Today’s Almanac-April 6, 2010-Part 1
It’s Two-fer-Tuesday!
On April 6, 1909 African American Matthew Hensen became one of the first two people to reach the Geographic North Pole, although some scholars dispute the claim. The other person was his employer, Robert Peary. Hensen was born on a Maryland farm just a year after the end of the Civil War. At the age of 12, he “ran away to sea.” He started as a cabin boy on a freighter and through self-education rose to become a highly skilled navigator and expert seaman. He met Peary on an 1887 expedition to Nicaragua and so impressed the naval officer that he included Hensen in all of his subsequent explorations eventually relying on him as his indispensible right hand man. When Peary turned his attention to the Arctic, the two men did what no other explorers had done-lived with, traded with, and studied the Inuit people who had perfected survival in the hostile North. They also both became fluent in the language of the Greenland Inuit and created networks of relationships that would supply their expeditions with expert and experienced guides and sled drivers. Peary made nine expeditions to the North, the last in an increasingly frenzied completion with Dr. Fredrick Cook, who made a disputed claim to discovery of the Pole in 1907. Using their Inuit friends and Peary’s system of a series of relay stations and logistical support, the expedition set forth from Ellsmmere Island near the northern tip of Greenland in parties between Feb. 29 and March 2. On the final stage Hensen, Peary and three Inuit drove to within five miles of the Pole where they established a camp. The two leaders pressed on together on April 6. According to Hensen’s account they overshot the Pole and had to double back where they found Hensen’s boot print at the site. He was given the honor of erecting the U.S. Flag. On return they learned of Cook’s claim. Investigations later largely refuted Cook’s claim, but also raised doubts about whether Henesen and Peary had reached the actual Pole. Most historians now believe that they essentially did, allowing for some possible variation due to navigation errors. They certainly were very nearby. Peary was acclaimed a national hero. Hensen was at first largely ignored. He wrote his own account of the journey in his 1912 book A Negro Explorer at the North Pole, but it did not attract much attention outside of the Black community. He labored for thirty years in obscurity as a clerk in the New York Customs House. In 1944, largely to arouse Black patriotism during World War II, Congress finally awarded him a duplicate of the gold medal that they had presented to Peary years before. Both Peary and Hensen fathered Inuit children during their long Arctic stays. Hensen never met his only son Anauakaq, but kept in contact with him and his mother sending some support when he could. Hensen died in the Bronx at the age of 88 in 1955. Just before his son died in 1987 he journeyed to the U.S. with Peary’s son and laid a wreath on his father’s grave.