined that the position of the photographer was essentially where Peary’s final celestial observations showed him to be. We also applied this technique to a photograph made by Peary on his 1906 “farthest north” expedition and, as a check on our methodology, to a photograph of the Will Steger polar expedition taken at the Pole in May 1986. Continued... |
| "...the Navigation Foundation has concluded that Robert E. Peary, Matthew Henson, Ootah, Egingwah, Seegloo, and Ooqueah, reached the near vicinity of the North Pole on April 6, 1909." |
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| Vanishing point of a long-standing controversy seems at hand with the Navigation Foundation’s close-range photogrammetric analysis of Robert E. Peary’s photographs--one piece of evidence, among many presented, that places him at the North Pole on April 6-7, 1909, “within the limits of his instruments.” |
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