North Pole Flag

For those of us who look forward to winter and the rush of Arctic air, this year has been an exciting one in Maine, not because of the snowfall but because of the Peary Centennial and International Polar Year Commemorations. The Portland Museum of Art has been hosting its Coldest Crucible exhibit, curated by Michael Robinson (whose blog is stunning, by the way). Also, the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum at Bowdoin College hosted several days of events to commemorate one hundred years since April 6, 1909 when Robert Peary claimed to have reached the North Pole. An attentive audience listened as a few Bowdoin students delivered their first conference papers.

There are two artifacts on loan to the Arctic Museum that are worth the drive to Brunswick. One is the enormously controversial page – an inserted page – from the diary Peary kept on his 1909 dogsled trek to the Pole. Loaned by the National Archives, this page sports the entry “The Pole At Last!” I confess that the other artifact counts as my favorite – an American flag loaned by the National Geographic Society. I delivered a talk at the Bowdoin symposium entitled “Mother of the Snowbaby, Author of the Flag: Josephine Peary in the Arctic.” Robert Peary’s wife, Josephine, sewed this flag as a memento for her husband who was departing on one of his many expeditions. We know from many media accounts, correspondence, published articles, and family oral history that Peary carried this flag for the next decade on his quest for the Pole, cutting swatches out of the flag and caching the pieces each time he accomplished a “farthest north” geographic point. Peary cut a diagonal stripe from it when he reached the Pole. This tattered, stained, and patched flag awaits those who would like to see, in person, one of the most famous artifacts in Arctic exploration history.