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About
Dr. Frederick A. Cook
| FREDERICK
A. COOK (1865-1940):
A SHORT BIOGRAPHY |
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In the earlier years
of what is called
"the Great
Polar
Controversy,"
General A.W Greely,*
leader of the
ill-fated Lady
Franklin Bay
Expedition, gave
this ringing
testimony to other
explorations that,
like his own, would
invoke bitter
passion:
"Rarely, if
ever; would they be
equally led and
never surpassed for
their extent,
duration and
experience."
Greely was alluding
to the achievements
of the Cook North
Polar Expedition of
1908-09. Its
commander, Dr
Frederick Albert
Cook, nevertheless
spent almost half of
his life surrounded
by such controversy
that his real field
work has been
largely overlooked.
While self-serving,
Cook's own words,
written in the
twilight of an
amazing career, may
best express the
depth of his
personal torment:
"few men in all
history ... have
ever been made to
suffer so bitterly
and so inexpressibly
as I because of the
assertion of my
achievement." |
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Cook
caught the polar wanderlust
only a year after his
graduation from the College
of Physicians and Surgeons
at New York University, in
1890, perhaps influenced by
the death of his first wife
in childbirth. Hardened by
a youth spent in the
Catskill Mountains (he was
born in Hortonville, New
York, to an immigrant
German physician), and
later supporting his
widowed mother in Brooklyn
while securing his
education, Cook had
ambition and enormous
energy. Over the next two
decades, he earned a
reputation as a doctor
afield, interrupting a
sporadic medical practice
to offer himself as surgeon
or leader of eight
expeditions "Poleward,"
a term he often used.
First
going north with the young
naval civil engineer Robert
Edwin Peary* on his North
Greenland Expedition in
1891, Cook earned Peary's
praise for "unruffled
patience and coolness in an
emergency." After
returning to an erratic
general practice, Cook went
north again in two arctic
commands on the Zita
(1893) and the Miranda
(1894). When
near-disaster struck the Miranda,
the
twenty-nine-year-old Cook
navigated an open boat
across 90 miles of polar
sea to obtain rescue. The
Arctic Club of America was
born out of this voyage,
and Cook became its first
president. He would later
preside over the
prestigious Explorers Club
as well.
After
a four-year stint of
medical practice and
lecturing, the polar quest
drew him again, this time
to the Belgian Antarctic
Expedition. The party
became locked in the ice of
the Bellingshausen Sea, and
its survival was largely
attributed to Cook. Roald
Amundsen, the first mate,
credited Cook with
"unfailing hope and
unfaltering courage"
in his scheme to free the
ship.
Peary's
1902 attempt to reach the
Pole from Cape Hecla on
northern Ellesmere Island
was forced back at
84°17'N: Cook had
been with him as the
expedition's doctor. The
trip convinced Cook that
the so-called American
route through Kane Basin
was unsatisfactory, and
that, in any event, he
would never again serve
under Peary. Soon, Cook
mounted expeditions to
Alaska's Mount McKinley,
being the first to
circumnavigate it in 1903
and making the first
claimed ascent of North
Amenca's highest peak in
1906. At a dinner sponsored
by the National Geographic
Society--with a seething
Peary in
attendance--President
Theodore Roosevelt hailed
Cook as the conqueror of
McKinley and the first
American to explore both
polar regions. In 1994, an
expedition to McKinley on
Ruth Glacier determined
that Cook had reached a
point at eleven thousand
feet approaching the top of
the mountain.
None
of Cook's first seven
expeditions ventured into
the Queen Elizabeth
Islands. But his eighth --
his longest, most
celebrated, and most
controversial -- took him
into that region for two
years. He sailed north on
the schooner John R.
Bradley in 1907.
Leaving his base camp at
Annoatok in February 1908
with Rudolph Francke, his
German assistant, 10 Inuit,
11 sleds, and 105 dogs, he
followed Otto Sverdrup's*
game lands through
Ellesmere and Axel Heiberg
islands, reached Cape
Stallworthy, and went over
the sea due north. His last
supporting party turned
back after three days'
march, and with two Inuit
companions, Cook fought
pressure ridges and ice
floes to reach what he
determined to be the
geographical North Pole on
21 April 1908. "We
were the only pulsating
creatures in a dead world
of ice," he wrote in
his diary.
The
return journey was an epic
in sled travel -- in terms
of pure survival, a classic
experience. After living in
an ancient Inuit cave on
Devon Island through the
polar night of 1908-09,
Cook and his party returned
to Greenland, whence he
sailed to the adulation of
the world, first in
Copenhagen, and later in
New York. Cook's wire that
he had reached the Pole was
sent on 1 September 1909:
Peary's announcement
followed five days later.
The great controversy that
began then is still
simmering today.
Cook
disappeared from public
view after a bitter media
campaign that did little
for the reputation of
either antagonist and even
less for historical
geography. Until he died in
1940, still maintaining his
achievements, Cook was
championed more in Europe
than in North America.
Since 1960, a revival of
literature on the question
has favored Cook. Such
arctic experts as Jean
Malaurie , Silvio Zavatti,
and A. F. Treshekenov have
elevated Cook's claims to
"probable and
possible" attainment.
Many of the international
presenters at a symposium
on Cook at the Byrd Polar
Research Centre in 1993
agreed that he was a
serious claimant.
Frederick
A. Cook's unquestioned
prior physical description
of conditions at the Pole
and his apparent
descriptions of
then-unknown ice islands
weigh in his favor, and his
non-discovery of Meighen
Island (Stefansson found
this "impossible to
explain") gives
credence to his reporting a
westward drift of the polar
ice. A troubled later life
(imprisonment for promoting
Texas oil lands which
subsequently produced the
largest pool of oil in the
United States) did not
contribute to any public
vindication for the
explorer, termed "the
American Dreyfus of the
North." Ultimate
rehabilitation may yet come
as the claims of the
once-discredited Cook are
given a more dispassionate
examination.
Further
Readings
- Cook,
Frederick A. 1900. Through
the First Antarctic
Night. New York:
Doubleday
- Cook,
Frederick A. 1908. To
the Top of the
Continent. New York:
Doubleday
- Cook,
Frederick A. 1911. My
Attainment of the Pole. New
York: Mitchel Kennerley
- _________.
1951. Return from the
Pole. New York:
Pellegrini and Cudahy
- Freeman,
Andrew. 1961. The
Case For Dr: Cook. New
York: Coward-McCann.
- Hall,
Thomas F 1917. Has
the North Pole Been Discovered?
Boston: Badger.
- Holland,
Clive. 1994. Farthest
North: The Quest for the
North Pole. Toronto:
McClelland and Stewart;
New York: Carrell and
Graf.
- Horwood,
Harold. 1977 Bob
Bartlett: The Great
Canadian Explorer. Garden
City, New York:
Doubleday and Co.
- Malaurie,
Jean. 1989. Ultima
Thule: The Quest for the
North Pole. Paris:
Bordas.
- Wright,
Theon. 1969. The Big
Nail. New York: John
Day.
The
Verdict of History
Copyright
2005 - The Frederick A.
Cook Society
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