Commander Robert E. Peary wrote this report in September 1909 to describe his expedition and announce his discovery of the North Pole. Peary is credited with the discovery, although scientists disagree whether he actually found the exact location of the pole. Some of the place-names and statistics Peary uses in this article have been subsequently revised. Peary frequently uses the term lead, which in this case means a channel of water through a field of ice.

First Report By Commander Robert E. Peary, U.S.N.

September 6, 1909

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The steamer Roosevelt, bearing the North Polar expedition of the Peary Arctic Club, parted company with the Erik and steamed out of Etah Fiord late in the afternoon of August 18, 1908....

We had on board twenty-two Eskimo men, seventeen women, and ten children, two hundred and twenty-six dogs, and some forty-odd walrus....

Four months of northerly winds during the fall and winter, instead of southerly ones, as during the previous season, led me to think that I would meet less water than before, but a great deal of rough ice, and I was prepared to hew a road through the jagged ice the first hundred miles or so, and then cross the big lead....

The party now comprised 7 members of the expedition, 17 Eskimos, 133 dogs, and 19 sledges. One Eskimo and seven dogs had gone to pieces. A strong easterly wind, drifting snow, and temperature in the minus marked our departure from the camp at Cape Columbia, which I had christened Crane City.

Rough ice in the first march damaged several sledges and smashed two beyond repairs, the teams going to Columbia for other sledges in reserve there.

We camped ten miles from Crane City. The easterly wind and low temperature continued....

At noon of March 5, the sun, red and shaped like a football by excessed reflection, just raised itself above the horizon for a few minutes, and then disappeared again. It was the first time I had seen it since October 1....

The north march was very good going, but for the first time since leaving land we experienced that condition, frequent over these ice fields, of a hazy atmosphere in which the light is equal everywhere. All relief is destroyed, and it is impossible to see for any distance.

We were obliged in this march to make a detour around an open lead. In the next march we encountered the heaviest and deepest snow of the journey through a thick, smothering mantle lying in the depressions of heavy rubble ice....

During the next march we traveled through a thick haze, drifting over the ice before a biting air from the northeast. At the end of the march we came upon the captain camped beside a wide-open lead, with a dense black water sky northwest, north, and northeast. We built our igloos and turned in, but before I had fallen asleep I was roused out by a movement of the ice, and found a startling condition of affairs.

A rapidly widening road of black water ran but a few feet from our igloos. One of my teams of dogs had escaped by only a few feet from being dragged by the movement in the ice into the water.

Another team had an equally narrow escape from being crushed by the ice blocks piled over them. The ice on the north side of the lead was moving around eastward. The small floes on which were the captain's igloos were drifting eastward in the open water, and the side of our igloos threatened to follow suit.

Kicking out the door of the igloos, I called to the captain's men to pack their sledges and be ready for a quick dash when a favorable change arrived.

We hurried our things on our sledges, hitched the dogs, and moved on to a large floe west of us. Then leaving one man to look out for the dogs and sledges, we hurried over to assist the captain's party to join us.

A corner of their raft impinged on the ice on our side for the rest of the night, and during the next day the ice suffered the torments of the damned, surging together, opening out, groaning and grinding, while the open water belched black smoke like a prairie fire. Then the motion ceased, the open water closed, the atmosphere to the north was cleared, and we rushed across before the ice should open again.

A succession of literally open leads were crossed, and after them some heavy old ice, and then we came to a layer of young ice, some of which buckled under our sledges, and this gave us a straight way of six miles to the north. Then came more heavy old floes covered with hard snow. This was a good, long march....

At a little after midnight of April 1, after a few hours of sound sleep, I hit the trail, leaving the others to break up camp and follow. As I climbed the pressure ridge back of our igloos, I set another hole in my belt, the third since I started. Every man and dog of us was lean and flat-bellied as a board, and as hard.

It was a fine morning. The wind of the last two days had subsided, and the going was the best and most equable of any I had yet. The floes were large and old, hard and clear, and were surrounded by pressure ridges, some of which were almost stupendous. The biggest of them, however, were easily negotiated, either through some crevice or up some huge brink.

I set a good pace for about ten hours. Twenty-five miles took me well beyond the 88th parallel. While I was building my igloos a long lead formed by the east and southeast of us at a distance of a few miles.

A few hours' sleep and we were on the trail again. As the going was now practically horizontal, we were unhampered and could travel as long as we pleased and sleep as little as we wished. The weather was fine and the going like that of the previous day, except at the beginning, when pickaxes were required. This and a brief stop at another lead cut down our distance. But we had made twenty miles in ten hours and were half way to the 89th parallel.

The ice was grinding audibly in every direction, but no motion was visible. Evidently it was settling back in equilibrium and probably sagging due northward with its release from the wind pressure.

Again there was a few hours' sleep, and we hit the trail before midnight. The weather and going were even better. The surface, except as interrupted by infrequent ridges, was as level as the glacial fringe from Hecla to Columbia and harder.

We marched something over ten hours, the dogs being often on the trot and made 20 miles. Near the end of the march, we rushed across a lead 100 yards wide, which buckled under our sledges, and finally broke as the last sledge left it.

We stopped in sight of the 89th parallel, in a temperature of 40 degrees below. Again a scant sleep, and we were on our way once more and across the 89th parallel.

This march duplicated the previous one as to weather and going. The last few hours it was on young ice, and occasionally the dogs were galloping. We made 25 miles or more, the air, the sky, and the bitter wind burning the face till it cracked. It was like the great interior ice cap of Greenland. Even the natives complained of the bitter air. It was as keen as frozen steel.

A little longer sleep than the previous ones had to be taken here as we were all in need of it. Then on again.

Up to this time, with each successive march, our fears of an impossible lead had increased. At every inequality of the ice, I found myself hurrying breathlessly forward, fearing that it marked a lead, and when I arrived at the summit would catch my breath with relief—only to find myself hurrying on in the same way at the next one. But on this march, by some strange shift and feeling, this fear fell from me completely. The weather was thick, but it gave me no uneasiness.

Before I turned in I took an observation, which indicated our position as 89.25. A dense, lifeless pall hung overhead. The horizon was black and the ice beneath was a ghastly, shelly-white, with no relief—a striking contrast to the glimmering, sunlit fields of it over which we had been traveling for the previous four days.

The going was even better and there was scarcely any snow on the hard, granular, last summer's surface of the old floes dotted with the sapphire ice of the previous summer's lakes.

A rise in temperature to 15 below reduced the friction of the sledges and gave the dogs the appearance of having caught the spirit of the party. The more sprightly ones, as they went along with tightly-curled tails, frequently tossed their heads, with short, sharp barks and yelps.

In twelve hours we made 40 miles. There was not a sign of a lead in the march.

I had now made my five marches, and was in time for a hasty noon observation through a temporary break in the clouds, which indicated our position as 89.57. I quote an entry from my journal some hours later:

“The pole at last! The prize of three centuries. My dream and goal for twenty years! Mine at last! I cannot bring myself to realize it. It all seems so simple and commonplace. As Bartlett said when turning back, when speaking of his being in these exclusive regions which no mortal has ever penetrated before, ‘It's just like every day.’”

Of course I had my sensations that made sleep impossible for hours, despite my utter fatigue—the sensations of a lifetime; but I have no room for them here.

The first thirty hours at the pole were spent in taking observations; in going some ten miles beyond our camp, and some eight miles to the right of it; in taking photographs, planting my flags, depositing my records, studying the horizon with my telescope for possible land, and searching for a practicable place to make a sounding.

Ten hours after our arrival, the clouds cleared before a slight breeze from our left, and from that time until our departure in the afternoon of April 7, the weather was cloudless and flawless. The minimum temperature during the thirty hours was 33 below, the maximum 12.

We had reached the goal, but the return was still before us. It was essential that we reach the land before the next spring tide, and we must strain every nerve to do this.

I had a brief talk with my men. From now on, it was to be a big travel, little sleep, and a hustle every minute. We would try, I told them, to double march on the return—that is, to start and cover one of our northward marches, make tea and eat our luncheon in the igloos, then cover another march, eat and sleep a few hours, and repeat this daily.

As a matter of fact, we nearly did this, covering regularly on our return journey five outward marches in three return marches. Just as long as we could hold the trail we could double our speed, and we need waste no time in building new igloos.

Every day that we gained on the return lessened the chances of a gale destroying the track. Just above the 87th parallel was a region fifty miles wide, which caused me considerable uneasiness. Twelve hours of strong easterly, westerly or northerly wind would make this region an open sea.

In the afternoon of the 7th we started on our return....

On September 5 we arrived at Indian Harbor, whence the message, “Stars and Stripes nailed to North Pole,” was sent vibrating southward through the crisp Labrador air.

Source: National Geographic, October 1909.

Appears in

Peary, Robert Edwin; North Pole; Arctic; Exploration, Geographic