the explorers journal the global adventure issue - The Explorers Club

An Illustration from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper shows the dead being brought aboard the Bear in 1884In 1881, Greely and a group of 25 men establisheda frigid outpost they named Fort Conger, just725 kilometers from the North Pole on EllesmereIsland. They conducted scientific research andexploration as part of the first International PolarYear. When in 1883, a ship failed to appear tobring them home, Greely and his men fell back ona pre-arranged plan to retreat 400 kilometers southalong the coast of Ellesmere to Cape Sabine onPim Island, where a year’s worth of supplies, if nota ship, was to await them.The retreat south proved to be an agonizing,two-month ordeal over treacherous, moving ice.When Greely and his men finally arrived at CapeSabine in mid-October, they were horrified to findnone of the promisedsupplies had been left.In preparation for thecoming winter, they constructeda stone house,which they christenedCamp Clay. The monthsthat followed broughta descent into a frozenhell of starvation, madness,and suicide. Allbut one man managedto survive the winter,but with the coming ofspring the men began torapidly die of scurvy orstarvation. Unbelievably,two relief expeditionsorganized by the U.Sgovernment to re-supplyand then retrieve the Greely expedition had failed,leaving the men’s fate unknown. When a navalrescue mission—instigated in part by a determinedHenrietta Greely and led by Commander WinfieldScott Schley—finally reached the men on June 22,1884, the few remaining members of Greely’sparty were within hours of death. Tragically, theworld would soon learn that only Greely and six ofhis men had managed to survive.When the expedition returned to the UnitedStates on August 4, 1884, the survivors andtheir rescuers received a tumultuous receptionin Portsmouth, New Hampshire, very unlike themodest ceremony on “O” Street 50 years later.Greely’s men had not only completed their missionand brought back all of their data—includingmeteorlogical measurements, observations oftides, magnetism, and gravity, as well as biologicaland ethnological studies—they had also claimed anew record for the furthest north, which had beenheld by the British for 300 years.Within days of the joyous welcome home, however,ugly stories began to appear in the newspapers,alleging that the expedition’s dead had beencannibalized to support the living. Despite the factthat the rescuers had found at least six corpsesstripped of their flesh, the survivors, to the end oftheir days, denied any involvement. Greely’s onlycomment was, “I know no law of God or man thatwas broken at Cape Sabine.”Sadly, the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition’s heroicchapter in Arcticexploration slipped intoobscurity, clouded byaccusations of governmentincompetence,needless loss of life,and the ultimate taboo.During Greely’s lifetime,other polar explorers,particularly Robert E.Peary, avoided himand years later in 1961,Wilhjalmur Stefanssonrecalled that a hushwould fall wheneverGreely entered theroom. The last livingperson to meet the general,Thaddeus Thorn,recalled him beingreferred to by the neighborhood boys as, “eat ‘emalive Greely.”So what is the real truth about this fascinating,accomplished man, who, among other things,served as the first president of The ExplorersClub? Should he be remembered as a hero, avictim, or a villain?These were the questions that came to mindwhen I read Greely’s account, Three Years ofArctic Service, in preparation for a 1988 campingtrip with my wife and eldest son on the shores ofLake Hazen—the largest lake north of the ArcticCircle—which was some 80 kilometers northwestof Fort Conger. This story of heroism and villainy,personality conflicts, and coincidences, as well aspolitical shenanigans, seemed more like a work ofthe explorers journal