432 



POLAR PROBLEMS 



new to me. At that time the Windward was the flagship. She, too, 

 was formerly a Scotch whaler used by Jackson in Franz Josef Land 

 on the Jackson-Harmsworth expedition. 



Ice Navigating with Peary 



In 1896 Peary was in London. He was hoping to go north the 

 following summer, to Sherard Osborn Fiord, which was to be his base. 

 This is on the Greenland side, about one hundred miles northeast 

 of Robeson Channel. While he was in London the Scotch whaler 

 Terra Nova, only about ten years old, with all her sailing and whaling 

 gear was for sale in Dundee for $35,000. Here was his chance. A bar- 

 gain indeed, for her whaling and sealing gear was worth at least half 

 that money. It was a rare opportunity, but before help came from the 

 United States a Liverpool firm bought her. They used her for sealing, 

 and the first spring she went sealing for them she paid for herself. 

 The Fiala-Ziegler Relief Expedition later bought her for $100,000, 

 and the people who sold her to Fiala-Ziegler got her back for half 

 that money. She afterwards went south to the Antarctic, first as a 

 relief ship for Scott and later as his own ship on the journey on which 

 he reached the south pole and lost his life. Had Peary secured the 

 Terra Nova the north pole would have been his years before April 

 6, 1909 — and, there is no doubt, the south pole as well, for at his time 

 of Hfe he wouldn't have rested with the discovery of the north pole. 

 In the Terra Nova he would have had a very fine ice fighter, one that 

 would have got him to Cape Sheridan, Grant Land. An3avay this 

 prize slipped from his hands, and, while he was wondering what was to 

 be his next move. Sir Alfred Harmsworth, afterwards Lord Northcliffe, 

 met him. Northcliffe had heard the Terra Nova story. So he said: 

 "Peary, the Windward is down in the London docks. You can have 

 her, and I will give orders to have her provisioned and coaled and 

 delivered to you in New York Harbor." That's all that was said. 

 There were no "ifs" and "ands" or newspaper rights to the story, etc. 

 The auxiliary ship that summer was the Hope, also a Dundee whaler. 

 Father was then captain of her at the seal fishery. I was sealing in 

 her as mate with father for three seasons. She was more like a gentle- 

 man's yacht — I mean her accommodations and apartments. Conan 

 Doyle was surgeon on her when she was whaling. He afterwards told 



known that in 1873 Captain Tyson was ice pilot on tiie Polaris when that ship was crushed in the 

 ice only a few miles from where the Proteus went down. This was on October 12, 1873. The following 

 April Captain Tyson and sixteen or seventeen of his party were picked up off Gready Island, Labrador 

 (53° N.), by my uncle, who was captain of the sealer Tigress. The Tigress and several sealers from 

 Newfoundland were following the old seals, as they worked north. This of course shows that the 

 ice that comes from the Polar Basin southward through Robeson Channel, Kennedy Channel, Kane 

 Basin, and Smith Sound works south with the northerly winds of winter and the swift south-flowing 

 Arctic current through Baffin Bay and Davis Straits across the entrance to Hudson Strait off the 

 Labrador coast and thence south over the Banks to find its destiny in the warm waters of the Gulf 

 Stream. The Tyson party camped on the ice and remained on it until they were picked up. 



