Matthew Henson
Matthew (Mat) Alexander Henson (born August 8, 1866 in Charles County , Maryland , USA , † March 9, 1955 in New York , USA) was an American polar explorer .
Life
Henson traveled the world as a sailor at a young age, but as an African American he was denied a career at sea. At the age of 18, he returned to the east coast and entered the service of Lieutenant in the US Navy Robert Edwin Peary as a personal assistant . On an expedition in the jungle of Nicaragua , Henson proved to be extraordinarily capable, whereupon Peary offered him to accompany him on a polar expedition.
In 1891 he was a member of Peary's Greenland expedition; During this time he learned the Inuit language and became an expert on dog sleds, which were often underestimated on polar expeditions at that time . For the next 20 years, Henson was an integral part of every Peary's expedition; Particularly noteworthy is the one in 1905/1906 in which the men succeeded in advancing further north than any other person before them: They reached 87 ° 6 'north latitude and were thus only 280 km away from the North Pole .
After the following polar expedition in 1909, Peary made the highly controversial claim that he had reached the North Pole with Henson and four Inuit on April 6, 1909 (among other things, the expedition would have had to cover a section of 500 kilometers in six to seven days in which five times the speed of the remaining, occupied routes). For the last stage, Peary had chosen only men as companions who could not check his own position. In his expedition diary, of all things, the two pages for the last two days before he allegedly reached the pole are no longer filled in. The famous entry, which allegedly documents the pole at last , was written by him on a loose piece of paper, not in his diary.
Unlike Peary, however, Henson never achieved the worldwide fame he deserved due to his skin color. In 1912 he wrote his first book A Negro Explorer at the North Pole , followed in 1947 by his autobiography Dark Companion .
Henson died impoverished in New York on March 9, 1955.
Honors and memberships
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- In 1959 a plaque was placed at the Maryland State House for his services .
- In 1988, Henson's body was exhumed and buried at Peary's side in Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, DC .
- A US Navy survey ship, the USNS Henson , was named after him. The same goes for Mount Henson , a mountain in Antarctica.
- The National Geographic Society posthumously honored him in 2000 with their highest honor, the Hubbard Medal.
- Matthew Henson was a member of the Masonic League ( Celestial Lodge No. 3 in New York).
reception
The Pol expedition of Henson and Peary in 1909 provided the material for the play "Die Farbe des Pols", which Zeha Schröder wrote in 2003 for the independent theater group "Freuynde und Gäsdte". The German comic author Simon Schwartz processed the story of Matthew Henson in the graphic novel Packeis , published in 2012 , which was awarded the Max and Moritz Prize .
Works
- A Negro Explorer at the North Pole (1912)
- Dark Companion (1947)
literature
- S. Allen Counter: "North Pole Legacy: Black, White and Eskimo" , University Massachusetts Press 1991, ISBN 0870237365
- Floyd Miller, "The biography of Matthew A. Henson," Dutton & Co. 1963
Movie
Web links
- Verne Robinson: Matthew A. Henson (matthewhenson.com)
- Anna Brendle: Profile: African-American North Pole Explorer Matthew Henson - National Geographic , 2003
Individual evidence
- ↑ Matthew Henson Freemason on the homepage of the Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon. Under the heading "Explores" (accessed on May 11, 2018)
- ↑ "Freuynde und Gaesdte": "The color of the pole" (with the text of the play as a PDF document) ( Memento of the original from March 31, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Weblog ( Memento of the original from May 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. by Simon Schwartz about pack ice
- ^ A Negro Explorer at the North Pole as a digitized version in the Internet Archive
- ^ The biography of Matthew A. Henson as digitized version in the Internet Archive
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Henson, Matthew |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Henson, Matthew Alexander (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American polar explorer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 8, 1866 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Charles County |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 9, 1955 |
| Place of death | New York City |