From Hero to Humbug

On October 10, as part of the Archives Week Fair at the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C., a panel discussion was held on the topic of local polar records collections in the Washington metropolitan area. The speakers included Ellen Alers, of the Smithsonian Institution, who discussed the varied collections related to the polar regions to be found in the Institution’s records. Alan Walker from the National Archives and Record Administration, covered highlights of the documents held at the Archives II facility in College Park, Md, especially the papers of Robert E. Peary, who claimed to have reached the North Pole in 1909. Robert M. Bryce, author of Cook and Peary, the Polar Controversy, Resolved, spoke on how he was led to make major documentary discoveries in other collections, including the original diary kept by Frederick Cook on his attempt to reach the North Pole in 1908, through clues found in Cook’s papers at the Library of Congress. Mr. Bryce also showed the film, “The Truth about the North Pole,” made by Cook and shown in Vaudeville performances in 1912, the existence of which he uncovered during research for his book at the National Archives.