Harry Whitney (December 1, 1873 – May 20, 1936) was an American sportsman, adventurer, and author. He traveled to northern Greenland with Robert Peary in 1908, staying over the winter with the Inughuit at Etah and Annoatok. In the spring of 1909 Whitney found himself at the center of the controversy between Frederick Cook and Peary over who had reached the North Pole first. A year after his return, he published a book on the trip. [1] He is sometimes confused with his contemporary Harry Payne Whitney, who was no relation. [2]
Harry Whitney was born on December 1, 1873 [3] in New Haven, Connecticut, to a wealthy family. His given name was "Henry", but he was known professionally as "Harry Whitney" throughout his adult life. His great-grandfather was Stephen Whitney, one of the first millionaires in New York City. His mother was Margaret Lawrence Johnson, a daughter of Bradish Johnson (1811–1892) who had owned a sugar plantation in Louisiana, and distillery and real estate in New York. [4] He attended the Hopkins Grammar School in New Haven and St. Paul's School in Garden City, Long Island.
Whitney worked briefly at Wallace & Sons, a wire manufacturing company in Ansonia, Connecticut, in 1901 and 1902. In 1903 he went by sailing vessel to Australia. There he spent two years learning about the sheep business and mining. Whitney returned to the United States in 1905, where he spent some time ranching in the West. He eventually became known as a big game hunter, or "sportsman". [3]
In July 1908, when Whitney was 34 years old, he and two "sportsman" friends found berths on the Roosevelt and the Erik, the ships carrying Peary's expedition north for his final attempt to reach the Pole. Whitney and his friends hoped to hunt musk ox, polar bears, and other arctic game and then return on the ship. However, upon reaching Etah, Greenland, they learned that musk ox could only be hunted in the late winter. Whitney decided to overwinter in a small shack made from packing materials on the shore. His friends returned to New York aboard the Erik. The Roosevelt continued on to Peary's base camp at Cape Sheridan, Ellesmere Island. [1] : 42
With the help of the local Greenlandic Inuit, Whitney was able to hunt walrus, narwhales, polar bear, and other game. In the spring, the native people brought him to Ellesmere Island to hunt musk ox. Whitney attempted to keep a musk ox calf alive to bring back to the Philadelphia Zoo, but the calf did not survive. [1] : 304–325
On April 18, 1909, Whitney met Frederick Cook and his two Inuit companions on the ice on Smith Sound. Cook claimed that the previous year the three men had been to the North Geographic Pole, and then had overwintered on Ellesmere Island. Cook left some items with Whitney and headed to southern Greenland to report his triumph. When Peary came south on the Roosevelt later that summer, he refused to allow Whitney to bring Cook's belongings on his ship. Cook would later claim that proof of his discovery had been among the papers Peary refused to embark. [5] When Whitney reached St. John's, Newfoundland in September, he found himself at the center of the rival claims of Cook and Peary. He declined to take sides in the controversy. [6] The following year Whitney published his book Hunting With the Eskimos, [1] illustrated with his own photographs and reproductions of pencil drawings done by the Inuit at Etah.
In 1910, Whitney went back to Greenland with his friend Paul Rainey. On their return, they presented the Bronx Zoo with two live polar bears. [7] In 1916, Whitney married Mrs. Eunice Chesebro Kenison, with Captain Bob Bartlett serving as an usher. [8] When the United States entered World War I, Whitney served as a captain in the Ordnance Section of the United States Army. After the war he attended Cornell, where he studied agriculture. He continued to hunt in Alaska, the Rocky Mountains, and the Arctic, providing skins and specimens to the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences and the Philadelphia Zoo as well as the Bronx Zoo. The Whitneys lived in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, at the time of his death. He died at a hospital in Montreal on May 20, 1936. [9]
Robert Edwin Peary Sr. was an American explorer and officer in the United States Navy who made several expeditions to the Arctic in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is best known for, in April 1909, leading an expedition that claimed to be the first to have reached the geographic North Pole.
Ellesmere Island is Canada's northernmost and third largest island, and the tenth largest in the world. It comprises an area of 196,236 km2 (75,767 sq mi), slightly smaller than Great Britain, and the total length of the island is 830 km (520 mi).
The muskox, also spelled musk ox and musk-ox, plural muskoxen or musk oxen, is a hoofed mammal of the family Bovidae. Native to the Arctic, it is noted for its thick coat and for the strong odor emitted by males during the seasonal rut, from which its name derives. This musky odor has the effect of attracting females during mating season. Its Inuktitut name "umingmak" translates to "the bearded one".
Matthew Alexander Henson was an African American explorer who accompanied Robert Peary on seven voyages to the Arctic over a period of nearly 23 years. They spent a total of 18 years on expeditions together. He is best known for his participation in the 1908–1909 expedition that claimed to have reached the geographic North Pole on April 6, 1909. Henson said he was the first of their party to reach the North Pole.
Frederick Albert Cook was an American explorer, physician, and ethnographer who is most known for allegedly being the first to reach the North Pole on April 21, 1908. A competing claim was made a year later by Robert Peary, though both men's accounts have since been fiercly disputed; in December 1909, after reviewing Cook's limited records, a commission of the University of Copenhagen ruled his claim unproven. Nonetheless, in 1911, Cook published a memoir of the expedition in which he maintained the veracity of his assertions. In addition, he also claimed to have been the first person to reach the summit of Denali, the highest mountain in North America, a claim which has since been similarly discredited. Though he may not have achieved either Denali or the North Pole, his was the first and only expedition where a United States national discovered an Arctic island, Meighen Island.
The culture of Greenland has much in common with Greenlandic Inuit tradition, as the majority of people are descended from Inuit. Many people still go ice fishing and there are annual dog-sled races in which everyone with a team participates.
Peary Land is a peninsula in northern Greenland, extending into the Arctic Ocean. It reaches from Victoria Fjord in the west to Independence Fjord in the south and southeast, and to the Arctic Ocean in the north, with Cape Morris Jesup, the northernmost point of Greenland's mainland, and Cape Bridgman in the northeast.
Sir Walter William Herbert was a British polar explorer, writer and artist. In 1969 he became the first man fully recognized for walking to the North Pole, on the 60th anniversary of Robert Peary's disputed expedition. He was described by Sir Ranulph Fiennes as "the greatest polar explorer of our time".
Cape Columbia is the northernmost point of land of Canada, located on Ellesmere Island in the Qikiqtaaluk Region of Nunavut. It marks the westernmost coastal point of Lincoln Sea in the Arctic Ocean. It is the world's northernmost point of land outside Greenland. The distance to the North Pole is 769 km (478 mi).
The Inughuit, or the Smith Sound Inuit, historically Arctic Highlanders or Polar Eskimos, are Greenlandic Inuit. They are the northernmost group of Inuit and the northernmost people in North America, living in Greenland. Inughuit make up about 1% of the population of Greenland.
Etah is an abandoned settlement in the Avannaata municipality in northern Greenland. It was a starting point of discovery expeditions to the North Pole and the landing site of the last migration of the Inuit from the Canadian Arctic.
Reindeer hunting in Greenland is of great importance to the Greenlandic Inuit and sports hunters, both residents and tourists. Reindeer (caribou) are an important source of meat, and harvesting them has always played an important role in the history, culture, and traditions of the Greenlandic Inuit. Controlled hunting is important for the welfare of reindeer, the quality of life for Inuit, both as food, and part of the their culture and Greenlandic culture in general, and the preservation of tundra grazing areas. Therefore, scientific research is regularly performed to determine the quotas needed to maintain a proper ecological balance.
Independence I was a culture of Paleo-Eskimos who lived in northern Greenland and the Canadian Arctic between 2400 and 1900 BC. There has been much debate among scholars on when Independence I culture disappeared, and, therefore, there is a margin of uncertainty with the dates.
The MacGregor Arctic Expedition was a privately funded expedition which set out to reoccupy Fort Conger, Ellesmere Island, Canada, a site within flying distance of the North Pole. The expedition, which took place from July 1, 1937, to October 3, 1938, had four main objectives: To collect weather data; to make a magnetic survey; to photograph the aurora borealis and study its effects upon radio transmission; and to explore the area northwest of Ellesmere Island, in order to clear up the questions about Crocker Land, which Robert Peary placed on the map more than 30 years earlier.
The Crocker Land Expedition took place in 1913. Its purpose was to investigate the existence of Crocker Land, a huge island supposedly sighted by the explorer Robert Peary from the top of Cape Colgate in 1906. It is now believed that Peary fraudulently invented the island.
Annoatok or Anoritooq, located at 78°33′N72°30′W, was a small hunting station in Greenland on Smith Sound about 24 km (15 mi) north of Etah. It is now abandoned.
Captain George Comer was considered the most famous American whaling captain of Hudson Bay, and the world's foremost authority on Hudson Bay Inuit in the early 20th century.
Greenlandic cuisine is traditionally based on meat from marine mammals, birds, and fish, and normally contains high levels of protein. Since colonization and the arrival of international trade, the cuisine has been increasingly influenced by Danish, British, American and Canadian cuisine. During the summer when the weather is milder, meals are often eaten outdoors.
The Peary–MacMillan Arctic Museum is a museum located in Hubbard Hall at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. Named after Arctic explorers and Bowdoin College graduates Robert E. Peary and Donald B. MacMillan, it is the only museum in the lower 48 states of the United States dedicated completely to Arctic Studies.