"As a kid growing up in school, I never heard of Matthew Henson," said JR Harris, who is also African American and serves on the board of directors of the Explorers Club, which has inspired some of the world's greatest adventurers. "A lot of people assume that Matthew Henson was somebody I looked up to back in the day, and that's just not true. All we heard was that the North Pole was discovered by Robert Peary."
Henson's life reads like a Victorian adventure novel. Born to a family of sharecroppers, Henson worked odd jobs before he joined the crew of a merchant ship and sailed to distant continents. His first mentor was one Captain Childs, who trained the adolescent Henson for a life at sea and even taught him to read. When Childs died in 1883, Henson again struggled to make a living – until a fateful encounter with Robert Peary in 1887. They first crossed paths at a haberdashery in Washington DC where Henson worked. Commander Peary, an engineer with the US Navy, was impressed with the young stock boy and he invited Henson to serve as his assistant on a survey mission to Nicaragua later that year.
The pivotal stage of Henson's career unfolded over an 18-year period starting in 1891, when he accompanied Peary to the Arctic Circle in search of the North Pole. As one of the last unexplored corners on Earth, the quest to physically reach the world's northernmost point had lured explorers for centuries – many of whom had fantasised about standing on top of the planet. Yet, the Pole's harsh weather and ship-crushing ice floes had repelled all human visitors, even the Inuit.
Peary was the established leader of these expeditions, raising money and organising teams. Henson accompanied Peary on every journey but one, spending years of his life in the field. In Greenland, Henson bonded with the Inughuit, the northernmost people in North America and part of the Greenlandic Inuit peoples; he learned to build igloos and sledges, and he became fluent in the Inuktun language. He hunted polar animals with a rifle, a life-saving skill when provisions ran low. Most impressively, Henson learned the art of mushing.
"He is a better dog driver and handles a sledge better than any man living, except some of the best [Inuit] hunters," Peary wrote of Henson. "I couldn't get along without him."