Robert E. Peary looked at the calendar. It was 21 April 1906 and he knew he had failed again. His last navigational observations told him that he was standing at 87.6 degrees north latitude. Never in human history had anyone come so far north. The nearest piece of solid earth was more than 560 kilometres to the south. But his goal of reaching the North Pole lay 300 kilometres to the north of him. But to get there, the only way was across a white desert made up of ice sheets.
Peary and his men have already endured a lot on their six-week journey across the uncertain ice sheets. After days of dragging their sledges over rough ice, they came across a wide swathe of open sea. Locals searched left and right for a place to cross this stretch of open sea over solid ice, but they kept turning back in frustration. Peary, then the most famous polar explorer, lost his battle with the North Pole.
The huskies could only carry a limited amount of food and equipment on their sledges, and there was no way to replenish supplies on the way. Peary started the journey with a large number of men and a large food supply. But as he went along, he had to leave more and more men behind to save food so that the others could return safely. Their work as companions was done and he no longer needed them.
But now Peary is stuck in the crack of the open sea. Every day he could not go on increased the risk that rising temperatures would break the ice floes on which they stood and sink the expedition. They waited a week for new ice to form and allow them to advance. The men toiled and dragged their sledges across the ice stacks. Even the strongest of the expedition looked half dead. Peary suffered terribly from frostbite. Eight of his toes had been amputated years before and he had only his stubbed toes. Food was becoming scarce. The huskies were howling with hunger and six of the weakest had already been killed to feed the rest. Fewer dogs meant slower travel and that meant death.
Peary was already considering whether to throw caution to the wind, just take the risk and move on. But in the distance, he saw something of the open sea again. He took no chances and the return journey was a battle for survival. When they finally made it back to their mother ship, the Roosevelt, he was left with only 41 of the original 120 dogs. Instead of rewarding his supporters and funders by reaching the North Pole, he had only progressed to 87.60 degrees from his northernmost point of 86.34 degrees, reached by Italian Umberto Cagni in 1900. The dream of the North Pole had vanished, and Peary was already planning his next feat.
Heavy ice kept the Roosevelt firmly moored to an anchorage off Cape Sheridan on Ellesmere Island, west of Greenland. It will be several months before warmer weather allows the ship to sail back to the safety of America. On 2 June 1906, Peary set out with a small party of men for an unexplored area west of Cape Sheridan. They had been travelling for a few days, food was plentiful and the weather bearable, when they spotted a large hill in the distance. When Peary climbed it after more than an hour’s climb and looked through his binoculars into the distance, he saw a narrow line of snow-covered mountains at the end of the icy desert. Greenland’s Iggiannguaq and Ulloriaq tribesmen assured him that there was undiscovered land far off in the distance. Peary lost half, but he could have become famous for discovering a new land. He called the unknown land on the horizon Crocker’s Land.
This discovery is said to confirm legends, rumours and rumours of the existence of an unknown land in the Arctic Ocean. Whalers, shipwreckers and adventurers who had discovered only a small part of the Arctic expanse were convinced of the existence of a large island, perhaps even a continent, far over the horizon. Could this be the lost Atlantis?
On previous journeys, Peary has seen tracks of foxes and deer far from solid ground in the icy desert, where there is supposed to be no life. So there is life out there somewhere. Could there be unknown people living there? Some locals claimed that their ancestors had visited these unknown places and returned alive.
In 1906, Robert Peary put Crocker Land on the world map. Geographers wondered how big it was, whether it was an island, an archipelago or something bigger, and marked it on maps with a narrow crescent. Peary seemed the most suitable person to solve this riddle, but even the discovery of an unknown land could not satisfy his desire to set foot in the North Pole. Two of his assistants set out to discover a new land. Their desire to solve the riddle resulted in failure, frustration, infighting, betrayal and even murder at the rawest end of our planet. But for Peary, half took precedence over all else.
The battle for the pole is lost
Immediately after his return to the USA, Peary was already making plans for a new expedition to the North Pole. Ambitious young men offered to join him, as this was the only way to achieve possible immortality. By the beginning of the century, America had replaced hard farming with comfortable and modern city life, the Civil War had been forgotten, factories were being built everywhere, the Wild West was no longer wild, and the only area where young men could still prove their manhood was the Arctic.
But most of them did not have the money to help finance Peary’s expedition.One of these young men was Donald MacMillan, a college teacher in Massachusetts. He had heard that Peary was looking for young men to go with him to the North Pole. They could not be too fat, as he would need too much food for them, nor too thin, as he would have to pull a sledge over ice floes. Peary was pleased with MacMillan, and while he was looking for donors to fund the expedition, MacMillan was going around New York, buying suitable aluminium containers, just the right thickness of rope, hooks, pine paddles, wraps of wire, waterproof canvas for the tents, thick lined leather gloves and the like.
Finally, the core of the expedition has been assembled. It included three veterans from the previous expedition; Captain Barlett, Peary’s assistant Henson and Secretary Mavin. Dr Goodsell volunteered to be the expedition doctor. The last to arrive was the young and spartan George Borup, who knew nothing about the Arctic, but whose father, a retired colonel, was persistent enough to convince Peary that his son was fit for any endeavour in the snow and ice.
MacMillan, who was 11 years older than Borup, was not so sure, as the young man had never sailed on the high seas before. But he was all the more pleased to see that the repairs on the Roosevelt were progressing well. She was one of the strongest ships to navigate the Arctic seas. Her bow was reinforced with steel plates and her hull was shaped so that it could not be crushed by ice floes. The ship was slowly filled with a specific amount of supplies.
On 6 July 1908, several thousand people gathered on the pier to bid farewell to the Roosevelt, which was about to sail north. At the sound of a siren, the ship weighed anchor, slowly pulled away from the pier and made a brief stop at the estate of President Theodore Roosevelt, who climbed aboard and wished Peary a safe voyage. “It’s going to be ninety degrees this trip, or we’ll be gone,” Peary theatrically told the President. “Good luck and I am sure you will get there,” Roosevelt replied as the ship sailed towards Nova Scotia, the starting point from where the ships sailed to the Arctic Sea.
The daily work began, with Borup and MacMillan sharing a cramped cabin crammed with instruments, clothes, food, thermometers, barometers and other junk. “Ashore!” came the call on 27 July, and after three weeks of sailing, the fog-shrouded black rocks of Greenland and the village of Cape York appeared in the distance. “Kissa Tikeri- Unga! I’m really coming!” shouted Peary in the Inuit language as the locals paddled towards the ship.
He respected the locals, but did not appreciate them. He knew only a few basic words of their language, did not understand their culture and was convinced that they were only there to help him reach the North Pole. They were simple Eskimos who did not know iron until the fur traders came to them. They had never seen a tree or plant bigger than ten centimetres. They had some firearms, but they found their own harpoons the most reliable. Until the British explorer John Ross came along in 1818, they were convinced they were alone in the world.
Peary didn’t stay long in the village, just long enough to choose which locals he would take with him. Etah was the last Inuit settlement in Greenland before the ship turned to its winter wintering place on the large island of Ellesmere. In Etah, Peary also met the adventurer Rudolf Frank, who had spent the winter here with Peary’s former rival Frederick Cook on a previous voyage. When Frank mentioned that Cook had set off for the North Pole with the Eskimos a few months earlier, Peary waved his hand dismissively. Cook was probably already dead.
The fog enveloped Roosevelt as it headed north to the northernmost point of Ellesmere Island, Cape Sheridan, 650 kilometres away at 82.30 degrees latitude. They could go no further that year. It was early in September and winter was approaching. Cape Sheridan was already so far north that it never got dark in the summer, but in the winter it was shrouded in total darkness for months. The newcomers found it difficult to get used to the geographical extent of the northern areas. The polar Inuit, on the other hand, understood geography in their own way. Their maps were in their heads. The great glaciers, rocks and fjords were their landmarks.
In February 1909, when the first faint signs of the sun appeared, Peary gave the signal to leave. Everyone gathered in the igloo and listened to the advice of the veterans. Finally, Peary said, “If you say goodbye to a friend here, God only knows whether you will see him again.” On the twenty-eighth of February, they set off. The temperature was minus 30 degrees Celsius, the air was calm and everyone saw only positive signs as they left.
Borup had a different idea of travelling on ice and snow. The internal pressure piled the ice into jagged masses that had to be bypassed, the wind blew the snow away, and it created snowbanks from which it was necessary to get out, unload the sledge and carry all the equipment to another place. This difficult work was Borup’s job and there was no point in complaining. When the group arrived at latitude 83.84 degrees, MacMillan noticed a disturbance among the Inuit. They saw no point in reaching the North Pole, all they cared about was getting knives, guns and tobacco, something that had some value to them.
The Inuit met in separate groups and talked quietly and mysteriously. It was then that MacMillan realised he was finding it increasingly difficult to walk. The toes of his shoes were freezing. He limped for a week, and then, in minus 50 degrees, he confessed to Peary that he couldn’t walk any more. Accompanied by two Inuit men, he sledged back home to the Roosevelt. Before he left, Peary gave him advice never to let the Inuit walk in front of him. If he needed help, they would go ahead, he instructed, ignoring his troubles and leaving him alone.
MacMillan arrived at the Roosevelt ten days later, bathed for the first time in a month and began to treat his frostbite. A week after his departure, it was his turn to go home to Borup. He was sorry, but it had been pre-arranged. He had done his hard work, he was going to take back the weakest Inuit and some dogs. In a week’s time it would be Marvin’s turn to return, and the following week Bartlett would leave, leaving only Peary, Henson and the best of the Inuit for the jump to the North Pole. But Marvin didn’t get far. He ignored the warnings of the Inuit, got stuck on thin ice and disappeared beneath the surface of the sea.
Meanwhile, MacMillan and Borup were waiting to hear from Peary. Looking into the distance, they saw a small dot coming towards them. It was an Inuit Quaarqutsiaq with news that Peary had reached the North Pole. The joy was indescribable. The triumphant return to New York was overshadowed by the news that the long-vanished Dr. Frederick Cook had appeared in Europe claiming that he, not Peary, had been the first to reach the North Pole. As the Roosevelt docked in New York, sailors from other ships shouted, “Cook is a champion, Peary is a fraud!”
Borup and MacMillan took on the role of defenders of Peary’s truth, and Peary allowed them to do so, possibly because he himself was not sure what was true.
Setting off on a new adventure
All three of them already had a new adventure in mind, the last one on the globe that would guarantee glory. To discover and explore the unknown land of Crocker. But Peary was reluctant, promising them only moral support and refusing to involve any of his donors. So they had to find their own donors. They were turned down by the National Geographic Society, but were successful with the private American Museum of Natural History, which had already funded expeditions to the Congo, Asia and other far-flung places. But it was too late to organise an expedition for 1911, and the museum’s management was convinced that, because it was managing private money, it could not do anything in haste.
MacMillan already had in mind a team of four men who would winter somewhere on the northern part of Ellesmere Island, then, in 1912, go to where Peary thought he had seen Crocker’s land, and then make their way across the ice to the island and explore it. They had to hurry, because there were increasing rumours that other polar explorers, such as Rasmussen, Stefansson or even Shackelton, might seize the opportunity and snatch Crocker’s Land from them.
The Natural History Museum naturally made its own demands on the funding of the expedition. It should not be an adventure for young people to have fun, but a serious scientific work from which the Museum will obtain important archaeological, palaeontological, ethnological and botanical data on an unknown land. Who will lead the expedition? The museum administration was convinced that it would be Borup, who was to be a typical example of a pioneering young American explorer, like the young President Theodore Roosevelt.
MacMillan was breathless. He was older and more experienced and had spent much more time in the Arctic than Borup. He had always been convinced that he and Borup were equal partners. But in the end, he gave in silently and bitterly. They had only five months to finalise their plans for the expedition, add up how much money they had raised, hire the rest of the team and the ship, buy equipment and supplies.
But Borup had something else in mind that was unrelated to the Arctic expedition. He asked Mary Peary to marry him. He had never been in love and had never kissed a woman other than his own mother, but he longed for a love that he had not received because of his mother’s untimely death.
He and Mary Peary met when Borup first went to the Arctic and became friends. The young man, freezing in blizzards, suffering hunger and fatigue, fighting for his life, trembled like a whale on the water when he spoke the magic words: “Will you marry me?” And Mary agreed, only Father Peary suggested that the engagement be kept secret for the time being.
Mary Peary was a well-known girl in American society, known as Snow Baby, and her photographs hung in many young men’s rooms. Borup was convinced that if he did not return from the expedition a winner, he did not deserve her, and he stood before Peary as a successful polar explorer. He was then invited to the annual dinner of the hunting club founded by President Theodore Roosevelt himself. Roosevelt came up to him, shook his hand and said, “It would be a fine thing for America if the discovery of Crocker’s Land could be attributed to the American people.” In the following days, donor contributions to the expedition almost doubled.
Then something happened that no one expected. Borup and his school friend Cas took the train to New England, planning to paddle their canoes the next day along the strait off Long Island. Some of the passengers on the train were talking in hushed voices about the Titanic disaster, where more than a thousand people were said to be dead and the bodies were already being brought to Halifax, Nova Scotia.
In the morning, the weather was cloudy and not at all suitable for paddling in the sea. But Borup and Case did not give up. They were already some distance from the shore when the weather turned stormy. They tried with all their might to paddle back to the shore, but failed. The canoe capsized and a desperate fight for survival began. A fisherman saw what was happening from the shore and came to their rescue. But it was too late. Only two bodies were pulled from the water. The expedition was left without a leader and Mary Peary without a fiancé, and the Natural History Museum began looking for someone suitable to take the expedition to Crocker’s Land. MacMillan did not seem trustworthy.
The search for a leader for the expedition dragged on, the initial costs of the expedition skyrocketed, and the Natural History Museum somehow decided that MacMillan would lead the expedition, with Dr Elmer Ekblau and Fitzburgh Green as his support. MacMillan would have liked to have chosen his own team, but he had to go down that route too. He did not like Ekblaw very much. He was a geology professor and a little too fat for an Arctic adventure. Fitzburg Green was more to his liking, as his energy reminded him a little of the late Borup.
With only six months to replenish supplies, the trio planned to set off for the Arctic in early summer 1913. The expedition also needed to be equipped with the latest technical advances. The Arctic explorers were completely cut off from the world for months or years and no one could know whether they were still alive. The latest technical device, a wireless radio transmitter, has changed that. MacMillan intended to maintain a permanent radio link from his base on Ellesmere Island with the Canadian National Relay Station on Wolstenholme Island, 2,040 kilometres away. From there, news would be sent on to New York.
Green managed to persuade the Navy to provide him with a radio operator, Jerome Allen. But no one knew whether the radio transmitter would be powerful enough to allow his calls to reach the Canadian relay station. Despite the official optimism, Green had bad premonitions. He had read in the newspapers of the death of Scott’s entire Antarctic expedition, while MacMillan, in an interview with the Tribune, spoke excitedly of how the discovery of Crocker Land would solve the last riddle on Earth.
On 1 July 1913, in the early hours of the morning, the expedition assembled in Brooklyn harbour for final preparations. It was quite likely that not everyone would return alive from the Arctic expedition. They hardly knew each other and only MacMillan was briefly in the northern provinces. MacMillan was in charge of the geological surveys, Elmer Ekblaw was the botanist, Fitzburh Green was the engineer and physicist, Cole Tanquary was the zoologist, Harrison Hunt was the physician and surgeon. As a guide and translator, they took with them Minik Wallace, whom Peary had brought from the Arctic as a child in 1897. They boarded the 43-year-old steamer Diana, which was rather neglected but which they were sure would serve their purpose. After clearing her of all unnecessary clutter, they spent two whole days boarding her with their equipment and food supplies.
At almost the same time, explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson set off from Seattle, 5555 kilometres away on America’s west coast, to board a whaler in Nome and head north to Canada. No one was under any illusions that his ultimate goal was not to discover Crocker’s Land. So the race was on. Peary said goodbye to MacMillan: “I wish I was in your shoes. When I saw the outlines of Crocker’s Land, I realised that this was not a job for me, but for a younger man, and that was you.”
The steamer Diana weighed anchor on 2 July 1913 and sailed northwards. The weather on the voyage was bad, the waves were high and the passengers were vomiting, the cook was preparing inedible food and the crew was busily emptying bottles of brandy. “As always, the crew are drunk and useless,” MacMillan wrote in his diary. As they approached Labrador, the first icebergs were already visible.
But on 16 July, what usually happens when the captain and crew are not careful happened. On 16 July, at midnight, the Diana was struck by a strong gust and there was a crashing sound as if someone was tearing the ship in two. The ship, overloaded with supplies, ran aground 200 metres from a place called Barge Point as it tried to avoid a small iceberg. The captain, reeking of rum, crawled half-naked on deck and the crew lost their heads. The only thing left to do was to unload the ship and dump most of the coal into the sea, otherwise the ship would sink.
MacMillan quickly motored to the coast and sent a boat to nearby Red Bay, from where he sent telegrams around looking for a replacement. Meanwhile, fishermen from a nearby village came to the rescue and began ferrying supplies from Diana to shore in their boats. Was the expedition over before it had even begun? Will the Natural History Museum and donors be ready to provide a new boat? For Macmillan, the days of waiting and anxiety began. Those who had financed the expedition had already invested too much money and publicity to give up. With some difficulty, they managed to secure a new ship, the Erik. At that time, communications with the North were still very shaky and everyone involved was reacting only on the basis of old memos. But it was clear that the expedition would end in the red.
It took two precious days to get the supplies back on board the Erik and on their way. They did not arrive in Etah, Greenland, until the second week of August. During the journey they were joined by a local man, Qajuuttaq, who MacMillan had known since 1909, and a few other locals who knew Ellesmere Island and were willing to join the expedition. Sledges, kayaks, harpoons and furs began to pile up on board the Erik.
Meanwhile, the weather has already deteriorated, with icy winds and floating ice starting to accumulate in the strait between Greenland and Ellesmere Island. The ship was to sail quickly, while it was still possible, to the other side of the strait and anchor on Ellesmere Island. Summer was ending and winter was coming. Two attempts to cross the Strait were prevented by ice, and the third time the captain of the ship dared not risk it again. So they would have to spend the winter in Greenland. The expedition and the Inuit escort were left alone on the shore at the hamlet of Etah, among tons of food and equipment. They settled into a low, half-buried Borup hut and packed it with supplies and equipment. Not far from the hut were the Inuit winter quarters, as they had been for centuries.
Inuit think and live differently
Capitalism and mass production of goods were alien to the Inuit, who traded only to feed their families. For an Inuit, being rich meant having lots of meat and good draught dogs. Private property was irrelevant in a society where the only way to survive was to share food and a roof over one’s head. MacMillan viewed the Inuit as friends and, like Peary, was unable to function unless he exploited their navigational and survival skills. He was aware that he and his companions were only marginal phenomena in this close-knit and primitive society. For now, the Borup hut was their home.
They quickly fixed what needed to be fixed and then set about installing and assembling the radio transmitter, which would now be installed at Etah. The radio antenna was placed nearby on a small hill. There followed a great disappointment. They did not know that the Canadian Government had changed its mind and had not set up a receiving station at Cape Wolstenholme, 2040 kilometres away, in the far north of the province of Quebec. The next receiving station was already 2600 kilometres away, too far to receive the signals from Borup Hut. The expedition remained completely cut off from the outside world.
Over the following months, the members of the expedition slowly got used to the total darkness of the winter months, but they didn’t rest. They all watched with interest to see how Minik Wallace felt in the land of his grandfathers. In 1897, as a seven-year-old boy, Peary and five other Inuit, including Minik’s father, Qisuk, boarded a ship, brought them to New York and “gave” them to the anthropology department of the Museum of Natural History, which did not know what to do with the “gift”. The Inuit suffered from various diseases and died one by one.
The Americans were amazed to see how the Inuit tried to greet themselves by singing traditional songs and drumming. But tuberculosis was not merciful to them. Only Minik, adopted by Wallace, a museum guard, survived. Later, Minik supported himself by doing manual labour. When he heard that Peary was preparing a new expedition in 1908, he asked him to take him with him, but Peary refused. Minik did not return to Greenland on a ship until the following year. He had to relearn the language of the natives and his hunting skills, but he was never able to recover his Inuit roots. He married, but the marriage was a disaster, and he found himself more and more often venturing alone into the wildest parts of the country, telling stories of places where the trees touched the sky and the sleigh moved without a dog team. Now MacMillan was using him as an interpreter.
In the safe haven of Etah in Greenland, MacMillan hatched a plan to reach Crocker Land. He had 18 sledges with dogs to carry 400 kilograms of food and equipment. This would last for 80 days. Three groups of six sledges were to go to Ellesmere Island at different intervals. The first four would return to Etah after just a few days, leaving behind food supplies at designated locations. The other 14 were to continue westwards until they reached Cape Thomas Hubbard on the far west side of Ellesmere Island, the spot where Perry is said to have first sighted Crocker Land.
From Cape Thomas Hubbard, one group would set off to explore the nearby unknown area, collecting geographical and other natural history data. The rest – MacMillan, Ekblaw and Green and their Inuit companions – were to head westwards across the icy polar sea until they reached Crocker’s Land. If time permitted, they would explore it and then return in the spring, before the ice began to melt, making it impossible for them to return.
During the winter of 1913/14, MacMillan sent several parties from Etah to Ellesmere Island, slowly penetrating into the interior of the island and setting up marked food depots for those members of the expedition who would return from Cape Thomas Hubbard, cold and hungry. MacMillan had first set off for Crocker’s Land in February 1914, but mumps, colds and the deplorable condition of the dog sledges prevented him from breaking through. He turned back and returned to the safety of Etah. Green wrote a letter to his mother at the time: “Of course we expect to be hungry and freezing as we never have before.” He recalled what Lieutenant Powell had written in 1882 when he was cruising the Bering Sea.
“Polar ice has a very unusual voice. It is not loud, but it can be heard over long distances. It is not even a growl, but a kind of slow growl, mixed with the undertone of an approaching storm. The ice shrinks when the temperatures drop, and that is when openings appear through which new ice penetrates. When temperatures rise, the ice strains and forces itself towards the shore with uncanny strength.”
Ice plays an important role in Inuit cosmology. MacMillan once told an Inuit that he found the sound of ice monstrous. “It is the souls of those who have drowned and can no longer get out. They are doomed to stay there forever, and they are crying out to be released into a happy world above the ice,” the native explained to him.
But on 11 April, MacMillan could wait no longer. The temperature outside was minus 31 degrees Celsius, the weather was cold but clear, and MacMillan, Green and Ekblaw and seven Inuit set off with supplies on a 2,220-kilometre journey. Ellesmere Island is the tenth largest island in the world. Here, volcanic rocks soar high into the sky, huge glaciers gouge into the rocks and steep high mountains are intimidating, and the silence is enough to make a traveller’s heart squeeze. In 1914, there was no one living on it.
The expedition had to stop after 300 kilometres on the island. The 1400-metre-high Beitstad glacier, which stretched like a spine along the entire length of the island and could not be avoided, had to be overcome. The very face of the glacier that MacMillan stopped in front of was as high as a six-storey house with a 50 % slope. Le Piugaatoq had once been on the other side of the glacier. It was necessary to get 11 men, 100 dogs and 3 tonnes of equipment across its face and then continue the climb to the very top. Of course, they had to unload all the sledges and carry all the supplies and equipment on their backs. The climb took three whole days and they were completely exhausted. Meanwhile, the temperature dropped dramatically to minus 50 degrees Celsius.
The Inuit entourage started muttering. They gathered in small groups and whispered conspiratorially among themselves. They were not interested in Crocker country and saw no good reason to go there. Minik Wallace was the first to leave them, claiming that the expedition would be fine without him. The other Inuit stayed for the time being. MacMillan decided he had to keep an eye on them. If more of them went home, the expedition would fail. Then Green came to him and told him that Ekblaw had frozen feet – every polar explorer’s nightmare.
Ekblaw’s legs were stuck and strangely coloured. He struggled on for a while, then stopped in despair. MacMillan had to send him back to Etah, accompanied by an Inuit. Each day became more exhausting. The Inuit dragged the sledge over the ice floes and shouted at the team. Green felt pain in his right hand whenever he lifted it and the cut on his finger, which he had received when he opened the can, flared up.
On 2 April, a snow storm hit and the dogs howled because they smelled polar bear tracks. The next day, the Inuit started shouting happily. They discovered an igloo that MacMillan had set up on an earlier expedition and the food supplies inside. Eating and sleeping, that was all they cared about. They stayed here for two whole days to build up their strength.
On 10 April, MacMillan and Green were convinced that Cape Thomas Hubbard must be close by and were frantically searching for a pile of stones that would prove that Peary had been here years before. But the expedition was too large to continue across the icy sea to Crocker’s Land. The Inuit did a great job, but there was always a shortage of food. All the Inuit except Piugaattoq and Ittukusuk had to be sent back home to Etah. No game would be caught on the way across the frozen polar sea. They will only be able to eat what they have with them. Only MacMillan, Green and two Inuit with four sledges and 600 kilograms of supplies will try to reach their final destination. They have been on the road for three weeks.
There is no Crocker Land
The expedition never found the stone marker at Cape Thomas Hubbard and on 11 April, the two Americans and two Inuit stepped onto the deceptively frozen surface of the polar sea. “Many of us are convinced that the ice of the polar sea is as smooth as glass, and that we have only to sledge on to our destination,” Peary wrote years ago. But MacMillan realised this was not true. The sleigh ride was like going over boulders, sometimes several metres high.
The Inuit started muttering, “Lots of water, not frozen.” Apparently, they noticed patches of high seas. In some places the ice was greyish, which meant it was too thin to cross. “We hope to reach solid ground in a few days,” Green wrote on 19 April, confident that they were only about 70 kilometres from Crocker’s land. He looked back and saw Cape Thomas Hubbard in the distance, as if urging them to return.
Every day they had to build a new igloo, which requires special skills. Using long knives, the Inuit would cut blocks of ice and place them on top of each other in a semicircle. After eight hours of wandering on the ice and building the igloo, everyone was exhausted. On April twenty-first, Green was the first to climb out of the igloo, pointing northwest and shouting, “We’ve got him!”
Mountains, valleys and peaks covered in snow stretched into the distance in clear weather. What lay before them was so vast that the eye could see no end. Two more Inuit crawled out of the igloo and MacMillan asked them which direction they should go to reach land. Piugaatoq, however, only said, “Pujoq. Fog.” MacMillan turned to Ittukusuk and said his colleague was wrong. There is, after all, land. He just shrugged his shoulders and said, “Maybe.” Green had seen all sorts of optical illusions over the years, but now he was sure he was seeing solid earth.
They had to find out where they were before they could continue their journey. With the help of a sextant and a chronometer and some calculations, they measured 81.52 degrees north latitude and 103.32 degrees west longitude. So this was Crocker’s country. But first they had to be sure and get on the ground. The spring thaw that was coming was telling them to go back. But they had come so far that they now had to make sure whether they had stumbled on the ground or whether it was all an optical illusion.
The Inuit were rebellious. They are not going, the ice is cracking, and it is better to go home, because all that appears in the distance is a mirage. They were persuaded by the promise of a rich reward. The next morning they set off, but although they had covered many kilometres, Crocker’s country was no nearer, but always the same distance away. According to their calculations, they were already 280 kilometres away from Cape Thomas Hubbard, much further from what Peary called Crocker’s Land, but it was no closer.
MacMillan later wrote: “The day was exceptionally clear, there was no sign of cloud or fog, and if we could see the earth, this was the time. Yes, there it was! Even without binoculars it was possible to see it. But our powerful binoculars showed us a dark background of mountains, valleys and snow-covered peaks. It was all so clear that we would have bet our lives on this reality if we had not been on the frozen sea. But our assessment then, as now, was that it was just an illusion or a refraction of the light of the sea ice.”
Crocker Land was nowhere to be seen and their destination disappeared into the fog. There was no reason to go on, because there was nothing ahead but ice and more ice. They took one last look at the fato morgano and turned the sledge around. MacMillan planted in the snow the flag he had intended to plant on Crocker Land. All four gathered for a group photo. Their journey ended at 82.30 degrees north latitude, 280 kilometres from Cape Thomas Hubbard, about 925 kilometres from the North Pole and 1500 kilometres from the nearest human being. At that moment, they were the loneliest people in the world. Green was depressed: “The disappointment is so much greater after the real effort.” MacMillan just said, “I was dreaming my five-year dream.”
Now the lives of the four men depended on being faster than the spring weather, which would break the ice and create patches of open sea that could not be crossed. No one could have predicted how difficult the journey back to Cape Thomas Hubbard would be or how long it would take. On the way back, they will use the food supplies they left in their hiding places as they walked towards Crocker’s Land, but above all they must not lose the old trail.
They lost it the very next day. “We need to find the old trail,” MacMillan urged the Inuit, but they just shook their heads as the blizzard obliterated the old trail and the shifting ice moved their supplies, which they had left marked on the trail, to an unknown destination. They walked blindly, sometimes finding the old trail and then losing it again. The tracking dogs were at the end of their rope due to exhaustion. But then the weather improved, visibility was good, and soon they spotted the hard ground of Thomas Hubbard’s Cape and even found Peary’s stone marker – a pile of stones proving that the famous polar explorer had been there in 1906. “Earth again!” Green exclaimed as he stepped onto solid ground. In just 13 days, the quartet had covered 555 kilometres of polar ice.
Ittukusuk and Piugaattoq set up camp, and the Americans thought about how to proceed. The dogs were poor, food was scarce, and hunting opportunities were limited. MacMillan suggested that they should move on immediately and cross the 1400 metre high glacier. A sudden storm could nail them and prevent them from travelling further, and they would run out of food. The snow was already deeper than they had expected and could no longer support their weight, and it was caving in. Every step across Ellesmere Island was an ordeal. But Etah seemed close to them all as the first place of civilisation, and none of the four realised that they would not see their homes so soon.
“Tomorrow we will separate,” concluded MacMillan. The main goal of the expedition, to find Crocker’s Land, had failed. So should he return to America empty-handed? The sponsors and the Natural History Museum will not be happy. So he and Ittukusuk will head north along the coast, explore it and record some geographical data. Green will head south with Piugaattok, plot the as yet undiscovered coastline and find the stone monument erected there in 1901 by the Norwegian Otto Sverdrup. The next day, the two Americans parted company.
Murder
“The Arctic Devil himself, old Torngak, has sent a blizzard upon us,” MacMillan choked as he and the Inuit began to fight their way through the storm. After a few hours, they took refuge in an igloo, which was more rough than lodging. They spent hours here, but the storm refused to stop. The first day passed, and the second too, and the third day was approaching, when it was agreed to meet Green again. MacMillan abandoned his plan to explore the coast and decided to wait for Green to catch up. But when Green and the Inuit were gone for the sixth day, he knew something was terribly wrong. They had apparently run out of food.
When he looked out of the igloo towards midday, he saw a black dot in the snow in the distance. His heart squeezed. It must be Piugaattoq, who was more skilled at survival. If anyone had escaped, it was him. But as the sledge began to approach, he noticed to his astonishment that Green was standing behind them. He approached him and groaned, “This is all that’s left of the Southern Expedition.”
A few days before, Green had been sitting in an igloo, smelling his own vomit. His lungs were crying out for oxygen, which was scarce in the heavy, stormy air. In fact, his task was easy. They were to head 45 kilometres south along the coast to Sverdrup’s stone memorial. But in the gale this was impossible. Piugaattoq suggested that they turn back, as he saw no reason to risk his life for a stone memorial. Food was scarce, hunting in the storm was impossible and they could get lost. Green exploded angrily, for they had a task to fulfil.
The situation required a sober head, and Green was losing his mind in panic. He accused Piugaattoq of caring only for his dogs and leaving his own buried several metres under the snow. And indeed his dogs froze to death. Piugaattoq was preparing to go back and invited Green to join him on his sledge. He flatly refused, because his feet were already frozen and he knew that sitting and not moving would be a disaster for him. Piugaattoq shrugged his shoulders and pushed off on his sledge, with Green trailing behind, increasingly convinced that the Inuit wanted to leave him. It would mean certain death for him. So he ordered him to walk behind him and not in front of him, which Piugaattoq refused in a bad mood and drove the dogs on.
“I’m going to freeze alone in this wilderness,” Green told himself, standing helpless in the snow and shouting to Piugaattoq to stop. He didn’t listen, so Green grabbed his rifle and fired a warning shot, but Piugaattoq still didn’t stop. He took aim a second time and fired. The shot hit the Inuit in the back. The dogs stopped as their driver fell off the sled. In another, more horrific version, Green then shot Inuit in the chest and also in the head, causing his brains to spill out on the snow. He loaded the dead man onto the sledge and drove him back to the igloo where they had spent the night, where he laid him in the snow.
If Piugaattoq had died among his own tribe, they would have laid him on a fur skin fully clothed, put some warm clothes on him and covered him with a fur coat. That way, he would always be warm in the next world. The body would be covered with rocks, because the frozen ground here does not allow digging graves. Next to the grave would be an oil lamp, a kayak and his tools. Piugaattoq did not have all this, so his soul was restless.
Green then dragged the body to the glacier, left it there and headed back to meet MacMillan. On 4 May, the two Americans met, Green told MacMillan what had happened, and MacMillan was convinced that it was a simple murder. Ittukusuk, meanwhile, was waiting for an explanation of what had happened to his companion, but MacMillan could not tell him the truth because the Inuit would have abandoned the expedition and perhaps even decided to take revenge. So he made up a story that Piugaattoq had been buried by an avalanche. Ittukusuk understood enough English to guess the truth, but he kept quiet because the Americans were outnumbered.
They were all still very far from Etah. The temperature started to rise from minus fifty to minus forty and in some places water was already appearing on the ice. They were almost without food and the dogs were starving. One female dog from the team had thrown up several puppies. She immediately ate the first one before the other dogs got to the others. Ittukusuk rescued them that way. He always came back with the game he had shot, he always found in the white wilderness the igloo they had built on their way to Crocker’s Land, and he was the one who carried most of the load over the Beitstad Glacier.
It was only thirty miles to Etah when the half-dead came across an igloo with supplies, including chocolate. Soon they reached the strait that separated Ellesmere Island from Greenland. The ice was firm enough to venture on. They had already met the Inuit of Etah in Greenland. When they arrived in Etah, they informed the other members of the expedition who had stayed in Etah what had happened to Piugaattoq and asked them to keep quiet about it, lying to the Inuit that their comrade had died in an avalanche. Green was increasingly convinced that what had happened was not murder, “after all, Piugaattoq was just a savage”.
In July 1914, two months had passed since the expedition returned to Utah. The Borup cabin was pleasantly warm, the windows and doors were open, the dogs were playing on the grassy knoll and MacMillan was writing letters. Eklbaw and Tanquary were 280 kilometres further south on a Danish trading post and no one had any idea that the world was sliding into World War I. MacMillan’s only worry was that they would stay alive and well until their sponsors sent a ship to take them back to their homeland the following year, in the summer of 1915. For the keen ornithologist, summer was also the time when birds returned to Greenland, and Tanquary, who had by then returned to Etah, was fascinated by zoology. So no one was unemployed.
In December 1914, however, MacMillan and Tanquary headed south to tell the outside world that they were alive and well and expected to be rescued the following summer. But by then the weather had deteriorated and they lost their way, wandering around for ten days at minus 50 degrees Celsius. They were so deprived of food that they started eating their dogs. Finally, they came across an Inuit camp. MacMillan, completely exhausted, returned to Etah, but Tanquary persevered and continued on his way, accompanied by an Inuit, to southern Greenland, informed the world of their whereabouts, and did not turn up in Etah until mid-March 1915. He was completely frostbitten and had to have several of his toes amputated.
Epilog
The American Museum of Natural History sent a three-masted Cluett scooter to Greenland in the summer, but it was totally unsuitable for Arctic waters and never made it to Etah. Halfway there, it was trapped by ice and did not leave the boat for two years. In 1916, a second rescue ship was sent out, but it encountered similar problems. By this time, three members of the expedition, Tanquary, Green and Allen, had already returned to America, having travelled 1850 kilometres along the west coast of Greenland. Only MacMillan and Ekblaw remained in Etah to explore some unexplored parts of the Arctic. Meanwhile, the Natural History Museum tried to rescue them for a third time. The steamer Neptune, with the famous Captain Bartlett, reached Nova Scotia on 24 August 1917 with MacMillan and Ekblaw on board.
Scientific expeditions usually result in a flood of scientific publications, which only add to the fame of those who take part. But the Crocker expedition was a stillborn baby. It brought back nothing of anthropological significance. The Natural History Museum was only enriched by a few hundred photographs and 200 artefacts. Today, this expedition is remembered only as a great adventure, linked to the perseverance, bravery and suffering of men who went in search of something that did not even exist. If it had not been for the horrific murder, every participant would have deserved admiration. But because of the extreme conditions in the Arctic, one of the members broke down out of fear or ignorance or both. Green was a man overcome by anger. The Inuit consider any expression of anger in such extreme circumstances to be dangerous and intolerable. Piugaattoq knew this would not end well and he ran away.
Green was never held responsible for the murder of Piugaattoq. In some circles, where the news spread, it made him even more interesting. He wrote several books, which were not particularly popular, and published articles in scientific journals on a fairly regular basis. In the 1930s he became a drug addict and after the end of the Second World War, in December 1947, he was forcibly taken by his children to an alcohol treatment centre, but it was too late, as he died a few days later.
Donald MacMillan had to cope with physical problems in the late 1960s. His movements were hesitant, his gait was unsteady and he often lost his balance. He spent his free time editing his collection of Arctic artefacts. Alzheimer’s disease ended his life on 7 September 1970. He was 95 years old. There is no mention on his tombstone that he was the last famous and celebrated polar explorer.
