Robert Piri Biography briefly

Father died of pneumonia, when Robert was not yet three years old, his mother after that took her son to relatives in Maine. The family was wealthy: Charles Piri left the widow of the inheritance of $ 12 - a significant amount at that time. Having completed secondary education, Bert was his family nickname won the brown scholarship for training at Bowdin College. In the year, he graduated from the college second in the release and moved with his mother to Freiberg, where he got a job as a surveyor.

After a year and a half of work, he resigned as a cartographer, in the year. In search of a more interesting work, Piri passed the US Navy’s service, was enrolled in the corps of civilian engineers with the rank of lieutenant and quickly established himself. In the year, he was first sent to Nicaragua for reconnaissance of the route of the alleged transocean channel as deputy chief engineer.

Returning from Nicaragua, he bought a book about the expedition of Ilyisha Kane in the Bukinistic store, after which new motives appeared in his diary and letters to his mother: he wrote that he would like to make his name known not only in his native places, but also everywhere. Polar studies seemed to him a suitable object of application of forces, in the diary the hints of plan to conquer the North Pole first appeared.

At the end of February, a huge caravan leaves Cape Colombia: 19 punch, dogs, 24 people. The world knew nothing about the fate of Piri until the fall of the year. Only on September 7, a victorious telegram came to Europe: “Stars and stripes were driven into the pole! On the day when the Telegram of Piri reached Europe, in Copenhagen, they already honored the conqueror of the North Pole in Kopengagen that he had reached the top of the planet on April 21 of the year.

It seemed that Cook and Piri would be completely shared by the honor and glory of the pioneers. But Piri could not come to terms with the same, with the same, with the same. That he is “only the second”. He was not at the pole neither on April 21, nor at any other time on the side of Piri stood an Arctic club created by him himself in the year and bore his name.

The club included wealthy and very influential people: the president of the American natural -historical museum, the president of the largest bank in America, the railway tycoon, the owner of the newspaper and many others. For ten years, they subsidized all Robert Piri expeditions. You can say they bet on it. His success was simultaneously their success, his laurels partly and their laurels.

But what is ephemeral laurels! His success promised them very real dividends. In the year, after long debate, the lower house of the US Congress adopted a resolution that the president soon signed. Piri was awarded the title of Rear Admiral and on behalf of Congress was declared gratitude "for his Arctic studies, which ended with the achievement of the North Pole." However, exhausting evidence of the achievement of the pole could not imagine either Cook or Piri.

Many participants in the Piri expedition were experienced navigators, but Piri did not take one of them to the pole.

Piri always sought that not a single “white” could claim his glory. On the way to the pole, he was accompanied by four Eskimos and a mulatto Meta Henson. Robert Piri’s records have called and raise many questions. Firstly, it was found that the "pole" photographs presented by Piri as evidence of his victory were not made at the pole. Secondly, the speed of its movement on drifting ice cannot but be surprised.

Piri in a year was able to reach a speed of 25.9 kilometers per day, Cook on his way to the pole took an average of 27.6 kilometers per day, Captain Bartlett, lightly returning to Cape Columbia, 28.9 kilometers. A simple calculation shows that in order to have time in eighteen days to reach the pole and return to Cape Colombia, Piri had to go in a year at 50! This speed seems completely incredible.

In the spring of the year, Piri was the last time in public-in the National Geographical Society, when he handed the gold medal of Hubbard Icelando-Canadia Willmur Stefanson. Friendship connected them with Piri, especially after Stefanson participated in the Cook campaign and proved that he could not reach the pole. On the celebration of Stefanson it was clear that Piri was seriously ill.

At the end of the year, the admiral began to be treated with blood transfusion, which then came into fashion, but it was already clear that relief would become only temporary. The Piri name is the peninsula in Greenland and the Strait in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, separating the island of Mien from the island of Ellef Ringness, as well as the meter mountain in Antarctica.