Nearing the Pole making 25–30
miles/day on smooth ice
Peary's Diary– "Dogs frequently on trot...on young ice of a
north & south lead they were often galloping...with tightly curved tails, repeatedly toss their heads
with short barks & yelps..."
Looking back at the dogs tracks in fresh snow. This
is young ice, or new ice as they called it. The water that recently frozen so it is smooth and
very easy to travel
over. Near the Pole they were able to let the dogs trot along at 25–30
miles/day.
Notice how lightly loaded the Peary expedition sledge is, and
easily pulled by 6 dogs? That is because Peary was making a dash
for the Pole, not a camping trip. 24 men using 19 sledges,
pulled by 130 dogs carried all the supplies needed for the elite
team of Peary & Henson to sprint the final distance. A brilliant
plan but so expensive that no one has ever re-enacted it.
Why would anyone try to prove this didn't
happen?
Were a Scotsman's "research mistakes" simply
motivated by his personal desire for fame & money?
Noose of
Laurels
• Why did Herbert misread Peary's handwritten diary word "dash" as
"dark"—thus
causing him to invent a bizarre psychological theory?
• How did he miss several references to the North Pole in
Peary's 1909 diary; thus erroneously stating that Peary never
mentioned reaching the North Pole?
• Was he misled by misinformation from Janet Vetters (Cook's
daughter) with whom he
exchanged numerous letters?
Was Herbert sympathetic to her anti-establishment/anti-National
Geographic beliefs?
• How did Herbert completely overlook
the actual, recorded wind direction data—thus
allowing him to contrive a theory Peary traveled west of the
Pole?
• Was Herbert wrong about Peary's "impossibly fast sledging
speeds" because of his own amateurish, grossly overloadedsledge
experiences?
In fact his 1969 British Trans-ArcticCamping
trip had to harness 10 dogs/sledge that strained under the load
while his men rode on top as passengers. • Does Herbert know NOW that Landry &
Crowley easily matched Peary's sledging speeds on their very
first attempt? That "dark" was A TYPO and thus
his paranoid theory is baseless?
That Peary DOES mentions reaching the North Pole several times
in his diary? That Peary's depth sounding records PROVE he was
not "left of the Pole?"
• Does Herbert know that my copy of his book was stamped
"DISCARD", by a librarian, in large
red letters?
I hope so. And we will all welcome his written apology to
rectify the damage his mistakes caused to American history and
especially to the memory of the brave men who first reached an
axis of the earth on April 6, 1909.
