From Hero to Humbug

Full details appear in the October issue of Polar Record.

The unexpected recovery of the original drafts of Cook’s telegrams sent from Lerwick, Shetland Islands containing the claim that Cook had reached the North Pole on April 21, 1908, appears in full in the October number of Polar Record, a peer-reviewed scholarly journal published by Cambridge University Press, which is now available on line at its website. The news of their discovery was reported on September 2 by the New York Times‘ science writer, John Tierney, in his blog TierneyLab.

Those few pieces of torn paper might be said to embody the entire Polar Controversy itself, because Cook’s claim was untrue, and had they not been written, there would never have been any controversy at all.

Cook’s second draft.

This is the second draft of Cook’s telegram he sent to the New York Herald, written on a standard UK telegram blank in the telegraph office in Lerwick on September 1, 1909.

In September 1909, the name of Frederick Albert Cook was on the lips of the entire civilized world. Some said he was the greatest of heroes; others said he was the greatest of scoundrels. To this day Cook remains the most controversial figure in the history of exploration, and his claim to have been the first to the North Pole, besting Robert E. Peary by nearly a year, started the great Polar Controversy. The story made headlines for nearly four months and the dispute over which or either reached the Pole is now in its 100^th year.   It was to become, quite literally, the story of the century.

“Whatever the truth is, the situation is as wonderful as the Pole,” exclaimed muck-raking editor Lincoln Steffens. “And whatever they found there, those explorers, they have left there a story as great as a continent.”

Dr. Cook lands at Copenhagen.

A century ago, Cook was being wildly feted in Denmark, where he landed on September 4, 1909, after an absence in the Arctic since July 1907. For the week following, until he sailed on the first leg of his return to America, he was besieged by cheering crowds, received by the King and showered with honors and medals.

How to follow the Polar Controversy.

It is difficult today to imagine the sensation the dispute between Cook and Peary stirred. But you can gain a sense of it by revisiting the primary documents of the dispute. You can catch a glimpse of the reception Cook received as he landed by viewing the film posted on this blog under the entry entitled “The Truth about the North Pole.” The last few minutes of that film, starting at 12.48, consists of actual newsreel footage of Cook arriving aboard the Hans Egede in the harbor of the Danish capital, being greeted by the crown prince, and being mobbed as he stepped from the launch at the dock. He can also be seen waving his cap from the Meteorological Building in response to calls for him to show himself to the enthusiastic crowds, from whom he had taken refuge. Just a few months later Cook was discredited by the very country who had so wildly greeted him, and “Tell it to the Danes!” became a popular catchphrase to respond to any dubious statement.

You can follow the events that were front page news every day between those two points in time in the feature of the New York Times called TimesTraveler. There you can see the actual stories that ran in that paper a century ago. But you should keep this in mind, so as not to loose your perspective: the coverage in the Times was at first largely doubtful to Cook, since the Times had paid Peary in advance the equivalent of $80,000 for the story of his attempt to reach the Pole, and wanted its investment to be worth something, when and if Peary returned. Also, William Reich, one of the editors at the paper, had a personal score to settle and badly wanted to get even with the owner of the New York Herald, James Gordon Bennett, to whose paper Cook sent his first telegram offering it the exclusive story of his polar attainment. And when Peary did return assuring the world that Cook’s story was a fake, Reich worked directly with Peary to undermine Cook’s credibility.  So there was more to it than an interest in “Whatever the truth is,” as Steffens noted.

It all began with these words sent in a telegram from Lerwick, Shetland Islands, on the morning of September 1, 1909:

REACHED NORTH POLE APRIL 21, 1908. DISCOVERED LAND FAR NORTH. RETURN TO COPENHAGEN BY STEAMER HANS EGEDE. FREDERICK COOK.

It will be 100 years ago tomorrow that those fateful words broke upon an unsuspecting world. For the next four months the world, and especially the United States, was obsessed with the controversy that they began over the question of who was the discoverer of the North Pole, Frederick A. Cook, who sent the telegram, or Robert E. Peary, who cabled five days later: STARS AND STRIPES NAILED TO POLE, and who three days after that accused Cook in making his prior claim, of simply handing the world a “Gold Brick.” But will the world now take any note of the centennial of the greatest scientific dispute of all time? To judge by the attention garnered by the hundredth anniversaries of the two explorer’s actual claims, probably it won’t. Apparently this shows the current state of the debate: both claims are now generally discredited, absolutely so for those who have studied the complicated details; the mystery is gone, and with it the fascination. Little is left to argue over except by the partisans. Those partisans on both sides still exist, mind you, and as long as they do, they still want everyone to believe their man is the true discoverer.

Cook’s centennial passes virtually unnoticed.

The only event marking Cook’s 1908 claim was a gathering of the dwindling faithful of the Frederick A. Cook Society in rented rooms in New York City. That’s not really surprising, since Cook’s claim was discredited just two months after he made it, when the Konsistorium of the University of Copenhagen, the experts that Cook chose to review his “proofs,” rendered it’s judgment: “The Commission is therefore of the opinion that there can not in the material which has been submitted to us for examination, be found any proof whatsoever of Dr Cook having reached the Northpole.” Yet the faithful duly met on May 6, 2008, but the only note made of it by the outside world was a short piece that appeared on March 30 in the local Brooklyn section of the New York Times by freelance writer James Vescovi. At that meeting members of the Cook Society and several academics and “polar historians” they regularly feature at these paid-for gatherings, presented papers reciting their mantras on how Cook was cheated of his claim and his fame by a great conspiracy, or on academic topics unrelated to him at all.

Cook vs. Dyche?  Cook’s supporters are as confused as usual.

Yet Peary’s 1909 claim got nearly as little attention. If Tom Avery hadn’t been using the date to launch his book, To the End of the Earth, detailing his 2005 attempt to bolster Peary’s claim by duplicating Peary’s timetable of 37 days in getting to the Pole, April 6, 2009 might have passed with little notice either. The only print article specifically marking the centennial was a piece entitled “Cook vs. Peary,” in the Smithsonian magazine’s April number, whose purpose, ironically, was to raise the possibility that Frederick Cook might be the true discoverer. The author, Bruce Henderson, who has had associations with the Cook Society, tried to rehabilitate Cook with True North, an essentially plagiaristic rewrite of the first Cook-slanted biography, The Case for Dr. Cook, published in 1961 by Andrew Freeman.

In a preface to the Smithsonian article Henderson predicted that “there’s going to be a lot of stories about the centennial of the discovery of the North Pole by Robert Peary.” He was wrong on that, as he was about so much else in his book. Not even the National Geographic Society made any note of the 100^th anniversary of Peary’s claim to be the discoverer of the North Pole, a title it had helped to create and in the past had often vigorously defended. In so doing, Smithsonian’s article stood out as unusually singular, and left it with the egg on it’s face that has usually been reserved in the past for the National Geographic Society, whenever the Polar Controversy raised it’s head. The editors at Smithsonian (the magazine relies entirely on free lance writers, not Smithsonian employees, and disclaims that the views it contains are necessarily those of the Smithsonian Institution) were apparently the only ones so ill informed as to allow themselves to appear to endorse Cook’s claim, which is now almost universally recognized as an attempt at the greatest circumstantial scientific fraud of the 20^th Century. Actually, the article should have been entitled “Cook vs. Dyche,” as among its numerous gaffs and biased versions of events, the other explorer facing down Cook on the double-page spread that introduced the article is not Peary at all, but L. L. Dyche, a professor at Kansas State University, who went twice to Greenland, once with each of the contentious explorers, to gather biological specimens.

Dr. Cook at Bowdoin.

The only major commemoration of Peary’s centennial took place at Peary’s Alma Mater, Bowdoin College, in Brunswick, Maine. (see Blogroll)  It consisted of an internal symposium and a very well mounted exhibition that brought together many key artifacts of Peary’s 1908-1909 expedition in the rooms of the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum under the title “Northward over the Great Ice.” Among them were one of Peary’s sledges and the silk flag Peary carried on all of his journeys after 1897, and from which he cut portions to leave at key points in his travels, including a long diagonal swath he claimed to have buried at the North Pole in 1909. The exhibit also had a number of interesting items related to the other members of Peary’s team, including a newsreel interview with Matthew Henson, Peary’s long-time servant turned assistant.

Cook received more attention than expected at Bowdoin, including equal-sized photographic portraits in one frame with a summary of the controversy mounted beneath, captioned “Heroes or Villains?” An enlargement of Cook’s photo of an igloo that he said he erected at the North Pole was also on display in the hall.

The Case For Dr. Cook.

Within the exhibition itself, Cook got a case all to himself containing a map of his reported route, a picture of the remains of the stone igloo at Cape Hardy (notice: it is not a cave) where he spent the winter of 1908-1909 with his two Inuit companions, and several souvenirs of the dispute, including the cover page from a French publication showing Cook and Peary in a fist fight at the North Pole while penguins look on. Of course, there have never been any penguins at the North Pole, but then again Cook and Peary were never there either.

Is the Polar Controversy nearing an end?

Considering the level of the centenary commemorations of the respective explorer’s claims, with their centenaries past, it appears now that the Polar Controversy is finally coming to a close. Naturally enough, the world doesn’t often note anniversaries beyond the 100^th , after all.  And the Polar Controversy from the start has always been sustained by two things: power and money. The National Geographic Society has, at least publicly, lost interest, and without it’s power of publicity, the doubts about Peary are becoming permanent. The war chest provided to the Frederick A. Cook Society by the will of Dr. Cook’s last lineal descendant to keep up the fight, is now, by the admission of the society’s president, Warren B. Cook, at low ebb. That money has been the largest factor in promoting Cook’s fake over the last 20 years. When that money runs dry, Cook’s claim will probably sink quietly into the oblivion it deserves. But his fascination as an unusually forward-looking personality and romantic fabulist will probably persist. On the other hand, Peary’s self-centered, imperialist personality and once-common, disdainful attitudes toward “inferior races” has little appeal today, and shorn of his claimed accomplishments, there is little left to admire.

When Dr. Cook returned to the United States in late December 1910 after a year of self-imposed exile following the rejection of his “proofs” to have discovered the North Pole by the University of Copenhagen, he said he had no intention to give lectures or otherwise try to reestablish his claim. But in January 1911, Cook was reported in Chicago, then the movie capital of the country, to establish something called the North Pole Moving Picture Company.

On February 12, 1911, Cook appeared on the stage of Oscar Hammerstein’s Manhattan Opera House as an “added” feature to a six-part vaudeville card directly after the Panklebs, an act billed as “Comedy Clay Modelers.”

Cook said he was appearing gratis in exchange for the opportunity to place his story before the public. This statement was viewed with some skepticism by the audience, which greeted it, as they had his appearance on the stage of the crowded house, with a mixture of hisses and catcalls mingled with some cheers. The doctor then displayed the fruits of his recent Chicago venture, showing a set of “historically accurate” motion pictures dramatizing episodes of his polar experiences, entitled “The Truth About the North Pole.”

During the showing of the film, one loud protester had to be forcibly removed from the theater, and most of the audience seemed seized with an uncontrollable desire to snicker and laugh outright at Dr. Cook in the Arctic regions.

In his talk that followed, Cook denounced Peary and his backers in no uncertain terms: “Now, Ladies and Gentlemen, I have tried to maintain patience. I have tried to show the attitude of fairness and manliness. My faith in human nature was such that I counted on meeting gentlemen in a public question, but I find I am dealing with dogs. . . . Today I will throw off the mantle of diplomacy and seek with a knife the brutes who have assailed me. . . . For three months mud-charged guns from every point of the compass were directed at me, all the world blushed with shame. The ‘Arctic Trust’ in the meantime bribed men to sell their honor and mind. . . . Cook must be downed at all cost! . . . What chance for fair play have I, all alone, a mere man, against such a combination? It is all a shame-faced underhanded battle, and to meet it we have made the moving picture, and I am here to see that the picture is started around the world on its eye-opening mission.

At first, the audience listened patiently, but as he went on, they became restless, and their intermittent clapping and hissing seemed unrelated to the words heard from the stage. At one point an urchin in the highest balcony shrieked, “Git der Hook!” and sent the entire audience into convulsions of laughter, but the doctor only smiled and went on to the finish: “I have reached the pole. What is my reward? . . . I have simply sought to be credited with the fulfillment of a personal ambition. This the Arctic Trust refused. It is little enough to seek—an empty ambition perhaps, for I only ask that my footprints be left in the polar snows. . . . Will you deny me that? . . . I challenge each and all to answer. If this is not the underhanded effort of a lot of thieves, let them explain.”

Whether Cook ever showed this film again is doubtful. Totally forgotten until the publication of Cook and Peary, the Polar Controversy, Resolved, it was only known from a stenographic record of Cook’s appearance discovered by the author in Robert Peary’s personal papers at the National Archives in 1991. Supposed lost, a print of Cook’s film was later discovered in a footage archive in San Francisco.

Here you can view it in its entirety.

Today is the official centennial of Dr. Frederick A. Cook’s claim to have discovered the North Pole. But the date doesn’t really matter. Any date would be equally valid, because an event that never happened can’t really have an anniversary, let alone a centennial. And Dr. Cook himself wasn’t quite sure when he made his “discovery.” Although Cook didn’t announce the news to the world until he telegraphed it from the Shetland Islands on September 1, 1909, his earliest written report came in a letter he left for Canadian Captain Joseph Bernier, dated at Upernavik, Greenland, May 23, 1909. In it Cook wrote, “We have pushed into the boreal center and picked the polar prize, but the effort was dangerous beyond all conception. . . . The pole was reached on Aprill 22, 1908.” Only later was the date normalized to April 21. An innocent slip of the memory? After his return the the United States in 1909 and a nationwide lecture tour consisting of scores of stops, at each of which Cook always asserted he had reached the pole on April 21, he disappeared for nearly a year. Soon his “proofs” were rejected by the judges of his choice at the University of Copenhagen. When he finally reappeared in 1910, he gave an exclusive interview to a reporter in London affiliated with the New York World, and assured him that we would “have a full answer to everything, and I will deliver it in my own time.” The discovery of the North Pole was also on its own timetable. In that interview he said, “The North Pole was discovered exactly when I said it was–April 23, 1908.” However, if you return to the ur-documents of Cook’s claim, the diaries and notebooks he kept while in the Arctic, one contains an outline of the book he planned about his conquest of the pole. Next to the heading of the projected chapter he titled “At the Pole,” he wrote the date “April 28.” That’s because he first planned to claim that date for his arrival, but set it back after he realized it would place him at the pole too late to reasonably return to land before the polar ice became unstable. So, take your pick. From the hand of the “discoverer” there are four dates he at one time claimed to have been at the North Pole. Captain Thomas Hall, that remarkable amateur scholar of the Polar Controversy, wrote of Peary’s claim: “But is was not the falsehood itself that was significant; it would not have been significant even if he had falsified every sentence in his story. But the significance rested in the FACT that the falsehood proved INVENTION, and proving invention, SOLVED THE PROBLEM. When anyone can catch Cook at business of that character it will be Cook’s undoing.” By the inconsistency of his own accounts of events of his expedition (and the date of his alleged discovery is only one of many) written in his own hand in the contemporaneous records kept by him on his polar journey, Dr. Cook has been undone. Happy Anniversary, Dr. Cook: Today, tomorrow, next week, or anytime. It really doesn’t matter.

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.

This site has changes hosts, and consequently is at a new URL on the web. All the links have been updated and a few points of the content have been corrected. The new host offers greater flexibility for adding to and updating the site and there should be more news postings in the future.

In 2005, Denali State Park erected a prominent 3×4 foot sign about Dr. Cook as part of its renovation of the viewpoint of the southern flank of the Alaska Range. The viewpoint is located in the park on Route 3, the main road that runs between Anchorage and Fairbanks, and is visited by thousands of tourists traveling to Denali National Park. It affords the closest view of the Alaska Range possible from any paved highway. The greatly expanded parking lot and tourist facilities features a panoramic sign identifying each of the main peaks visible about 30 miles distant, and the Cook sign. Entitled “Tall Mountain, Taller Tales,” the sign details Cook’s fraudulent claim to have made the first ascent of the tallest of these, Mount McKinley, in 1906. The sign features the uncropped version of Cook’s fake “summit” picture, discovered by the author of this website in 1991, and shows Belmore Browne’s picture of the same, comparatively tiny, point of rocks, 19 miles from Mount McKinley’s 20,230 foot summit and only 5,100 feet high, where Cook took his fake picture. The panel also features a picture of Ed Barrill, Cook’s climbing companion, who swore an affidavit in 1909 that neither he nor Cook had ever been near the actual summit. The background of the panel shows a picture of the Ruth Glacier apporach to the mountain with a yellow circle around the tiny “Fake Peak” where Cook took the photo.

Site updated and corrected. Links: The Library of Congress exhibit including a display of Cook artifacts can be found here; look for the section marked “At the Pole.” Ohio State Univerisity Archives collection of papers related to Cook can be found here. The Finding Aid to the personal papers of Frederick A. Cook held by the Library of Congress can be found here; look under “C”. A small collection of Cook papers is among the holdings of Dartmouth College.