Matthew Henson:
Explorer
1866-1955

    "Great ideals are the glory of man alone....only man can get a vision and an inspiration that will lift him above the level of himself and send him forth against all opposition...to do and to dare and to accomplish wonderful and great things for the world and for humanity."

        Those words are from the lecture notes of Matthew Henson, a man who started life near the bottom of society and ended at the very top of the world as the first person ever to reach the North Pole.    

        Born in Charles County, Maryland, Matthew Alexander Henson lost his mother when he was only two years old. Six years later, his father died. For a while,
Matthew attended school in Washington, D.C., where he lived with an uncle. But around the age of twelve, he ran away to Baltimore and signed on a cabin boy on the merchant ship Katie Hinds. The ship's commander, Captain Childs, to a liking to the boy, and he spent the next six years sailing around the world with him. By the time Henson was eighteen, he had traveled across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the China and Baltic seas, and through the straits of Magellan at the tip of South America.

        Returning to Washington, D.C., Matthew Henson got a job in a clothing store as a clerk. One day in 1887, a naval officer, Robert E. Peary, entered the store. He said he was planning an expedition to explore building a canal through Nicaragua that would link the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

        Impressed with Matthew Henson, Peary hired him. His seagoing experience and his ability to chart a path through jungle terrain made him a valuable associate. The Nicaragua expedition marked the beginning of an association between two men that would last for more than twenty years.

        Robert Peary wanted to be the first man to reach the North Pole. It was a dream Matthew Henson soon came to share. He learned to speak Eskimo [Eskimo = the Inuit language] and became skilled in making sledges [ sledges = sleds] and other equipment needed in the regions of the far north. Together, he and Peary made seven trips to the Arctic. Six times, ice, storms, and sub-zero temperatures forced them to turn back.

        In 1908 they set out on their final expedition. Perry was accompanied by several other assistants and Eskimo guides. But it was Matthew Henson, an African American, who was assigned to lead the first dog sled. "He is a better dog driver," said Peary, "and I can handle a sledge better than any man living except some of the best Eskimo hunters. I couldn't get along without him."

        Six dog teams left Crane City, Greenland, at the edge of the Artic Circle, established camps, and left supplies. One by one, they returned to Cape Columbia on Canada's Ellesmere Island, where they reunited for the final trek of their 478-mile journey to the North Pole.

        Often travel was unbearable. Temperatures dropped as low as 60 below zero. According to Henson, "We [traveled] eighteen to twenty hours out of every twenty-four....Forced marches all the time [because] we couldn't carry food for more than fifty days, fifty-five at a pinch."

        Henson moved out in front, his dog team covering thirty-five miles on the first day. Peary followed, not moving as quickly because he had several toes amputated nine years earlier because of frostbite.

        On the morning of April 6, 1909. Matthew Henson reached 90 degrees north latitude. With the help of two Eskimo assistants, he built an igloo and waited for Commander Peary to arrive and confirm his calculations. After Peary arrived, the crew spent about thirty hours making observations and taking soundings
[ taking soundings = measuring the ocean's depth] before planting an American flag and packing up their gear for the long, freezing trip home.

        When Henson returned from the expedition, he was so thin his wife didn't even recognize him. Few people were will to recognize his achievements, either. Not until thirty-six years later was he awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Six years after Matthew's death in 1955, the State House of Annapolis, Maryland, finally had a commemorative plaque designed , honoring him as co-discoverer of the North Pole.