In 1906, explorer Robert E. Peary set out to reach the North Pole. He was unsuccessful, but in the book he wrote upon returning to civilization, he said he’d seen a distant land while looking north from the northern most place in Canada. He named it “Crocker Land,” after George Crocker, the banker who funded his expedition.
In 1909, both Peary and Frederick Cook claimed to have been the first person to set foot on the North Pole. Cook said he’d gotten there without crossing Crocker Land, leading supporters of Peary to conclude he must be lying. Rather than tell his supporters that he’d invented Crocker Land as a try at cadging more money from his banker friend, Peary stayed silent, and Donald Baxter MacMillan organized an expedition to the arctic with the goal of mapping Crocker Land and proving Cook a liar. “I am certain that strange animals will be found there,” MacMillan wrote at the time,”and I hope to discover a new race of men.”
MacMillan’s party set up a base in Northwest Greenland, and in March, 1913, MacMillan and his party set off on a 1,200-mile journey across the Tundra to Crocker Land. The arduous journey sapped the resolve of the explorers, and everyone turned around and went home except Macmillan, Navy Ensign Fitzhugh Green, and their two Inuit guides, Piugaattoq and Ittukusuk. This ragtag crew reached the edge of the Arctic Ocean on April 11.
They set off across the treacherous frozen ocean in search of Crocker Land, and on April 21, Macmillan saw a huge island in the distance! Even though Piugaattoq said it was a mirage, the crew pushed further North. After five days traversing the rapidly melting ice sheet, Mcmillian realized his guide had been right, and they turned around and made it back to solid land right before the sea ice broke.
Later in the expedition, Green murdered Piugaattoq after an argument over directions. Macmillan and the rest of the Americans covered up the crime, telling the Intuit that Piugaattoq died in an avalanche. Stranded by the weather, the expedition members didn’t all make it home until 1917.
Despite their claims, it seems that neither Cook nor Peary actually reached the North Pole. The first verified trip to the pole was Roald Amundsen’s expedition in 1926.
