Robert Piri(1856-1920) - American polar explorer.
In the summer of 1898, the first expedition of R. Peary on dogs took place, on the ice of the ocean he passed from the Canadian Arctic Archipelago to the North Pole, the discovery of which was R. Peary's dream all his life. This expedition did not bring the desired result, and for the next four years he tried unsuccessfully to achieve it. During one of the campaigns, Piri froze his legs and amputated his toes. Truly, there are no boundaries to his enthusiasm, the great strength of his spirit - every year he was getting closer to the goal. And every time, reaching the next point, Peary left there a piece of the Stars and Stripes flag, presented to him by his wife, who, no less than himself, believed in his victory.
Robert Peary was already 53 years old when in the summer of 1908 he again assembled an expedition of 21 people, and in the spring of 1909, after wintering, she set out to storm the Pole. Ahead, auxiliary detachments built snow houses and arranged food depots. The road was very difficult, there were snow storms, it fell below 50 °, the kerosene became viscous, the sleds often broke. For the last decisive attack, Piri selected 5 people. The proximity of the goal gave him hope and cheerfulness. Now we only stopped for a short rest. It was beautiful, although the thermometer showed -40 ° C. On April 6, 1909 R. Peary wrote in his diary: “The North Pole is finally conquered. My dream and goal of twenty years of life have come true! " Having determined his location several times and having spent 30 hours at the pole, Piri set off on a difficult return journey.
Returning to the village, he sends US President William Taft an enthusiastic telegram: "The North Pole is at your disposal!"
Shortly after Peary's return, an unprecedented scandal erupted. Piri's compatriot Frederic Cook announced to the whole world that exactly a year before Piri he himself had visited the North Pole, but he could not present significant documents proving his innocence. Cook appeared in the eyes of the public as a fraud, especially since the members of his expedition ultimately showed that they were only a few tens of kilometers away from the coast.
Robert Peary himself died in 1920, and according to his will, for almost 70 years, there was no access to the traveler's personal archive. When the term of the ban expired, it turned out that R. Peary had not reached the pole, he turned back due to lack of food and a complete breakdown in about two hundred kilometers from the goal ... It is therefore fair to say the following: one way or another, at the beginning of the XX century, Robert Peary has penetrated the heart of the Central Arctic farther than anyone else. He was already 53 years old, and he would not have dared to make the next desperate attempt.
PERI, ROBERT EDWIN(Peary, Robert Edwin) (1856–1920), American naval officer and Arctic explorer. Born May 6, 1856 in Cresson (Pennsylvania). He attended high school in Portland, Maine and graduated from Bowdoin College in 1877 with an engineering degree. He worked as a draftsman for the US Coast and Geodetic Survey. In 1881 he was admitted to the Corps of Civil Engineers of the US Navy. In 1884-1885, he carried out filming work in Nicaragua.
In 1885, after reading a report on the Greenland ice sheet, Peary became interested in the Arctic. After that, he organized and conducted eight Arctic expeditions. In 1886 he went on a three-month expedition to Greenland to find out the possibilities of movement in its interior regions. Together with a friend, I explored the ice cap east of Disko Bay. In 1891-1892, after two years of forced work in Nicaragua, Peary went north, crossed northeastern Greenland on a sleigh - from McCormick Bay to the Independence Fjord, having covered a distance of 2100 km, discovered the lands of Melville and Heilprin. He found that the east and west coasts of Greenland converge and thus Greenland is an island.
In 1893-1895, Peary made his third expedition to Greenland, and in the summer of 1896 and 1897 made short trips to Cape York in Greenland to search for fallen meteorites. In 1898 he went on a four-year expedition, during which he tried to reach the North Pole, but in 1902 he managed to reach only 84 ° 17ў N. During this expedition, he visited Fort Konger - a hut on the island of Ellesmere, where 17 years earlier was the base of an unsuccessful expedition led by A. Greely - and found the diaries and instruments left there. Peary explored the areas adjacent to Lady Franklin and Princess Mary Bays, and the isolated ice cap on Ellesmere. During the seventh expedition (1905-1906) I reached 87 ° 06'N by sleigh. This point was in the middle of the ice-bound dangerous Arctic Ocean, only 322 km from the North Pole.
During the eighth expedition (1908-1909), Peary was first fully supported by the US Navy, probably thanks to the efforts of his friend President Theodore Roosevelt. Peary claimed that during this expedition on April 6, 1909, he and his assistant Matthew Genson, as well as the four Eskimos accompanying them, reached the North Pole. Upon his return in 1909, Peary learned that the surgeon of his expedition 1891-1892 Frederick Cook claims to have reached the pole almost a year earlier than Peary, on April 21, 1908. After heated discussion, Cook's claims were refuted, and Peary was declared the winner. However, doubts remained about the reliability of the discovery of the pole by Piri himself. For example, Roald Amundsen never believed that Peary reached the pole. However, only in the 1980s and 1990s, when the diaries, maps and photographs of the Piri expedition were studied, his primacy was questioned. Research undertaken in 1989 by the Navigation Foundation concluded that Piri was no more than 8 km from his target. This result has been confirmed by the National Geographic Society. In 1996, Robert M. Bryce, who has devoted 20 years to studying this controversial issue, published the book Cook and Peary: the end of the polar discussion(Bryce R.M. Cook and Peary: The Polar Controversy, Resolved), in which he argued that neither Cook nor Peary reached the Pole and that the latter had only 160 km to go to the desired goal.
Piri - author of books Secrets of the polar journey (Secrets of Polar Travel, 1917); North Pole (The north pole, 1910); Near the pole (Nearest the Pole, 1907) and Over the great ice to the north(Northward over the« Great ice», 1898).
In the spring of 1892 on dog sleds, he crossed the northern part of Greenland: from Inglefield Bay in the northeast and back to the bay. In the spring of 1895 he repeated this path. In the spring of 1900, moving northeast from the Smith Strait on the sea ice, Peary reached 83 ° 50'N. sh., having discovered an unstable state of ice north of Greenland. For the first time he explored the entire northern coast of the island and, in particular, the peninsula, later called Piri Land, where he discovered Cape Morris Jasep.
Beginning in 1898, Peary made several attempts to reach the North Pole by dog sledding. He chose Grant Land as his starting point, from where in 1902 he reached 84 ° 17 's. sh. In the spring of 1906, heading north from Cape Hekla, Ellesmere Island, reached 87 ° 06'N. sh. Piri left a description of the ice in the Central Arctic and developed methods of toboggan travel in the polar regions. He described his journey in the book "North Pole" (1917).
The strait in the north of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago is also named after Peary.
Marine encyclopedic reference book, ed. N.N. Isanina. L.: 1987
April 6, 1909 expedition of an American explorer Roberta Leary reached the North Pole... At the same time, his compatriot Frederic Cook claimed that he had visited the North Pole a year earlier.
Who was Robert Peary
Robert Peary was an unusually ambitious person. Even in his youth, he wrote that "I would like to earn a name that would give me access to the circle of the elite, where I would feel on an equal footing with everyone." After graduating from high school and college, he became an officer in the United States Navy and was engaged in military engineering in Central America. But even then, after reading several books about the north, Piri began to associate his ambitious dreams with the exploration of the northern territories. And soon he went to Greenland.
In 1891-1892, he crossed this island in a sleigh - however, not very successfully: at the beginning of the campaign, Piri broke his leg and did not remain disabled only thanks to the professional skill of the expedition's doctor. This doctor was just Frederick Cook, his future rival.
Robert Peary generally unlucky for a long time - all his ambitious plans collapsed, because someone was constantly ahead of him (the same Fridtjof Nansen, for example). However, the American did not despair - having dreamed of conquering the North Pole, during the 1890s he studied the life of the Eskimos and came up with his own "system" that was supposed to help him get to the northernmost point of the planet.
Piri made his throw to the pole in the first half of 1909. The expedition was prepared fundamentally: under the auspices of the US Department of the Navy; intermediate bases were arranged in advance; the number of the detachment was great.
April 6, 1909 Robert Peary reached the North Pole... Imagine his amazement when, on the way back, he learned that Frederick Cook had done it a year earlier: on April 21, 1908. Since then, Peary has fiercely defended his own priority, launching an extensive newspaper campaign and relentlessly accusing Cook of forgery.
So was Robert Peary at the North Pole
The matter for Cook was complicated by the fact that the documents of his campaign were lost (not without, it seems, Peary's efforts). Note that modern researchers who have studied in detail the diaries, maps and photographs of the Peary expedition are inclined to conclude that the American still did not reach the Pole, having made a mistake in the calculations. In this case, the distances from eight to 160 kilometers are called, separating it from the target at the final point of the path.
Robert Edwin Peary(Robert Edwin Peary) (1856-1920), American naval officer and Arctic explorer. Born May 6, 1856 in Cresson (Pennsylvania). He attended high school in Portland, Maine and graduated from Bowdoin College in 1877 with an engineering degree. He worked as a draftsman for the US Coast and Geodetic Survey. In 1881 he was admitted to the United States Naval Corps of Civil Engineers. In 1884-1885 he carried out filming work in Nicaragua.
In 1885, after reading a report on the Greenland ice sheet, Peary became interested in the Arctic. After that, he organized and conducted eight Arctic expeditions. In 1886 he went on a three-month expedition to Greenland to find out the possibilities of movement in its interior regions. Together with a friend, I explored the ice cap east of Disko Bay. In 1891-1892, after two years of forced labor in Nicaragua, Peary went north, crossed northeastern Greenland on a sleigh - from McCormick Bay to Independence Fjord, having covered a distance of 2100 km, discovered the lands of Melville and Heilprin. He found that the east and west coasts of Greenland converge and thus Greenland is an island.
In 1893-1895, Peary made his third expedition to Greenland, and in the summer of 1896 and 1897 made short trips to Cape York in Greenland to search for fallen meteorites. In 1898 he embarked on a four-year expedition, during which he tried to reach the North Pole, but in 1902 he managed to reach only 84 ° 17 "N. During this expedition he visited Fort Konger, a hut on Ellesmere Island, where 17 years earlier, the base of an unsuccessful expedition led by A. Greeley, - and found the diaries and instruments left there.Piri explored the areas adjacent to Lady Franklin and Princess Mary bays, and the isolated ice cap on Ellesmere Island.During the seventh expedition (1905 -1906) reached 87 ° 06 "N by sleigh. This point was in the middle of the ice-bound dangerous Arctic Ocean, only 322 km from the North Pole.
During the eighth expedition (1908-1909), Peary was for the first time fully supported by the US Navy, probably thanks to the efforts of his friend the President Theodore Roosevelt... Peary claimed that during this expedition on April 6, 1909, he and his assistant Matthew Genson, as well as the four Eskimos accompanying them, reached the North Pole. Upon his return in 1909, Peary learned that the surgeon of his 1891-1892 expedition, Frederic Cook, claims to have reached the Pole almost a year earlier than Peary, on April 21, 1908. After heated discussion, Cook's claims were refuted, and Peary was declared the winner. However, doubts remained about the reliability of the discovery of the pole by Piri himself. For instance, Roald Amundsen never believed that Peary had reached the pole. However, only in the 1980s and 1990s, when the diaries, maps and photographs of the Piri expedition were studied, his primacy was questioned. Research undertaken in 1989 by the Navigation Foundation concluded that Piri was no more than 8 km from his target. This result has been confirmed by the National Geographic Society. In 1996, Robert M. Bryce, who spent 20 years studying this controversial issue, published Bryce RM "Cook and Peary: The Polar Controversy, Resolved", in which he argued that neither Cook , neither Piri reached the Pole and that the latter had only 160 km to go to the desired goal.
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