Polar Experts Ease Doubts Over Tainted Peary Claims

Polar explorer Robert E. Peary, whose legacy has been suspended in limbo the past few months as scholars debated whether he should be ranked as one of the nation’s leading heroes or one of its greatest frauds, got a little help Wednesday.

The nonprofit Navigation Foundation said a mysterious document that surfaced last October does not prove Peary lied when he claimed to have “discovered” the North Pole in 1909. The foundation concluded further that the numbers scrawled on the piece of “scratch paper” were grossly misinterpreted and, moreover, were not even from that expedition.

The foundation studied the document at the request of the National Geographic Society, which financed Peary’s expeditions, because of growing doubt about the explorer’s claims. While it concluded that the document does not prove Peary a fraud, the foundation also said it tells “absolutely nothing about whether Peary reached the pole.”

Basis for Doubts

The debate has intensified in recent months, due partly to the society’s National Geographic Magazine, which published an article in September by British polar explorer Wally Herbert that questioned whether Peary actually reached the pole.

The debate is harsher now than it was a few years ago, but it is not new. It began almost as soon as Peary returned from the frozen north 80 years ago. It has been fueled partly by a lack of evidence to support Peary’s claim that he reached the pole with five companions and spent 30 hours there in an ice igloo that the six men built.

In his National Geographic article, Herbert said he was “dismayed” that Peary’s handwritten diary contained several blank pages covering the time when he claimed to have been at the pole, and there were no entries about activities during that period. Particularly troubling has been the lack of sextant readings that would have pinpointed Peary’s position.

Instead, a loose piece of paper had been inserted in the diary, declaring “The Pole at last!!!”

Herbert said present understanding of currents and ice drift suggests Peary could have been as much as 30 to 60 miles off course and his “astonishingly slack” navigational records make it impossible to determine whether he actually reached the pole. Since the North Pole is covered by the drifting polar ice pack, celestial navigation was the only way for Peary to determine his location, and the lack of records by Peary fueled the current debate.

Some critics have insisted that Peary may have erred--and possibly toyed with the facts--when he realized that warming temperatures and supply shortages were making his fifth attempt too dangerous and he knew he would never have another chance to reach his lifelong goal.

Herbert, while concluding that the evidence is so inconclusive that the truth may never be known, suggested that Peary may have felt justified if he fudged a little.

“In all probability, during those last five marches northward Peary was being driven not by the rational mind but by a conviction that the pole was his and that he had the divine right to discover it and return to proclaim his achievement.”

Meanwhile, astronomer Dennis Rawlins of Baltimore, who published a book in 1973 in which he argued that Peary probably never reached the pole, came across a document that changed the entire tone of the debate. While researching another matter at the National Archives, Rawlins found a slip of paper that had been placed in the archives long after Peary’s death.

The paper, in an envelope dated 1909, had a series of numbers scrawled on it, and astronomer Rawlins said he recognized them as readings from a sextant Peary used to determine his position while at his northernmost point.

Rawlins said the readings revealed that Peary never got farther than 88 degrees 15 minutes north, which would place him about 121 statute miles from the pole.

Rawlins said the paper proved that Peary, a U.S. Navy admiral who died in 1950, knew he had failed to reach the pole and he suppressed that fact to claim a fraudulent victory.

The document became available in 1984, when Peary’s descendants unsealed his files, but no one paid any attention to it because it contained numbers that only someone familiar with celestial navigation would recognize.

There the matter stood until Wednesday, when the Navigation Foundation released an interim report on Rawlins’ conclusions. After studying the document, the foundation concluded that “Rawlins’ analysis is clearly incorrect.”

The date, 1909, that had been scrawled on the envelop by someone other than Peary, was incorrect, the foundation concluded.

Retired Rear Adm. Thomas D. Davies, president of the foundation, said three experts evaluated the document and concluded it was not even from the 1909 expedition.

While examining the files, the investigators found a letter in which Peary’s daughter, Marie Stafford, said that her mother admitted she may have made a mistake when she dated the envelope April 7, 1909--the day Peary claimed to have reached the pole.

Davies said the document amounted to “scratch paper,” apparently used by Peary to calibrate his instruments on an earlier polar expedition in 1906, Davies told a press conference Wednesday at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.

According to Davies, Rawlins mistakenly thought numbers on the slip of paper represented compass readings, but in fact they were “time sights” used to check the accuracy of Peary’s three chronometers, precise timekeeping instruments used by navigators. Furthermore, the slip refers to the star, Betelgeuse, which Peary could not have seen in April of 1909, the foundation concluded.

Rawlins made the mistake, Davies said, because “he clearly was not trained in navigation.”

“This piece of paper provides no evidence Peary faked his claim,” Davies said.

In a telephone interview, Rawlins conceded that the foundation had found several mistakes in his interpretation of the document.

“It’s (the foundation’s investigation) a competent piece of work which presents an alternative interpretation,” Rawlins said.

He insisted, however, that Peary’s claim to have reached the North Pole is unfounded.