In addition to Steger, many other explorers with sledging experience have found Peary’s speeds credible. Two experienced sledgers, Lord Shackleton (explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton’s son) and geologist-glaciologist Geoffrey Hattersley-Smith, who note that they traveled extensively by dog team in north Greenland and Ellesmere Island in the 1930s, ‘50s, and ‘60s, responded to the recent controversy with a letter to the Times of London.

I quote from the letter: “It was clear from our conversations with the Greenlander Odaq [Ootah], the last survivor of the polar party, that Peary found very good travel conditions on the last stretch to the North Pole. We have ourselves traveled up to 70 statute miles ‘between sleeps,’ admittedly on very good surfaces, so Peary’s distances, allowing for deviations of route, were by no means extraordinary.”

Speed in sledging is determined by a number of variables--the ability and determination of drivers, the strength of dogs, the configuration and weight of sledges, and, or course, ice conditions. Peary’s Eskimo drivers were unsurpassed; Ootah’s sledging skills had made him a legend in his own time among his people, and Matt Henson after long years in the Arctic had become almost his equal. The Smith Sound dogs were conceded to be superior to those of other Eskimo tribes. Peary’s 40 dogs for the final dash were the pick of 133 that had started the trek and were well fed and rested in readiness for the final assault. 

Other than Peary’s own description we cannot know what ice conditions were at the time, but we do know that Steger reported a smoothing of the ice and the presence of a frozen north-south lead that provided an improved surface for sledge travel in the near vicinity of the Pole. Ralph Plaisted’s colleague, Col. Gerry Pitzl, navigator on their successful snowmobile assault in 1968, similarly reported that for the last two weeks before reaching the Pole travel was “practically unrestricted...In many cases the lead direction was north, affording us the luxury of effortless travel.” 

Measurements of the ocean depth (soundings) taken by Peary on the trek from Cape Columbia to the Pole contribute significantly to the much-debated question of where his track lay. These data were no help to Peary in proving his case in 1909, since a profile of the Arctic Ocean in the vicinity of the 70th meridian did not then exist. Now of course it does. The Defense Mapping Agency made available to the Foundation a number of relevant bottom depths obtained by U.S. submarines operating under the Arctic ice, and these were used to refine a recent chart of the area issued by the Office of Naval Research. 

A computer-generated model based on these data show that if Peary’s track was close to the 70th meridian, he would have twice crossed over a major feature of the ocean bottom, the Lomonosov Ridge, during the trek to the Pole. Sure enough, a series of deep-shallow-deep soundings by Marvin indicates that the party passed over a southern leg of the ridge. A sounding made by Bartlett at 87° 15' north indicates that he was over the canyon just west of the ridge, and Peary’s sounding at 89° 55' showed that he had by that point crossed the ridge again. Thus he was on or very close to the track he describes in The North Pole. In any event, he could not have been on the track described in NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC by Herbert; Marvin’s soundings could only have been made some 20 miles to the east of Herbert’s suggested track. Moreover, Peary’s own sounding of 2,743 meters without reaching bottom, made at about five miles from his Pole camp, Camp Jesup, rules out at least one of Herbert’s three suggested locations for Camp Jesup. 

Continued...