Читать книгу Beyond Adventure - Roy Chapman Andrews - Страница 21

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It was not until the spring of 1902 that he was able to make a serious assault on the Pole. Bad weather, and a long delay because of open water at what he called the "Big Lead" or "Grand Canal," prevented him from advancing farther than 84° 17' 27" N. over the sea ice. Nevertheless, this was a "fartherest north" for the Western Hemisphere.

On August 5th, the Windward arrived, with Mrs. Peary and Marie on board, to bring him home. He had spent four years in the Arctic. At this time, Dr. Fridtjof Nansen wrote of him: "I do not know what I admire most with Peary—the indefatigable energy with which he works for his goal, year after year, and in the teeth of the most formidable odds, or the never failing readiness with which he overcomes the greatest and most unexpected difficulties.

"By his long labors in the far north Commander Peary has been able to finally settle the northern extension of Greenland and thus has probably defined and mapped the most northern land of the earth. This was one of the greatest geographical problems of the North Polar region."

And yet Peary felt that he had failed. The question was, could any man succeed in reaching the Pole over the shifting ice? The British had long ago arrived at the conclusion that it was impossible. But Peary would not admit impossibility. He underwent an operation in Philadelphia on his feet. Dr. W. W. Keen removed the useless little toes, which projected beyond the stumps of the others; then he slit the skin at the front of the feet, drew forward the tissue from underneath and behind the toes to make a cushion for the stumps. With these makeshift feet, Peary carried on all his remaining exploration.

His previous experience convinced him that it was essential to have a ship which could force its way through the ice of the narrow Kennedy and Robeson Channels into the Arctic Ocean itself. Thus he could make his dash for the Pole from the nearest point of land, without the handicap of starting from a base far to the south. If he had had such a vessel, his last sledge journey would, in distance, have carried him far beyond the Pole.

But no such ship existed. Nansen's Fram was so built that ice pressure would squeeze the hull above the level of compression. But the Fram's engines were nowhere near strong enough to break the ice. She could drift, but not force her way through the pack. He needed $100,000; Morris K. Jesup and Thomas H. Hubbard, another supporter, pledged $50,000 each if the Peary Arctic Club could raise another $50,000. This he was finally able to do, and Judge Darling, assistant secretary of the navy, agreed that the expedition would be sponsored by the navy, but without any financial support. It was the only recognition of his work the navy had given him ungrudgingly.

Peary himself designed the ship. The Fram was a sailing vessel with auxiliary power; Peary's craft was to be a steamer with auxiliary sails.

"When it came to finding a name," Peary wrote, "for the ship by whose aid I hoped to fight my way toward the most inaccessible spot on earth, the name of 'Roosevelt' seemed to be the one and inevitable name. It held up as an ideal . . . those very qualities of strength, insistence, persistence, and unvarying victory over all obstacles which made the twenty-sixth President of the United States so great."

The ship was launched March 23, 1905. She was 184 feet over-all, with a beam of 35½ feet and a draft load of 16 feet. Her sides were thirty inches thick, of strongest wood, heavily braced by struts, and steel-sheathed outside. She had a sharply raking stem that would rise on the ice at each blow. The detachable propeller blades and massive rudder could be drawn up when required.