For a time, D.C. seemed the red-hot epicenter of arctic exploration
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Version 0 of 1. The weekend blizzard transformed Washington into a harsh, frozen wasteland with endless vistas of snow and ice. Robert Peary would have felt right at home. Peary was, of course, the famed Arctic explorer who, when he wasn’t gallivanting around, looking for the North Pole, lived in Washington. He moved here after college to work at the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey before joining the Navy. His wife, Josephine Diebitsch, worked at the Smithsonian as a linguist. His assistant, Matthew Hensen, was from Charles County, Md. Peary may have been the most famous American to be gripped by polar fever, but he was hardly alone. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it seemed as though you couldn’t swing a dead arctic fox without hitting some ruddy-skinned adventurer smelling of pemmican and seal blubber. This was especially true in Washington. The capital’s hotels were full of polar explorers who had traveled here to give lectures or beg money from the government or from private sources such as the National Geographic Society. In 1901, a Washington Post reporter sat down for lunch at the Shoreham Hotel with Evelyn B. Baldwin, who was planning to sail north soon from Franz Josef Land in the Arctic Ocean in search of the pole. “Just try a pinch of this,” Baldwin said as he proffered the contents of a small envelope holding short lengths of what looked like white string. “Spaghetti?” the reporter asked. “Oh, no,” the explorer responded. “It is desiccated potatoes, with which I am experimenting. . . . These are some belated samples that were sent me. I think the desiccated potatoes will make very valuable food in the arctic regions, and shall carry a lot of them with me.” The Post writer found them “not disagreeable to taste.” A year later, The Post interviewed Rear Adm. George W. Melville, a survivor of the ill-fated Jeannette polar expedition of 1879. What were Baldwin’s odds? Melville said he had no idea, remarking that the primary challenge of any polar expedition was keeping itself supplied along the way. The vast ice sheet covering the pole was in constant motion, Melville said, “and a cache of provisions left on the ice would, in a week’s time, be drifted a hundred miles distant from the point where the explorer left it.” Something to keep in mind if your street has yet to be plowed. The National Geographic sponsored most of the talks, by explorers who are still relatively familiar names (Roald Amundsen) and those who aren’t (Anthony Fiala, Donald B. MacMillan, Carsten Egeberg Borchgrevink). In 1899, society members filled First Congregational Church of Washington to hear Walter Wellman describe his upcoming expedition. Wellman was a journalist who wrote up his exploits for the Chicago Herald. He explained that he would be looking for S.A. Andrée, the Swedish explorer who had gone missing in 1897 trying to pilot a balloon over the North Pole. (Arctic explorers spent much of their time searching for previous arctic explorers, no doubt with the expectation that someone might soon be searching for them.) At the time, Peary was on one of his expeditions, though Wellman didn’t rate his chances very highly. After all, Peary had lost seven toes to frostbite on a previous expedition, “and though he is known to be a resolute man, it is questioned by all men of arctic experience if it is possible for him, thus handicapped, to endure the tortures of a severe sledging campaign.” There was a lot of trash talk in the polar field. In February 1896, Prof. Henry A. Hazen of the U.S. Weather Bureau gave a lecture at Western Presbyterian Church in the District, titled “Trip to the North Pole.” Hazen hadn’t been there himself — no one had yet — but he sketched the history of polar exploration and pointed out a member of the audience: Gen. Adolphus Greely. Fifteen years earlier, Greely had led 25 men to the arctic. Only seven returned. There were rumors of cannibalism. A few months after Hazen’s lecture, Greely addressed the National Geographic Society. He focused on the recent voyage of Fritdjof Nansen, a “hardy Norwegian.” Two years later, in 1898, it was Nansen’s turn to lecture in Washington. At the Convention Hall, he gave a talk titled “First Crossing of Greenland and Eskimo Life.” A reporter from The Post noted: “He spoke to a large audience, who were attentive, although the hall was very chilly and many persons had to leave on this account before the lecture was finished.” You have to wonder if Nansen had ordered the temperature turned down to give the audience a taste of life in the Arctic Circle. In the afternoon, Nansen lectured at the Grand Opera House, 15th and E streets NW. The audience was mesmerized. The Post reported: “His word pictures of the long days and nights in the arctic circle, the beauty of the sky and heavenly bodies, and the phenomenon of the aurora borealis, are wonderfully graphic and pleasing, carrying his hearers with him, until one can almost imagine himself in the silent north, and see the fiery serpent of the northern lights, with its flashing colors of ruby, gold, and silver, until it dies out and leaves the arctic moon in its full glory shining upon the snowy surface and transforming the scene into a picture from dreamland.” Close your eyes and imagine that as you scrape the ice off your windshield. Twitter: @johnkelly For previous columns, visit washingtonpost.com/johnkelly. |