Who was the first person to stand at the North Pole?

There are many theories, but nobody knows for sure. It is the greatest mystery in the history of polar exploration. There are many people who believe that it was the American, Commander Robert E. Peary, who claimed to have reached the North Pole on April 6 1909. Along with the African-American Matthew Henson, four Inuit men and 40 dogs, Peary said that he reached the Pole after a journey of 413 nautical miles across the most hostile environment on the planet.

Peary had sacrificed 23 years of his life during various attempts to achieve his ultimate ambition and lost eight of his toes in the process. And then at the ripe old ago of 52, he announced that he had reached his goal in just 37 days.

Above : Peary’s sled teams work their way north

Expecting to be hailed a national hero back home, Peary returned to New York to find that most of America had only 5 days previously heard the news that his great rival Dr Frederick Cook had beaten him to the Pole on a separate expedition. Although Cook was eventually proven to be a fraud (he also faked the first ascent of Mt McKinley in Alaska before being imprisoned for fraudulent business activities), the huge public scepticism that arose during the fierce Peary-Cook controversy has never really died down.

Ever since Peary’s death in 1920, polar historians and modern-day explorers have questioned the legitimacy of his claim. The North Pole was left alone for decades until 1969, when the legendary British explorer Sir Wally Herbert arrived at the Pole exactly 60 years to the day after Peary.

In 1985 Herbert was given unique access to Peary’s expedition journal by the National Geographical Society, the custodians of the Peary archives, and by the Peary family. He spent three painstaking years collecting evidence that they hoped would prove once and for all that his 1909 expedition was successful. The outcome was not what they expected.

Sir Wally published his findings in his 1988 book The Noose of Laurels in which he poured cold water on Peary’s claims. Herbert stated that because of his remarkable travel speeds (most modern expeditions take two months to reach the Pole), it would have been impossible for Peary to have reached the North Pole in the 37 days he claimed, especially considering that a huge body of open water, “as wide as the Hudson River”, delayed him for six days early in the journey.

He also argued that Peary’s sprint-finish to the Pole, during which he reportedly covered an astonishing 30 miles a day over the expedition's final five days, was surely exaggerated. Herbert wrote “No explorer, before or since, has claimed to have covered these sorts of distances across the polar pack ice over the same number of consecutive days, and even the most successful expeditions in the last ten years have taken longer to reach the North Pole than Peary claimed it took him to reach that elusive spot and return to his point of departure.”

Peary’s unconventional navigation techniques, discrepancies in his journal, lack of reliable witnesses and strange behaviour at the end of his journey only compounded the argument.

The debate continues to grip the popular imagination today, particularly in the US, where Peary is as much of a household name as Scott and Shackleton are in the UK. Millions of words have been written on both sides of the argument, all of which have proved inconclusive.

The questions will continue to be asked until somebody tries to recreate Peary’s final expedition as closely as possible and show that the travel speeds he claimed were really possible.

That is what the Barclays Capital Ultimate North team intends to do.

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