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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Lebensstil
- Sprache: Englisch
In "Secrets of Polar Travel," Robert E. Peary, an iconic figure in Arctic exploration, presents an illuminating account of the technical and personal challenges faced during polar expeditions. The book combines vivid narrative with practical advice, grounded in Peary's extensive firsthand experience navigating the treacherous terrains of the Arctic. Through a meticulously crafted blend of adventure and scientific observations, Peary delves into the intricacies of ice structure, weather patterns, and survival techniques, making it an essential resource for both aspiring explorers and historians of the Arctic. Robert E. Peary, famed for his contested claim to have reached the North Pole, dedicated his life to the study of Arctic geography and ethnography. His passion for exploration, rooted in a desire to push the boundaries of human knowledge, is reflected in the meticulous detail and authenticity displayed throughout this work. Inspired by indigenous knowledge and his own scientific inquiries, Peary aims to bridge the gap between adventure and scholarly research, thereby enriching the field of Arctic studies. "Secrets of Polar Travel" is highly recommended for readers intrigued by adventure, science, and history. It serves not only as a guide for potential explorers but also as a compelling reflection of human tenacity. Peary's synthesis of adventure and expertise makes this work a captivating read that resonates with both enthusiasts of exploration and those interested in the enduring legacy of polar research. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - An Author Biography reveals milestones in the author's life, illuminating the personal insights behind the text. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
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Secrets of Polar Travel
Table of Contents
Introduction
The polar ice yields its secrets only to discipline and patience. In Secrets of Polar Travel, Robert E. Peary crystallizes that principle into a sustained argument for method over bravado, turning the Arctic from an unknowable abyss into a rigorous problem of planning, logistics, and judgment. This introduction navigates the book’s stature, context, and enduring impact, preparing readers to encounter a text that stands both as testimony and as manual. Peary offers a way of seeing the high latitudes in which every mile must be earned twice, first in preparation and then in execution, and the result is a bracing study in applied perseverance.
This work is considered a classic because it codifies, with unusual clarity, the practical craft of polar exploration during a formative moment in exploration literature. Rather than merely recounting ordeals, Peary distills procedures and principles, shaping how later readers understood the Arctic not as a blank terror but as a terrain governed by knowable rules. Its influence is felt in the evolution of expedition narratives toward technical precision, and in the respect it fostered for logistics as a central literary subject. The book’s endurance arises from that synthesis of experience and instruction, which continues to animate accounts of travel under extreme conditions.
Secrets of Polar Travel is authored by Robert E. Peary, the American Arctic explorer associated with extensive expeditions in Greenland and the polar sea, and it belongs to the 1910s, after his culminating Arctic campaigns of the early twentieth century. The book offers a concise, systematic overview of polar methods: the organization of parties, the selection and handling of dog teams, the management of food and fuel, the design and care of sledges, and the planning of routes and depots. Peary’s purpose is practical and declarative, to set down the lessons he believed would make polar travel possible, safer, and more effective.
The book emerges from the Heroic Age of polar exploration, when technology was limited by today’s standards and success depended on careful navigation, physical economy, and reliable teamwork. Before satellite positioning and modern fabrics, travelers relied on meticulous observation, tested clothing systems, and conservative margins. Peary writes from the vantage of cumulative experience, forged over seasons among glaciers, floes, and pressure ridges. His perspective treats the Arctic as both adversary and teacher, a realm that punishes carelessness yet rewards method. Within that tension lies the text’s enduring fascination: it frames exploration less as conquest and more as a disciplined conversation with an indifferent environment.
Readers will find a thorough primer in expedition architecture. Peary lays out the logic of caching and relay systems, the reasoning behind rations and weights, and the delicate calculus of speed versus safety. He discusses field repairs and maintenance as pillars of survival, from mending a sledge runner to safeguarding cooking fuel. He treats clothing choices as a strategy rather than fashion, emphasizes dryness as life insurance, and insists on simple, robust gear that can be relied upon with cold-stiffened hands. Underlying every topic is an ethic of planning: foresee failure points, address them early, and keep procedures so clear that exhaustion cannot unravel them.
Equally central is the human matrix that makes polar travel viable. Peary acknowledges, adopts, and adapts practices derived from Arctic Indigenous expertise, particularly regarding clothing, sled construction, and the handling of dogs. He emphasizes the cultivation of team discipline and morale, where small acts of orderliness inoculate against accumulated risk. The book treats the dog as a partner and a logistical asset, detailing feeding, training, and rotation to preserve strength across weeks of work. In Peary’s account, technology, technique, and human relationships interlock; the chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and character is as operational as any tool.
Stylistically, Secrets of Polar Travel blends an authoritative, matter of fact voice with vivid concreteness. Peary prefers demonstration to flourish, building trust through specific procedures and the measured cadence of an instructor. Yet the prose retains a sense of awe for the latitude of long light and long dark, for wind that can erase a campsite in an hour, and for the quiet arithmetic of miles gained against calories spent. Episodes from the field appear as anchored illustrations, not as theatrics, and they serve the argument. The result is literature that invites emulation while acknowledging the stakes of every decision on the ice.
Its influence extends beyond the Arctic shelf. By treating exploration as a system, Peary offered later writers and planners a template for articulating complex fieldwork, whether in mountains, deserts, or sea ice. The book helped normalize a vocabulary of leads, floes, and pressure, and it reinforced the legitimacy of logistics as a subject worthy of narrative attention. Expedition handbooks and memoirs that followed often echoed its emphasis on preparation, teamwork, and simplicity under duress. Even readers who never intended to travel north found in its pages a model of disciplined thinking applicable to any endeavor where the environment sets the hardest terms.
The legacy surrounding Peary’s career includes controversy, notably debates over his claim of reaching the North Pole. Secrets of Polar Travel does not revolve around adjudicating that claim; instead, it presents the procedures, heuristics, and hard lessons that any polar venture must confront. Reading the book today invites a reflective stance toward historical assertions and the standards of verification available at the time, without diminishing the value of the practical knowledge it records. The text’s authority resides in its granular counsel, in the humility taught by error and refinement, and in the way it makes the Arctic’s demands legible to diligent minds.
A further strength of the work is its environmental attentiveness, implicit rather than theoretical. Peary’s advice teaches observation: of the grain of snow, the tilt of light, the drift of clouds, and the behavior of ice under stress. These are the sensibilities that keep travelers alive and that, cumulatively, sketch a portrait of the Arctic as a dynamic system. While not written as a scientific treatise, the book preserves indirect glimpses of early twentieth century conditions that now interest historians and scientists. It underscores prudence and respect, reminding readers that the environment sets constraints that good judgment must heed.
For contemporary audiences, the book remains valuable as a manual of thinking under constraint. Its lessons in planning, redundancy, and risk mitigation apply to modern expeditions as well as to complex projects in any field. The emphasis on simple, reliable systems speaks to design philosophy; the focus on teamwork and morale resonates with leadership studies; the clarity of procedures anticipates checklists and standard operating protocols. In a time captivated by technology, Peary’s insistence on fundamentals is refreshing. He shows how rigor, repetition, and attention to detail transform adversity into manageable work, and how patience, rather than bravado, is the most durable form of courage.
Secrets of Polar Travel endures because it synthesizes experience into principle. Its themes are preparation and endurance, ingenuity under pressure, the ethics of responsibility to one’s team, and the humility to learn from those who have already solved problems the hard way. The book’s appeal lies in its candor and utility, in the way it turns the mystique of the Arctic into intelligible tasks without dispelling its grandeur. For readers today, it offers both a historical window and a living toolkit. It asks us to match ambition with method, and assures us that true exploration begins long before the first step north.
Synopsis
In Secrets of Polar Travel, Robert E. Peary presents a practical exposition of the methods he used to conduct Arctic expeditions, culminating in his attempt to reach the North Pole. He organizes the material as a field manual, explaining principles rather than debating personalities. Drawing on years of sledging in Greenland and the high Arctic, he sets out what he regards as proven practices for planning, equipping, and leading parties over sea ice and ice caps. The narrative proceeds from general aims through logistics and technique, providing detailed notes on transport, clothing, food, navigation, and discipline to guide future polar travelers.
He begins by defining the objective and the rationale for the chosen route. Peary argues that the shortest practical line from firm land to the goal offers the best chance of success, favoring a northern approach from Greenland and adjacent islands. He surveys earlier efforts and competing schemesdrift, ships alone, and other contrivancesand evaluates them against ice behavior and seasonal daylight. Central to his plan is a spring march from a high-latitude base, timed to exploit increasing light and still solid ice. This section sets the framework for subsequent chapters on how to establish a base and stage the advance.
Peary then describes the ship stage and the creation of the Arctic base. He outlines the requirements for an ice-going vessel capable of forcing a passage, wintering safely, and serving as a supply hub. With that achieved, the expedition moves to a fixed camp on the northern coast, where crews build shelters, lay out workshops, and organize stores. Men and materials are acclimatized during the long night, dogs are trained, and supporting depots are planned. Cooperation with experienced local hunters is emphasized for hunting, hauling, and building. The chapter closes with the base poised for the spring departure over the ice.
Equipment is treated as a system. Peary catalogs clothing made of furs and windproof fabrics, layered to balance warmth with ventilation. He specifies sleeping gear, tents, and snow houses, noting when each is best employed. Sledges are built for strength with minimal weight, using lashings that can be tightened in the cold. Cooking outfits are compact and reliable, suited to rapid camp routines. Standardized loads center on pemmican, hard bread, tea, and fuel, with fresh meat to maintain health. Throughout, he stresses simplicity, interchangeability, and careful weight accounting, so that repairs are rapid and every article serves a clear function.
The care and use of dogs occupy a substantial portion. Peary details selection, harnessing, team sizes, and feeding schedules that keep animals working through prolonged marches. He explains the daily rhythm: early start, fixed travel periods, brief halts, and efficient camp building, with emphasis on preventing frostbite and conserving strength. Trail-breaking strategy is adjusted to snow and ice conditions, while loads are shifted to account for fatigue and terrain. He sets expectations for driver discipline and handling storms or whiteouts. The section concludes with guidelines for keeping teams effective over many weeks, including culling weak animals and rotating leaders.
Logistics on the march are organized around a support-party system designed to project a light, fast final party farthest north. Peary explains how relay groups break trail, lay depots, and successively turn back, transferring supplies forward. Schedules, rations, and distances are calculated to maintain momentum and return each support party safely. He discusses marking routes, protecting caches from wind and drift, and coordinating rendezvous. The approach includes contingency plans for ice drift, delays, or loss of dogs. This chapter presents the arithmetic of miles, loads, and time that underpins the entire enterprise, culminating in the release of a small polar party.
Navigation and records form another core topic. Peary describes taking astronomical observations with sextant and artificial horizon, determining position by sun altitudes, and checking for drift of the floe beneath the party. He outlines procedures for establishing direction near the Pole, where conventional longitude loses meaning, and for fixing a route by flags and numbered camps. Meteorological readings, soundings, and descriptive notes are gathered to document conditions and progress. Photography and careful custody of notebooks are specified. The account sets out the measurements used to verify attainment and the method of making confirming marches around a goal to ensure accuracy.
The hazards of polar travel are addressed candidly. Peary treats pressure ridges, open leads, thin ice, and storms as routine challenges requiring set responses: scouting, bridging, ferrying, or detouring, as conditions dictate. He outlines precautions against frostbite, snow blindness, and scurvy, emphasizing fresh meat, eye protection, and strict camp routines. Contingencies for lost sledges, broken gear, or injured men include redistribution of loads and rapid repairs. He notes how to judge ice by color and sound, when to wait and when to force a passage, and how to handle retreats. Leadership principles are presented as risk management in action.
In closing, the book gathers its lessons into a concise doctrine. Success in the polar regions, Peary asserts, rests on meticulous preparation, a sound base, reliable equipment, disciplined sledging, and the systematic support of a small forward party. He credits the techniques of northern peoples as essential to travel and survival, and he acknowledges that new tools may appear, but argues that fundamentals endure. The volume serves as both a procedural guide and a record of methods employed on his expeditions. Its overall message is practical: with method and persistence, polar objectives yield to organized effort rather than improvisation.
Historical Context
Robert E. Peary’s Secrets of Polar Travel is anchored in the High Arctic of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with scenes and lessons drawn from North Greenland, Ellesmere Island, and the drifting pack of the Arctic Ocean. The book’s vantage point is retrospective, published in 1917 in the United States after Peary’s 1909 claim of reaching the North Pole. It addresses practical methods forged between 1886 and 1909, years when polar exploration fused nationalism, science, and technological experimentation. The setting also includes New York’s institutions and patrons who financed expeditions, for the logistics described arose as much from urban fundraising and engineering shops as from ice pressure ridges and snow-swept sledge routes.
The period was one of imperial science and competitive prestige. Steam power met wooden hulls; astronomical navigation met dead-reckoning over moving ice. Whaling declined, but scientific and geopolitical interest surged. In northwest Greenland, Inughuit communities around Qaanaaq and Savissivik provided knowledge of dog husbandry, sledge design, and snow-house construction that transformed American technique. The United States experienced the Progressive Era’s organizational zeal, while Canada asserted sovereignty over the High Arctic and European nations set polar records. Secrets of Polar Travel condenses methods learned in this environment of harsh climates, intricate logistics, and unequal cultural exchanges that bound urban sponsors, naval officers, sailors, scientists, and Indigenous hunters.
The long quest for the North Pole gained pace after mid-century British failures and tragedies. The 1845 Franklin expedition’s disappearance spurred decades of searches. By the 1880s, coordinated research intensified with the First International Polar Year (1882–1883), while American efforts included the ill-fated Lady Franklin Bay expedition under Adolphus Greely (1881–1884), where only 7 of 25 survived. Fridtjof Nansen’s Fram drift (1893–1896) set a high-water mark in technique and ambition, reaching 86°14′ N in 1895. Peary entered this arc with Greenland journeys from 1891 onward, absorbing the lessons of survival, depot-laying, and sledge mobility that underpin his book’s advocacy of method over bravado.
The 1908–1909 expedition, the work’s central event, departed New York in July 1908 aboard the custom-built Roosevelt and wintered near Cape Sheridan on Ellesmere Island. Establishing the forward base at Cape Columbia, Peary organized a relay system of support parties led by Captain Robert A. Bartlett, George Borup, Ross G. Marvin, Donald B. MacMillan, and Matthew Henson, with Inughuit hunters and dog teams. From February–March 1909, teams advanced over the polar pack, building snow houses, bridging leads, and laying caches while retiring in succession to conserve strength. Secrets of Polar Travel explicates this modular “Peary system” as the key to speed, safety, and final attainment over drifting ice.
Bartlett turned back near 87°48′ N; Peary pushed north with the final party: Matthew Henson and the Inughuit Ootah, Egingwah, Seegloo, and Ooqueah. On 6 April 1909, Peary recorded a position he believed to be the Pole, naming the camp Jesup. The return retraced lanes and depots at forced pace. The expedition was marred by the death of Ross Marvin, reported to have fallen through thin ice during the retreat. Peary’s book translates this experience into procedures: sun sights with sextant and artificial horizon, speed schedules, minimalistic loads, ration calculations, and the doctrine of keeping men warm, dogs fed, and sledges light to outmatch pressure ridges and open leads.
Central to the 1909 outcome were Indigenous techniques and labor. The Inughuit built igluit quickly, drove dog teams with whips and voice, and fashioned flexible sledges lashed with rawhide to survive torsion. Henson, fluent in the working language and skilled at trail-breaking, managed dogs and repairs under brutal wind chill. Peary codified these inputs into clothing systems of fur and wool, ice-camp routines, and disciplined dog care. Secrets of Polar Travel thus formalizes the hybrid technology of Arctic survival, presenting it as a system of relays, depots, and snowhouse bivouacs refined through Greenland expeditions and culminating in the organized push from Cape Columbia across the constantly moving pack.
The 1909–1911 Cook–Peary controversy framed reception of the achievement. Frederick A. Cook announced in Copenhagen on 1 September 1909 that he had reached the Pole on 21 April 1908 via Axel Heiberg Island. Peary’s cable from Indian Harbour, Labrador, on 6 September 1909 proclaimed Stars and Stripes at Pole. A press war erupted: the New York Herald favored Cook, the New York Times and the Peary Arctic Club backed Peary. Copenhagen University initially accepted Cook’s claim, then withdrew support in 1910 for lack of data. In 1910–1911, National Geographic Society panels and U.S. bodies recognized Peary. The 1917 book functions as methodological justification amid lingering skepticism.
Elite patronage and organized funding shaped the enterprise. The Peary Arctic Club, formed in New York in 1904 with businessmen and newspaper backing, underwrote the specialized ice-going Roosevelt, launched in 1905 and named in honor of Theodore Roosevelt, a public supporter. Philanthropy, museum ties, and media alliances funneled money, coal, pemmican, furs, and instruments into arctic logistics. Secrets of Polar Travel reflects this infrastructure in discussions of outfitting, procurement, standardization of gear, and the logistics chain from urban workshops to polar depots. The book embodies Progressive Era faith in planning and sponsorship, showing how civic elites and press platforms could manufacture the means—and narrative—of exploration.
The First International Polar Year (1882–1883) institutionalized polar science: magnetic variation, aurora, meteorology, and geodesy were systematically recorded at coordinated stations. The American station at Fort Conger on Ellesmere Island later became a logistical asset for U.S. expeditions. The Lady Franklin Bay expedition (1881–1884) under Greely suffered catastrophic resupply failure and starvation near Cape Sabine; the ordeal etched depot discipline and retreat planning into American polar memory. Peary’s manual foregrounds continuous supply lines, fallback points, and conservative margins for storms and ice drift—lessons distilled from the era’s hard arithmetic of distance, calories, and daylight at extreme latitudes.
Peary’s Greenland campaigns (1891–1892; 1893–1895; 1896–1897) provided the apprenticeship for his methods. Operating from McCormick Bay and Independence Fjord regions, he traced the northern limits of Greenland, argued for its insularity, and adopted dog-sledge travel refined with Eivind Astrup and Inughuit mentors. These journeys mapped coasts, gathered tidal and glaciological data, and tested clothing layers, sled designs, and ration schemes. Secrets of Polar Travel distills these trials: the value of double-ended sledges, seal and caribou garments, pemmican-centric diets, and systematic advance-and-return relays. The Greenland record supplied the cartographic and experiential backbone for the later route from Ellesmere Island to the central Arctic Ocean.
The removal of the Cape York meteorites (Savissivik area) in 1897 illustrates the era’s scientific extraction and heavy logistics. Peary transported three masses—the Tent or Ahnighito (~31 tons), and the smaller Woman and Dog—to the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Engineering solutions included skids, cribbing, and reinforced sledges, and sea transport timed to seasonal ice retreat. The operation demonstrated hauling techniques that reappear in depot work and sledge handling described in Secrets of Polar Travel. It also reflects the asymmetry of exchange: Indigenous communities had used the iron for generations, while museums and patrons in the United States claimed ownership under the banner of science.
Contact with Inughuit communities entailed profound consequences. In 1897, six Inughuit were brought to New York for study; four died of disease within a year, and Minik, a child, was left bereaved and misrepresented by museum practices. Such episodes expose the coercive power structures accompanying exploration. While Secrets of Polar Travel often praises Inuit skill and endurance, its technical tone sits alongside a history in which credit, control over knowledge, and bodily risks were unevenly distributed. The book’s reliance on igloo building, skin clothing, and sledge craft is inseparable from the social dynamics that enabled those techniques to be documented and redeployed by American expeditions.
Matthew Alexander Henson’s role highlights the racial politics of the United States in the Jim Crow era. Born in 1866, Henson joined Peary in 1887 and became the expedition’s foremost sledge driver and mechanic, co-leading advance parties and reaching the final camp at the Pole claim in April 1909. Yet honors lagged; segregation and prejudice constrained institutional recognition. Henson’s own 1912 account, A Negro Explorer at the North Pole, asserted his centrality. Secrets of Polar Travel acknowledges Henson’s mastery of dogs and icecraft within its technical narrative, but the era’s racial hierarchy meant that American audiences and awards seldom placed him alongside naval officers and club patrons.
Ship design and ice navigation constituted another decisive arena. The Roosevelt, launched in 1905 for Peary, combined a massively reinforced wooden hull, a raked stem, powerful engines, and a relatively shallow draft to ride up on and crush young ice. It enabled the 1905–1906 attempt that pushed Peary to about 87°06′ N, surpassing Nansen’s record and refining coastal bases on Ellesmere Island. Secrets of Polar Travel details anchoring in floe harbors, coal management, and the choreography of unloading, sledging, and establishing winter quarters. The ship’s capabilities underwrote depot positioning at Cape Sheridan and Cape Columbia, without which the 1909 sledge campaign could not have commenced.
Mass media and communications shaped public perception and institutional outcomes. On 6 September 1909, Peary cabled his claim from Indian Harbour, Labrador, setting off a global news cycle. The New York Times’ sponsorship and serialized coverage contrasted with the New York Herald’s promotion of Cook, turning geographical verification into a contest of headlines, lectures, and committees. Secrets of Polar Travel responds to this environment by translating feats into procedures—instrumental readings, march tables, dog-care regimens—meant to persuade through method rather than rhetoric. The book’s didactic tone reflects a moment when data, diagrams, and systematized practice were enlisted to stabilize fame amid rival claims and public doubt.
As a social document, the book underscores the era’s tensions between individual heroism and collective, often uncredited labor. By detailing the indispensability of Inughuit techniques and Henson’s skill, yet framing them within a command hierarchy funded by urban elites, it reveals the class and racial structures underpinning exploration. Its logistics-centered critique targets reckless “dash” narratives, insisting that careful planning and respect for local knowledge are the true arbiters of success. In doing so, it implicitly indicts institutions that rewarded spectacle over method and that assigned laurels along lines of status, citizenship, and race rather than contribution.
The methods presented also illuminate extractive practices and geopolitical ambitions. Depot lines, museum collections, and press alliances illustrate how science, nationalism, and capital intertwined to convert Arctic spaces and Indigenous knowledge into metropolitan prestige. Secrets of Polar Travel exposes fault lines: the vulnerability of Native communities to disease, the marginalization of a Black co-explorer in a segregated society, and the power of newspapers and patrons to arbitrate truth. Its procedural transparency operates as a critique of mythmaking, arguing that verifiable routines and shared techniques, not heroic fiat, should govern claims in an age when exploration served both scientific curiosity and political theater.
Author Biography
Robert E. Peary was an American civil engineer, naval officer, and polar explorer whose pursuit of the North Pole defined a generation of Arctic ambition. Active from the late 19th century into the early 20th, he became one of the most widely recognized figures in exploration, both celebrated and contested. His expeditions, writings, and public lectures brought the Greenland ice and polar pack into popular imagination, while his methods shaped how later parties planned high-latitude travel. Peary’s published accounts, especially of Greenland and his North Pole attempt, made him a central narrator of the era’s Arctic enterprise, even as debates about his claims persisted.
Educated in Maine at Bowdoin College, Peary trained as a civil engineer and began his career in surveying and construction before entering the U.S. Navy’s Civil Engineer Corps in the early 1880s. Engineering discipline and naval logistics informed his approach to exploration: careful provisioning, measured risk, and attention to equipment. He drew on the period’s literature of exploration and on the institutional culture of geographic societies and the Navy, which valorized discovery as a public service. That combination—technical training, administrative experience, and a growing fascination with the Arctic—set the foundation for his transition from engineer to expedition leader.
Peary first ventured to Greenland in the mid-1880s and returned for extended expeditions in the early and mid-1890s. Working along the island’s northern reaches, he and his parties mapped stretches of coastline and inland features, contributing to the understanding that Greenland was insular rather than a tongue of a northern continent. These journeys required wintering in the Arctic, building depots, and learning from Inuit communities in northwest Greenland. Peary adopted local travel knowledge—clothing, diet, dogs, and sledges—integrating it into his plans. The experiences yielded a blend of geographic observation, endurance testing, and practical anthropology that shaped his later strategy for polar attempts.
Out of these years Peary refined a distinctive logistical approach often called the Peary system. It used multiple support parties, relay-sledging, and incremental depot-laying to push a small final team toward the objective while preserving resources. The system emphasized dog teams, igloo shelter, pemmican rations, and carefully selected gear tailored for cold-world efficiency. Peary detailed his Greenland work in Northward over the 'Great Ice' in the late 1890s, offering both narrative and method. The book, widely read at the time, positioned him as a leading practitioner of Arctic travel and set expectations for the larger polar bids that followed.
In the first decade of the 20th century, Peary turned to the central goal of his career: reaching the geographic North Pole. A major attempt in the mid-1900s using the specially built ship Roosevelt advanced far north and was recounted in Nearest the Pole. He then led the 1908–1909 expedition that culminated in his claim to have attained the Pole, with Matthew Henson and Inuit team members part of the final dash. Peary published The North Pole soon afterward, galvanizing public attention. Rival claims, notably by Frederick Cook, and subsequent scrutiny of navigational records made the achievement a subject of enduring dispute.
Reception of Peary’s work combined acclaim for organizational skill and daring with criticism of evidence and ethics. Investigations and later scholarship have questioned whether he reached the exact Pole, and many historians judge that he likely fell short, though debate continues. His procurement of the Cape York meteorites for a New York museum and his role in transporting Inuit individuals to the United States in the 1890s have also drawn sustained ethical criticism. At the same time, his adoption and adaptation of Inuit techniques profoundly influenced polar travel, and his partnership with Henson, long underrecognized, has become central to modern reassessments.
Peary retired from active naval service in the early 1910s with flag rank and spent his later years writing, lecturing, and reflecting on the practices of exploration. Secrets of Polar Travel summarized the principles he believed essential for success in high latitudes. He died in the early 1920s. Today his books are read as artifacts of their era: valuable for firsthand observation and for the evolution of polar logistics, yet approached critically for claims and cultural attitudes. His legacy is complex—part aspiration and method, part controversy—and he remains a pivotal figure in the study of Arctic exploration.
Secrets of Polar Travel
NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1917
INTRODUCTION
In my book “The North Pole” appeared a brief résumé, or synopsis, of my system of arctic exploration, which was the evolution of years of continuous practical work and experience in extreme high latitudes, wherein everything that could be thought of in the way of perfecting arctic methods and equipment was worked out.
Ideas that in the mind or on paper appeared promising were tested relentlessly under the most hostile conditions. Those that failed under the test were abandoned, and those that gave evidence of containing some meat were perfected, until at last the entire subject of perfected equipment and methods, combined with the thorough knowledge of all conditions to be encountered gained through years of experience, compelled success. This was the résumé:
The so-called “Peary System[1]” is too complex to be covered in a paragraph, and involves too many technical details to be outlined fully in any popular narrative. But the main points of it are about as follows:
To drive a ship through the ice to the farthest possible northern land base from which she can be driven back again the following year.
To do enough hunting during the fall and winter to keep the party healthily supplied with fresh meat.
To have dogs enough to allow for the loss of sixty per cent of them by death or otherwise.
To have the confidence of a large number of Eskimos[2], earned by square dealing and generous gifts in the past, so that they will follow the leader to any point he may specify.
To have an intelligent and willing body of civilized assistants to lead the various divisions of Eskimos—men whose authority the Eskimos will accept when delegated by the leader.
To transport beforehand to the point where the expedition leaves the land for the sledge journey, sufficient food, fuel, clothing, stoves (oil or alcohol) and other mechanical equipment to get the main party to the Pole and back and the various divisions to their farthest north and back.
To have an ample supply of the best kind of sledges.
To have a sufficient number of divisions, or relay parties, each under the leadership of a competent assistant, to send back at appropriate and carefully calculated stages along the upward journey.
To have every item of equipment of the quality best suited to the purpose, thoroughly tested, and of the lightest possible weight.
To know, by long experience, the best way to cross wide leads of open water.
To return by the same route followed on the upward march, using the beaten trail and the already constructed igloos to save the time and strength that would have been expended in constructing new igloos and in trail-breaking.
To know exactly to what extent each man and dog may be worked without injury.
To know the physical and mental capabilities of every assistant and Eskimo.
Last, but not least, to have the absolute confidence of every member of the party, white, black, or brown, so that every order of the leader will be implicitly obeyed.
In “Secrets of Polar Travel” it is the intention to enlarge upon the above synopsis and to give the reader and the present and future polar traveler many details of serious polar work that it was impossible to embody in my former popular narratives without crowding out other and, as it seemed, more important matters.
Some of the things that will be described are well known to all polar explorers who have had serious practice, while others will be new to all except those who have had opportunities to obtain the information by personal conversation with members of my parties.
In extending the scope of the present book to touch on polar exploration, it seems well to post the reader at the very beginning on the striking antitheses of natural conditions, apparently known to only a few even among the best read and most intelligent people, existing at those mathematical points, the north and south poles, where the earth’s axis intersects the surface of the earth.
The north pole is situated in an ocean of some fifteen hundred miles’ diameter, surrounded by land. The south pole is situated in a continent of some twenty-five hundred miles’ diameter, surrounded by water. At the north pole I stood upon the frozen surface of an ocean more than two miles in depth. At the south pole, Amundsen and Scott stood upon the surface of a great, snow plateau more than two miles above sea-level. The lands that surround the north polar ocean have comparatively abundant life. Musk-oxen, reindeer, polar bears, wolves, foxes, arctic hares, ermines, and lemmings, together with insects and flowers, are found within five hundred miles of the pole. On the great south polar continent no form of animal life appears to exist.
Permanent human life exists within some seven hundred miles of the north pole; none is found within twenty-three hundred miles of the south pole. The history of arctic exploration goes back nearly four hundred years. The history of antarctic efforts covers a little more than one hundred and forty years. The record of arctic exploration is studded with crushed and foundering ships and the deaths of hundreds of brave men. The records of antarctic exploration show the loss of only three ships and the death of a score or more men.
For all those who aspire to the north pole the road lies over the frozen surface of an ocean the ice on which breaks up completely every summer, drifting about under the influence of wind and tide, and may crack into numerous fissures and lanes of open water at any time, even in the depth of the severest winter, under the influence of storms. For those who aspire to the south pole the road lies over an eternal, immovable surface, the latter part rising ten thousand and eleven thousand feet above sea-level. And herein lies the inestimable advantage to the south polar explorer which enables him to make his depots at convenient distances, and thus lighten his load and increase his speed.
