Robert Peary essays

Robert Peary essays Robert E. Peary was an explorer who lived between 1856 and 1920. He explored the North Pole after two failed attempts. He was also a native of Cresson, Pennsylvania and was born on May 6, 1856. Peary was educated at Bowdoin College, which is located in Brunswick, Maine, than served in the U.S. Navy as a civil engineer for several years in Before Peary made it to the North Pole, he made a few other discoveries. Such as the discovery in 1891 when he proved that Greenland was an Island, not a continent. This particular discovery came into effect from a prior trip to Greenland in 1886, which interested him in under-taking further expeditions to explore Arctic Regions. While on these expeditions he discovered and named Independence Bay on the north east coast of Greenland on July 4, 1892. During the years 1893 and 1897 he made many more important scientific discoveries that he published in a book in 1898 called Northward over the Great Ice. Pearys first attempt to discover the North Pole was in 1898. This trip, however, wasnt successful and he returned in 1902 after never reaching the pole. Three years later in 1905 Peary tried again to reach the North Pole. This time he sailed in the Roosevelt, which is a ship, designed to move among floes (masses of moving ice). Once they reached the north coast of Ellesmere Island, Perry and his men got off the ship and continued northward on sledges over the ice fields of the Arctic Ocean. This was his closest attempt to reaching the North Pole. In 1907 he published another book, Nearest the Pole, which told of his journey. In 1908 he began his third attempt to reach the pole. On April 6, 1909, accompanied by two Eskimos, he finally reached the pole. While there he was able to take soundings to prove that the sea, near the North Pole, isnt as shallow as what scientists believed. Just a week before Pearys return from his greatest discovery, an Americ ...