From Hero to Humbug

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.

Several interesting and detailed articles have appeared in this scholarly journal concerning Dr. Cook’s claim to have climbed Mt. Mckinley; they are in volume 7, #2-3. Additional articles on the counterarguments and methods of the Frederick A. Cook Society can also be found in this journal; they are in volume 9, #2-3.
Many interesting links to polar subjects can be found on the website of the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State.

The site is up!