Meet Peary and Henson

the west coast. They're nearly out of food, and they're desperately searching for a herd of muskoks to stave off their depths by starvation. The animals they're stalking way up to eight hundred pounds and are built like battering rams, with a coat of shaggy hair and sharp curved horns. Muskoks are powerful and unpredictable, and their peers and Hanson's last hope for revival. All day, they look for snags of the oxen's hair on rough rocks and scan the

snow for tracks. Finally, they locate hoofprints and follow them across a valley. Anticipating fresh meat. They spot a herd of eight adult oxen and their calves about a hundred and fifty feet ahead of them, munching on tufts of grass on a wind swept slope. According to his biographer Bradley Robinson, Henson stops his dogs and sled and let's us lead dog out of its trace. It sprints towards the herd. The panicked musk ox form a circle around

their calves. The adults face outward from the circle, ready to fight. Perry and Henson aim and fire, but they are so weak with hunger that their actions feel like they're in slow motion. Most of the bullets hit their targets, and the oxen dropped to the ground in heaps. But one big animal is just grazed by the shot. It turned towards Peary, who has no ammunition left. The ox charges. Robinson writes that Perry scrambles up the snow covered slope,

shouting at Henson to fire. His legs feel like rubber, his boots slip on the icy ground, and he expects at any moment to feel the animal's horns in his back. Out of the corner of his eye, Pier sees Henson raised his gun over the ragged sound of his breathing. He hears a thud in the snow behind him. Henson

has saved his life. This isn't the first time that Pierry has come within inches of death and his quest to reach the North Pole, and it won't be the last time that Henson's skill and quick thinking prevent disaster. On one of their expeditions, Peary wanted to be the first person at the North Pole, and he wanted to live to tell the world. Henson would help make it happen.

In this episode, will examine the unique relationship between Robert Peary and Matthew Henson, two adventurers with completely different backgrounds and temperaments. They built one of the most enduring and successful partnerships in the history of exploration, but there were also disappointments, betrayals, and a lot of drama. Will tag along as they make their first stabs at the Big Nail, the North Pole itself From Mental Floss and I Heart Radio,

This is the Quest for the North Pole. I'm your host, Cat Long, Science editor at Mental Floss and this is Episode five. Meet Pierry and Henson. The Canadian historian Pierre Burton rights no other explorer in Arctic history was ever a single minded in the pursuit of his goal as Robert Edwin Perry. No other as paranoid, and his suspicion and even hatred of those he considered rivals and interlopers. No other as ruthless, as arrogant, as insensitive, or as

self serving. Of all the bizarre and eccentric human creatures who sought the Arctic grail, Perry is the least lovable. Pretty strong words. Yet these unpleasant qualities might have been the keys to perry success. His relentless ambition drove him on when others might have faltered. His hunger for fame would not let him give up, even after he lost

eight toes to frostbite. His todying to his superiors, as Burton puts it, resulted in them funding his expensive trips to the Arctic, even aside from his quest for the North Pole. He must be given his due as one of the greatest explorers of the period, Burton rights, but it was the poll that obsessed him. Unlike earlier expeditions like nonsense that hope to answer scientific quest, Jens Peary was not really concerned about useful discoveries or charting the unknown.

He had little training in natural history, unless you count his taxidermy business. After he graduated from college. He kept meteorological records, as every previous explorer had done, but he was merely collecting data, not interpreting the results to solve the hypothesis. His prime purpose was to conquer the North Pole before anybody else. As Burton writes, even the conquest of the poll was not in Peery's view and end in itself, but only a means to an end. Perry

hungered for fame and fortune. He made no bones about that. The pole he knew would give him both. Very knew himself. He discussed his own drives and personality, especially with his mother. That's Edward J. Larson, historian and author of most recently To the Edges of the Earth, The Race for the Three Polls, and the Climax of the Age of Exploration. You're basically raised by his mother in Maine, and they were devoted to each other, and he would pour out

his soul to his mother in letters. You can really see a man who he is totally driven by a sense of a hunger for fame and acceptance. Maybe that reflects his lack of a father growing up. He said in one letter to his mother shortly after he moved to Washington, and at that time he had been trained as an engineer and he was working for the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. He wrote, I don't want to live and die without accomplishing anything, or without being known

beyond a narrow circle of friends. Perry had moved to Washington, d c. In eight seventy nine after graduating from Bowden College with a degree in Civil engineering. He worked for the Coast and Geodetic Survey for two years, then joined the U. S. Navy's Civil Engineer Corps and was assigned to Survey Territory in Nicaragua for a potential site to build a canal linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The expedition into the tropical forests of Central America gave Peery

a taste of the world beyond his Yankee upbringing. He also began to view daring adventure as his ticket to fame. After reading about the little known interior of Greenland, he formulated a plan for traversing its ice sheet, the largest in the northern Hemisphere. Despite having zero experience in cold weather exploration, ignorance never stopped Perry once he had a goal in mind, and unlike many of the British Admiralties expeditions earlier in the nineteenth century, Peery actually learned from

his experiences and adapted his plans as needed. In eighteen eighty six, Peery embarked on his first trip to the Polar regions. He hitched a ride on a whaler going north, and once he arrived near Disco Island on Greenland's west coast, he hired a Dane named Christian may Guard as his sole companion for the trek. He tried to hire native helpers, but they refused to go with him. Perry estimated the provisions and equipment he would need, bundled it on sledges,

and then set off. He claimed he ascended to seven thousand, five hundred feet in elevation and marched about one miles into the interior before a shortage of food forced him and may Guard to turn around. We have only Perry's word for the distance he traveled, though we don't know how many how far he didn't make it because he didn't take a long proper instruments for calculating a longitude. Quick refresher here if you're traveling west or east. You

measure the distance you travel in degrees of longitude. Calculating it requires special instruments like a chronometer. Perry had brought one, but claimed it had the usefulness shaken out of it. After Perry had climbed a glacier, he claimed the hundred miles, but for gold Manson, who was the greatest gusplorer at the time, said that's ridiculous. He didn't make it that far. Proving his achievements once he returned home was a running

issue with Perry. More on that later. As we mentioned in our third episode, Nonsen had traversed the Greenland ice sheet from east to west after Perry had returned to the US, so he was a novice explorer. Perry was already extremely competitive. Once he heard about nonsense achievement, Perry altered his plans for his next trip to Greenland. He decided to attempt a crossing on a longer, more northern route from west to east that would be more difficult

than nonsense route. When he got back, he wrote to his mother, my last trip has brought my name before the world. Remember mother, I must have theme. He underling the word must I must have theme and cannot reconcile myself two years of commonplace drudgery and the name late in life, and I see an opportunity to gain it now.

And then he later wrote, as he was building towards his later expeditions, because he kept going back, he wrote, same money and Revenge, Goldney forward until sometimes I can hardly sleep lest something happened to interfere with my plans. Now Here is a driven man in this case with Perry, it was not only a personal goal, but it was also a public goal that gave his life meaning and gaining meaning for his life. And you can see this in Teddy Roosevelt going down the River of down in

South America. By accomplishing this, it gave Perry's meaning to his life, and his life was not work living to him without meaning. Before Perry embarked on his next trip north, he would meet the person who would go further than anyone toward making Pierre's dreams of reality. Matthew Alexander Henson grew up about as far away from the North Pole

as can be imagined. He was born in eighteen sixty six in Nanjimoy, Maryland, a village in Charles County, on the eastern shore of the Potomac River, about forty miles south of Washington, d c. The Civil War had ended just the year before, but southern Maryland remained sympathetic to the Confederacy. To illustrate that fact, John Wilkes Booth had fled through Charles County after assassinating Abraham Lincoln because he knew he'd find like minded Marylander as to help him escape.

This feels like a good place to say that while we know some things about Henson's early life, other details even some pretty big events very widely. Even Henson published two versions of his own childhood, Here's what we know for sure and where we tried to fill the gaps. According to two biographies published in nineteen fifty four and nineteen sixty three, Henson's parents were free born black sharecroppers

on a large farm near Nanjimoy. Henson's mother died when he was young, and he was raised by a cruel stepmother. When he was about ten years old, he ran away to Washington, where he worked for a woman in her cafe for a year, and then walked to Baltimore, where he signed up as a cabin boy on a ship called the Katy Hinds, commanded by Captain Childs. He sailed all around the world before coming back to Washington when

he was about eighteen. In Henson's own book about Reaching the North Pole, published in nineteen twelve, he says he moved with his family from Nanjimoy to Washington, d C. His mother died when he was seven, and he went to live with an uncle, who sent him to a prestigious high school for black students for more than six years. Then Henson signed up on a vessel and sailed to ports around the world. In all three books, Captain Child's

emerges as a kindly father figure to Henson. I wanted to know more about Filds, his ship, and his travels. I dug deeper into newspaper archives, scholarly databases, and even ancestry dot Com, but couldn't find any evidence of an ocean going vessel called the Katie Hines. This was really perplexing because US merchant ships were registered with government agencies

and their voyages were often reported in newspapers. So I brought in our fact checker, Austin Thompson, who looked in other sources, including the annual list of the merchant vessels of the United States, and there was no Katie Hines. But in several old articles in Maryland newspapers, I did find that A. W. S. Child's was appointed captain of a police sloop with that name in eighty eight, about the same year that Henson says he signed up as

a cabin boy. This Katie Hines patrolled Maryland's waterways for illegal oyster dreasures. Austin found an article that definitively plays Childs and the Katie Hines in Maryland in one and the Baltimore Sun reported that W. S. Child captain of one of the state's oyster police boats, died in eighteen eighty three in his home near Nanjimoy, Maryland. That matches the year of Childs's death in the Henson biographies. Could this be Henson's captain Child's We think so, but we

may never know for sure. So it's not easy to know exactly where and how Henson spent his youth. But whether Henson sailed around the world or just the Chesapeake Bay, all biographical accounts suggest that he returned to Washington at age eighteen or nineteen. He gets a job as a clerk at b. H Stein Meticine Sun, a well known men's furrier and hat shop located three blocks east of the White House. Working in retail will become a turning

point in his life. In eighteen eighty seven, Robert Peary entered the store to buy his son helmet for his second trip to Nicaragua. Here's James Edward Mills, a freelance journal list, independent producer, and faculty assistant at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin. He's also the author of the adventure Gap Changing the Face

of the Outdoors. Key and Hanson struck up a conversation, and I'm not sure exactly how it went, but the upshot of it was that Hanson joined Perry ostensibly as his assistant. And um, It's difficult to know exactly what the nature of their overall relationship was, but Hanson basically was his right hand man from that point on. Henson joined Perry on all of his expeditions, which, after their trip to Nicaragua, would abandon warm climates for the farthest

reaches of the Arctic. You know, I think that he might have taken a polar exploration to escape the Jim Crow South. This is the one place in the world where he could be judged by the continent of his character, not the color of his skin. And I think that there's a lot to be sent for that. Between eighteen eighty one and Pierry and Henson embarked on four expeditions to Greenland and northeastern Canada to explore the territory and scout out a possible route even further north. On these arduous,

lengthy journeys, they developed a unique working relationship. Peary was the expedition leader, navigator, financier, and planner, while Henson was the project manager, carpenter, mechanic and translator. Peary was the

visionary and Henson made the vision a reality. Before any expedition, Peery first had to obtain funding for the enormous expenses they would incur, which included borrowing or buying a ship, strengthening the vessel for Arctic conditions, hiring the crew, buying provisions and equipment, buying items to trade with the new wheat for their services, and a ridiculous number of miscellaneous costs like books, tents, clothing, maps, tools, guns and edition,

scientific instruments, spare parts and much more. The disaster of the Greely Expedition, a U. S. Army foray to the Arctic that resulted in death by starvation, was still fresh in people's minds, so Perry's early expeditions to Greenland were mostly self funded. He had secured book deals, lecture tours, and newspaper exclusives to offset the huge costs of the journeys. But when Perry made the North Pole his soul focus, he was able to gather a group of donors to

pay for his adventures, the Peri Arctic Club. The group comprised the wealthy industrialists and philanthropists of New York's Gilded Age. They enjoyed big game, hunting and other manly pursuits championed by Theodore Roosevelt and his doctrine of the strenuous Life. Roosevelt said it was the highest form of success, which comes not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who, out of

these wins the splendid ultimate triumph. Many of them are major business people in New York, but there is also a whole set of them who are worrying that, um, all these technological advances are weakening white males and they're losing their manliness, and so Peery becomes this example of

you know, this outdoor, strong, successful man. That's Susan Kaplan, director of the Pierry McMillan Arctic Museum at Boden College, an author of Pery's Arctic Quest, untold stories from Robert E. Peery's North Pole expeditions that sort of feeds into the whole North Pole narrator to as well, and so Peery's backers, many of them are very focused on him as the symbol of you know, strong, tough masculinity. That is so interesting.

That's probably why he and Peeddy Roosevelt were such good friends. Yep. It's not simply that he's the strong masculine man, but he's a white Western strong masculine man. Becomes very important. The club members had money to spare and a desire to have their names enshrined on the Arctic map. Perry's biggest supporter was banker Morris K. Jessup, one of the founders of the American Museum of Natural History. He formed the club in with the Chase National Bank, president Henry W.

Cannon and journalist Herbert L. Bridgeman. The Period Arctic Club convinced Perry's employer, the U. S. Navy, to give him a five year leave of a since so he could pursue his Arctic ambitions. The club also raised funds to send a supply ship to Perier's party for each year he pursued the poll. Bridgeman organized the relief missions and was the only one of the club's leaders who took

part in one of Perry's adventures. Finally, club members committed to contributing a set sum each year to support Peri's goals. For their sustained generosity, Perry told them, the names of those who made the work possible will be kept through the coming centuries, floating forever above the forgotten and submerged debris of our time and day. In other words, they could bank on an Arctic cape, mountain bay, or glacier being named after them, much like donors today get their

names on a museum gallery or a library building. The Peri Arctic Club helped Perry borrow a ship from Alfred Harmsworth, the British publisher of the Daily Mail. The Windward was the same vessel on which Frederick Jackson brought Fritcheff Nonsen and Hilmar Johansson back to Norway after their attempt at the North Pole in The ship would be their main

transport for only the first leg of their journeys. However, once they anchored the ship in a safe location to act as a base camp, Pierry and Henson traveled by dogsled and that's where Henson's talents came into play. Here's James Edward Mills again. I think what's really remarkable about Henson is that he doesn't get a lot of credit and certainly hadn't got a lot of credit for his contributions to that expedition, mainly because of his rights as

an African American. He was, I guess, by design, made a play second fiddle to the white explorers in this party, despite the fact that Henson was the master craftsman and built all the sleds and helped to design the polar suits working with the Native Inuits. On their first expeditions together, Pierry and Henson visited the new Wheaek commune at Eta and hired many of the people to drive the dog sleds.

Henson intimated that he was interested in learning the skill, and he must have seen what he would be in for. The Greenland sled dogs were powerful, furry, and ferocious. They retained their wolf like instincts and seemed only barely domesticated, more wild animal than family pet. The dominant dog, called the King Dog, led the team of eight animals, each

with its own trace connected to the sled. The traces spread into a fan shape as the dogs ran at top speed, egged on by the new wheat driver's whip and verbal commands. It took weeks for Henson to learn the right way of shouting commands that the dogs would respect and to crack the whip at the King Dog's ear. He had to get comfortable with the sled itself, which

was often loaded with heavy gear. Many times he wiped out and ended up in a snow bank as his new wheat teachers laughed hysterically, But after more eks of practice, Henson finally got the hang of it. By their nineteen o eight nineteen o nine North Pole expedition, Perry said Henson can handle a sledge better and is probably a better dog driver than any other man living except some of the best of the Eskimo hunters themselves. A quick note about the term Eskimo, since this isn't the last

time we'll hear it. It's a complicated word. It was used by colonizers to describe Native people, not one that Native people used to describe themselves. Many consider it offensive, while some Native people still choose to use it. The Inuit Circumpolar Council Charter of nineteen eighty defines the indigenous peoples of the Inuite Homeland, which includes Alaska, Canada, Greenland, and Russia as Inuit in inuktitute word, meaning the people.

Groups within the Inuit Homeland have more specific names for themselves, such as the Inuite of northwestern Greenland. Henson showed that he was eager to adopt other inw wheat waves. The in New Wheat taught him how to hunt walrus, build igloos and stone huts, and stay warm by sleeping in furs and packing the soles of his sealskin boots with moss for installation. Henson also achieved fluency in Innuctitut, or possibly the related and New Wheat language Inuktun, which went

far toward establishing trust and a respectful relationship with them. Peery, like other explorers, learned a few important words and left it at that. Henson also performed a million other miscellaneous tasks for the expedition team, from building and repairing sledges, to butchering meat, to patching clothes, to negotiating with the in New Wheat families. Here's James Edward Mills. You obviously

you have the ability to communicate across cultural boundaries. At the same time, I think that he had the humility to learn their language, He had the vulnerability to be taught how to do these critical and important things, you know.

And I think that that there's probably a certain amount of camaraderie that comes with this, because I can imagine that especially at the time, you know, when you have this still incredibly colonial attitude towards relationships with people of color and other parts of the world, as you know, the dominant white culture of Europe and North America. Instead of telling the in New way to make clothes and sledges, Henson was more likely to have said, can you teach

me how to do it? And I think that it is indeed that relationship between people of color and native people around the world you know, there's a certain sense of a fellowship, and I think that that probably translated itself in Henson's relationships with the Inuit from until nineteen o nine, periods Old Focused became the North Pole. He'll forge a sea root as far as the ice will

let him sail. He'll rely on the in New Week communities in northwestern Greenland for supplies, dogs, and manpower, and most of all will depend on Henson's expertise and Arctic survival to reach his goal. We'll be right back. In December. After leaving their ship windward on the western edge of Kane Basin in the Canadian Arctic, Peery and a small team are racing north along the coast of Ellesmere Island.

They're aiming for an abandoned fort, where Peery hopes to cut off a Norwegian rival, Auto spare Drop, the same man who captain Nonsense Ship from on its incredible journey across the Siberian Sea. Ever paranoid that someone else will reach the North Pole first and steal his shot at glory, Pierry is convinced that's fair Drop, and tends to use the fort as a base camp for his own dash to ninety degrees north. The only way to reach the fort, which is two and fifty miles north of the ship.

As the snow goose flies is on dog sled over glaciers, mountains, and ice flows in the dead of polar winter. Henson tries to talk as leader out of this dangerous idea, but Perry will not be dissuaded. Now, Peery Henson, the expedition surgeon, and four and new wheat guides push on through the twenty four hour darkness and temperatures around minus sixty degrees fahrenheit. They barely stopped to eat rest, and

they grow exhausted and disoriented. At any moment, a person or sledge could disappear through the ice to their death. After nearly three weeks of constant travel, they burst through the front door of Fort Conger at Lady Franklin Bay on Ellesmere Island. The shelter was built by the American Army officer Adolphus Greeley and his crew during the expedition, which eventually ended in disaster when relief ships failed to

rescue them. Now the party finds the notorious hut, just as Greeley had left it with biscuits on the table, overturned cups and piles of supplies and papers strewn about. Henson lights a fire the inwhite ten to the dogs, and Peery notices a worrisome wooden feeling in his feet. Henson removes the leader's outer boots and sees that Peery's legs are like marble up to his knees, a sure

sign of severe frostbite. As Henson takes off the under shoes, several of Pierri's frozen toes pop off at the joints. Pier He stares at his feet. Finally, he says, a few toes aren't much to give to achieve the poll. It wasn't just his cavalier attitude towards his toes that made Peery different from his polar peers. Though he was a naval officer, Peery's plan for the execution of his expeditions was completely different from the British naval methods of old.

He took cues from Nonsen and adopted a new wheat ways that put his own mark on polar travel. Here's susan kaplan. Early on in his career, you know, he went to the Arctic having built what he thought for instance,

was the ideal fledge. And once he was up there, he started to look and realized that the inu Wheet had these technologies, from fledges to the kind difer clothing they were wearing, to the implements they were using for hunting and processing skins that were really effective and ingenious. And he had the openness of mind to recognize that there were technologies that they had developed that were ahead of anything that any Western culture had come up with.

And so from that perspective he really respected them at the Inuhuit, and in employing them, he also realized that they had hunting skills and travel skills that the men he was taking north with him just simply did not have. And so what he conceived of were teams of Westerners and a new Wheat who would work together. And they all arrived in the Arctic, you know, months before he was going to try to get to the North Pole, and he sent these people out in teams hunting and

doing title readings. And that was both because they needed meat and because he had promised scientific results from his expeditions, but it was also a way to get people from completely different cultures who had no common language to figure out how to work together. Like nonsense, Pierie opted to pull light sledges with minimal supplies instead of hauling every

item he would need with him from the US. He obtained supplies from a new wheat villages like Itta on the northwestern coast of Greenland, or from existing camps from previous expeditions like Fort Conger. Peery read books and journals by previous explorers and decided the British method of multiple ships and large crews was a recipe for failure. Instead, he concluded that a mode of exploration based as closely as possible on in new wheat techniques had the greatest

chance for success. Perhaps his biggest divergence from the old way was hiring and integrating in new wheat families into the expedition's plan, something that only Charles Francis Hall, whom we met in our previous episode, had done before, and on a much smaller scale. Peerry hired entire families to perform certain tasks, knowing that the men would be reluctant to leave their wives and children behind. Women prepared furs and sewed them into clothing for the explorers, while men

served as dog drivers hunters and guides. Peery paid them with trade goods and supplies forging loyalties so that quote unquote new Heat wouldn't work with any other explorers, which was also a way to ensure that his quote unquote right to claim the poll wasn't infringed. Here's ed Larson Perry, especially coming from Maine, was probably more open to this view that in their place, at their time and in their own ways. Um, these peoples had learned to navigate and live in a way that if we use and

exploit we can succeed. Think of the early America, the Westerners going through asking for Native American help, adopting Native American ways, the early for trappers, Lewis and Clark, whoever you want to talk about, and you know that was just different, because how did you know? You America and Britain. Just to use an analogy, boats competed for Pacific Northwest. The British sailed there with people like Vancouver. The Americans went across the mountains with Native American guy, and Verry

sort of fits in that American traditions. So what he did is he tried to figure out, all right, these people are already to live up there. How did they live? They're already able to travel up there, and so he built on this. And that's what I'm getting at the question of what sort of a leader he was willing to build an organization which was very different than virtually all the other explorers. He developed the team of local

Innoit people, and he used their methods. Matthew Henson played a unique role in building the organization and negotiating with the in New Heat. He may have been the one person able to persuade the New Heat to travel so far from their homes and hunting grounds. As James Edward Mills notes, he convinced them to go with them. You know, it's actually this is the place that they've never gone before.

They had to have been something to that. So again drawing a lot of conclusions here, I don't know first act, but I would imagine that, you know, his sensibility to bridge the cultural gas as a thoughtful and respectful person of color was tootal to give the success of the

Terry expinitions. At the same time, the New Wheat never really got the whole point of Perry's quests, but they understood the poll to be a tangible thing as Burton writes its name suggested a perpendicular object projecting from the ice. They called it the Big Nail, after a useful trade article with which they could identify. By availing himself of the in new white skills and endurance, Parry was able to develop a system that would get him to the

poll with the least amount of extraneous labor. The system involved sending out small advanced parties along the intended route from the base camp to the pole. Each party would hall supplies to a designated point and build an igloo. Successive parties would use some of the supplies and shelter at these spots, then deposit their own caches of applies

at points farther along the route. Each of the advanced parties would return to base camp, leaving Parry and his hand picked comrades to push on through the final leg of the journey to the pole without the need to lug tents or food on their sledges. Each party would travel extremely lightly, Unlike past explorers, Perry's lean margin for error meant that a delay caused by a storm or

bad ice would ripple through the system. The carefully allotted food caches could run out as parties waited to cross open water, or one party could eat more than its share, leaving too little for the subsequent teams. Despite all the planning, they were still at the mercy of nature. After deciding that conquering the North Pole was his ticket to fame, Perry's next and most ambitious expeditions took place between eight

and nineteen o six. The first ended up being a four year or deal that started with his frost bitten toes and slid down hill from there. Perry's will was tested constantly by physical injury, emotional turmoil, and the belief that other explorers from Norway and Italy were gaining on him. Here's susan kaplan. He's not the only one who has

their sights on the North Pole. Nations were vying to get to the North Pole for national prestige, and as I mentioned, because if there was land there, what resources were on that land? So Peery is not driven to go to the North Pole in total isolation. Um, you know, there are a number of other people sort of sniffing around and trying to figure out how to get there.

As he planned for departure in the summer of Pierry learned that otto, spare Drop was again sailing the from Antarctic waters, this time somewhere around Kane Basin, the same a locale that Peery anticipated as his jumping off point for a dash to the poll sphair Drop actually had no interest in being the first man at the pole. He was in the region to map unknown lands and

gather scientific data. But Peery, consumed by a desire for fame, didn't believe that Spairedrop was not planning to sabotage his plans. He used the alleged threat to squeeze more money out of the Periarctic Club. In July, Pierry Henson and the rest of the crew departed New York on the windward. They sped up the Canadian coastline as far as Kane Basin,

where Perry ran into spare drops party. In October, Pierry called the Norwegians the introduction of a disturbing factor in the appropriation by another of my plan and field of work. Spheedrop was amused by the encounter and noted how Perry tried to hide the patches on his trousers. After a few minutes of chit chat. Sphairedrop later wrote I took Peery down to the sledge and watched him disappearing at

an even pace, driven by his Eskimo driver. As I was turning around to go back to the tent, I caught sight of my crew member Faussheim, driving like mad along the ice. My heart felt quite warm with patriotism. Now that Peery knew he had competition, or thought he did, he accelerated his plan. Since fair Drop was around Kane Basin, just south of Fort Conger, Peerrie assumed fair Drop intended to appropriate the old hut for shelter and supplies. Peery

was determined to get there first. After the ill fated race north from the Windward by dogs led, Peerrie's party reached Fort Conger on January sixth, eighteen ninety nine. As they thawed out in front of a fire, Peery realized his feet or frost bitten off went his toes with the under shoes. The surgeon was forced to fully amputate seven Perry later lost another. One, of course, Sperdrov never showed up. By March, the party had carried Peyrie on

a sledge back to the Windward. Over the next year and a half, Peerrie traveled hundreds of miles across the northern limits of Greenland and Canada's Ellesmere Island, employing and testing his staging system and scouting a possible route to the pole. In spring nineteen hundred, he and Henson located the northernmost point in Greenland, which Peerrie named after his chief backer, Morris K. Jessup. He went forth across the treacherous sea for several miles, but concluded that this route

was too difficult. Meanwhile, the Windward returned to New York, picked up Perie's wife Josephine, and their young daughter Marie, and returned to Ita. The whole winter. Pearrie's family stayed less than two hundred miles from where he was spending the winter at Fort Conger, but neither of them knew it Worse, Josephine met an in New Wheat woman in Ita named Ala Cassina, with whom Pearrie had had a child.

Josephine was a formidable adventurer herself, and had even given birth to Marie in the Arctic on Perrie's expedition, but the awkward situation in Ita shook her. She wrote to her husband, you will have been surprised, perhaps annoyed when you hear I came up on a ship. But believe me, had I known how things were with you, I should not have come. At Fort Conger, the mood was deteriorating. Members of the party were getting on each other's nerves.

The surgeon was jealous of Henson, and Perry tried to smooth things over by unfairly chastising his right hand man. A reliefship brought the news that Peary's mother had died. Josephine was mad at period for carrying on with ale Cassina. Then Frederick Cook, a doctor who had served on one of Peari's early expeditions, arrived and the news was not good. He recommended returning to New York at once. Peery ignored him,

but that's not the last we'll hear of Cook. At long last, in March two, Peery, Henson, and the Inuit guides made a serious stab at the Pole. Having lived in the region for the past three years, Pierry may have felt confident in his chances, but it was a struggle from start to finish. The party was already worn out from the previous season's traveling, and they were forced to detour around hummocks in open water, adding distance to their journey. Sometimes they had to chop through barriers of

solid ice to make a path for the dogs. Then they came to a treacherous expanse of open water between ice flows, called a lead. This particular lead marked the edge of the continental shelf and butted up against the shifting ice of the deep Arctic Ocean. The ice was constantly coming together and pulling apart without warning. Now Perry found it wide open, and there was nothing to do but wait for the floes to join again, for the temperature to drop some ice could form so they could

cross it. Frustrated, Perry dubbed it the Big Lead, the Hudson River, and the Grand Canal. As they waited, they consumed their provisions. On April one, Pierry realized their journey to the Pole would be impossible, and he was still three hundred and ninety five statute miles from their destination. They had reached eighty four degrees seventeen minutes north on the windward for their homeward journey, Josephine Pierry gave them

more bad news. Two years earlier, Italian naval officer Umberto Cagney had led a dash for the pole from Francios off Land while facing incredible hardships. Can Ye turned back after reaching eighty six degrees thirty four minutes north, a new farthest north that beat Nonsen and Johansson's record by twenty nautical miles and Pierry's turnaround point by a hundred and fifty eight nautical miles. And to twist the knife a little deeper, Perry's a led did arch nemesis Auto.

Sphare Drop had also spent four years in the Arctic between eight and nineteen o two and had more to show for it. He located and mapped three massive islands to the west of Ellesmere, now called the sphare Drop Islands, and mapped more than one thousand square miles of territory in the Canadian hier Arctic. Not only did Pierry not reach the poll, he didn't even set a farthest north record.

He lost eight toes. His marriage was shaky, and his mother, his closest confidante, was no longer there to provide moral support. His personal and professional life was at a crossroads, but one person continued to believe in his mission, Henson had assisted him at every turn, and with his help Pierry had a chance to try again. Let's take a break here, we'll be right back. Robert Peary once wrote that no one should ever expect anything of the Arctic except the worst.

The four year odyssey that he and Henson spent in the Arctic was a test of their endurance insanity. But on their second attempt at the North Pole, which followed the same route that they had mapped out on their previous voyage, they would experience some of the worst moments in all their fifteen years together. On this expedition, beginning in nine five, Peary would finally get his own ship.

He raised one and twenty thousand dollars about two point seven million into days dollars from the Peri Arctic Club and mortgaged his own house to pay for the design and construction of the Roosevelt, named for one of his biggest supporters, President Theodore Roosevelt, It had a rounded, flexible hull inspired by nonsense from a system of horizontal trusses within the hall strengthened it against the horse of ice, while its bow could drive through ice that blocked its way.

Following his four year expedition, Pierry realized that his usual bare bones crew would not have enough manpower to complete the relay stages in his system. He would hire a larger expedition team, which of course included Henson, and divide them into three groups. The first would break the trail for the dog sleds and build igloos along the route. The second would like cach as of supplies at those stages, and the third would be the polar party, the men

who would actually go to the North Pole. Perry would continue to enlist in New Wheat families and their dogs in his scheme. The Roosevelt left New York Harbor on July and sailed up the Canadian coast, passing landmarks that

were by now extremely familiar to Pierry and Henson. By mid August, they were at Eta to pick up about forty of their in New Wheat colleagues, including Utah, the community's lead hunter, two hundred dogs, and several tons of Walverus meat, which were frozen and hung in the Roosevelt's rigging. Then the ship's captain, Bob Bartlett, drove full steam ahead

north into the pack ice. They overwintered at Cape Sheridan, where Sir George Strong NAAR's and the Alert had hunkered down about thirty years earlier and prepared for their dash the following spring. In February nineteen o six, Parry gathered his crew and sent the advanced parties to stockpile supplies at Point Moss, a spot on the northern coast of Ellesmere Island, from which Peary would leave the security of land and travel over the ice for more than four

hundred miles to the Pole. From Point Moss, Henson, Utah and the advance parties went ahead to break the trail for the sledges and to build igloos along the route at fifty mile intervals. Peerry led the final party. Headwinds thwarted their progress through fractured ice fields. The parties encountered hummocks, rotten floes, and open leads that slowed their trial boll and cause Perry mounting frustration. While the dog teams rested at each of their pre built camps, Perry fumed about

falling behind his planned pace. On March, Pierry, Henson and their teams came upon the big lead, and once again they just had to wait until they could cross it with the sleds. Unlike Nonsen and earlier explorers, Perry never took any boats or kayaks with him over the sea ice. They were delayed for a week before a thin film of ice formed on the big lead, just enough to support the weight of the sledges. They continued their dash for three days before Perry admitted to himself that the

delay had again cost him the pole. There was no way they could now attempt the next three D and sixties statue miles to the pole with their dwindling food, but he could not return home and face the peri Arctic Club empty handed. To do so would cost him another chance to try for the pole. While a ferocious store kept them inside their igloo for several days, Perry dwelled on Nonsen and Kanye's farthest north records. The least

he could do would be to try and set one himself. Peery, Penson and the New Wheat threw all excess weight off their sledges and drove like crazy. They were truly in a race against time, because for every day they spent going north, they consumed more food and had less food for their return journey. Finally, Pierry took a navigational reading and discovered they were at eighty seven degrees six minutes north.

A new record, or was it. Burton writes that Peery claimed he traveled one and thirties statute miles between April fourteen when he left their igloo and April one when he took the reading. That breaks down to an average speed of nineteen miles a day without any obstacles in the form of hummocks or open water. In contrast, the average speed he traveled between Point Moss in the Big Lead when he was still attempting to run for the poll,

it was about seven miles per day. And the only proof of their alleged record was Perry's word, since only he could make the navigational calculations. As Ed Larson explains, this was totally on purpose. There was one I think indirect advantage for Perry in all this, and that is he could feel and in a way was superior to these people. It was it was superior amendment that only

he could calculate where they were. Only he could take and it wasn't very good at longitude, but only only he could take a latitude and he could plot the course, and he didn't have to worry, as Scott and Shackleton and the others did, about somebody he took along, and he didn't have to worry about anybody trying to challenge his power. Wherever they were, they didn't stop to celebrate.

Terry had already pushed them to the limit. He later wrote, as I looked at the drawn faces of my comrades, at the skeleton figures of my few remaining dogs, at my nearly empty sledges, and remembered the drifting ice over which we had come, and the unknown quantity of the big lead between us and the nearest land, I felt that I had cut the margin as narrow as could reasonably be expected. Now they were in a race against death.

On their retreat, the wind that had blown at their backs on the way north blasted them in the face. Tiny snow particles felt like red hot needles on their exposed skin. Each day became a mad dash from one former camp to the next, where they had shelter but no fresh supplies of food. Perry wrote, at the end of every march, we stumbled into our old eggloes, utterly exhausted, with eyes aflame from the wind and driving snow, but thanking God that we did not have to put ourselves

to the additional effort of building egglooes. Eventually they came upon the big lead, stretching clear to the horizon in either direction. While they waited to cross it, they killed and ate most of their dogs and broke up the sleds for fuel. On their northward journey, Perry had dubbed

the channel the Hudson River. Now as we lay in this dismal camp, Perry later wrote, watching the distant southern ice, beyond which lay the world, all that was near and dear, and perhaps life itself, while on our side was only the wide stretching ice and possibility of a lingering death. There was but one appropriate name for its black waters, the sticks. Finally, a crust of ice two miles wide covered the lead, a short distance from their camp, possibly

thick enough to support a man in snowshoes. There was only one way to find out. The lightest and most experience in new wheat guide went first, leading the dogs in their one remaining sledge behind him. Each man on snow shoes followed at fifty or sixty foot intervals. To avoid breaking the ice. We crossed in silence, each man busy with his thoughts and intent upon his snowshoes. Frankly, I do not care for more similar experiences, Perry wrote. Once started, we could not stop, We could not lift

our snowshoes. It was a matter of constantly and smoothly gliding one past the other with utmost care and evenness of pressure. And from every man as he slid a snowshoe forward, undulations went out in every direction through the thin film incrusting the black water. The sledge was preceded and followed by a broad swell. It was the first and only time in all my Arctic work that I

felt doubtful as to the outcome. Halfway across the ice, Perry's boot broke through, and he thought it was the end, he wrote, But I dared not take my eyes from the steady, even glide ing of my snowshoes, and the fascination of the glassy swell at the toes of them. After a period in which they must have felt time stopped, the whole party made it to the firm ice on the southern edge of the lead. Perry remembered, when we stood up from unfastening our snowshoes, and looked back for

a moment before turning our faces southward. A narrow black ribbon cut the frail bridge on which we had crossed into the lead was widening again, and we had just made it. They finally returned to the Roosevelt on May six, and despite their struggle to get there, Parry had one more trek in him. He and a small team marched westward along the northern coast of Ellesmere Island, setting what he believed was the farthest west record, just as a backup for his farthest north. The Roosevelt and its crew

returned to New York on December six. Again, they had survived, but Pierry had to face his own crushing disappointment, and he received a cool reception from the public when it learned he had failed to reach the poll, but his influential fan club rewarded him for his feats. The National Geographic Society honored Perry with its Hubbard Medal at a fancy gala, and Theodore Roosevelt gave a speech at the

ceremony presenting the award. Peary was there to receive it on December, having left the Roosevelt and returned to New York before the ship steamed into the harbor. None of the members of his expedition team, least of all Henson and the new Wheat, who were actually at Perry's farthest north with him, received any recognition. According to Ed Larson, Perry was probably fine with that. He did have this singular vision that he had to achieve it, where many

of the other polar explorers didn't mind sharing glory. I mean certainly Shackleton didn't. That was Coren Toshackle his nature. Nor did uh Jnson, who was considered the greatest explorer of the age. They didn't have that same problem. They figured there was plenty to go around and they would get the most of it. The metal and accolades were nice, but Perry must have asked himself how much longer he

could continue his quest for the North Pole. In his two serious efforts to conquer it, the brute realities of the polar environment had held him back. He didn't know whether the peri Arctic Club would remain hopeful of his dream for glory. At the end of Robert Perry was fifty years old. Matthew Henson was forty. Both were well over retirement age for Arctic explorers, but despite their age and there are many setbacks, they still had one more try in them. The Quest for the North Pole is

hosted by Me cat Long. This episode was researched and written by Me, with fact checking by Austin Thompson. The executive producers are Aaron McCarthy and Tyler Clang. The supervising producer is Dylan Fagan. The show is edited by Dylan Fagan. For transcripts, a glossary, and to learn more about this episode, visit Mental flaws dot com slash podcast. The Quest for the North Pole is a production of I Heart Radio

and Mental Flaws. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, check out the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.