|
Who was first? US News revives the North Pole debate
`Who was first? Polar historians and those who know the Cook and Peary stories have been familiar with that for
almost a century. This past year the question
became part of a cover story on
US News and World Report (August 14, 2006) and resulted in a letter from the Society in a subsequent issue.
Board member Marcia Hutchinson of Golden, CO, a great-grand-daughter of the explorer, alerted the Society of the advance issue and the resultant exchange. The
US News summary included the following:
|
The first
explorer to reach the North Pole was:
A. Robert Peary;
B. Frederick Cook;
C. Probably neither;
D. Definitely neither.
Ever since 1909-when first Cook, and then Peary returned from their northernmost journeys to banner headlines and international
controversy-the answer has depended on whom you asked.
At its simplest, the debate over who got where when is the story of onetime gentlemen colleagues turned rivals in their quest for North Pole bragging rights.
Peary claimed that he reached the pole on April 6, 1909, after a 37-day dash across the ice pack from his base 413 miles away. But
just five days before Peary could
cable his news home, Cook scooped
him with his claim to have arrived at the top of world in April, 1908. |
|
The vituperative volleys of one side against the other haven't let up since.
Yet Cook still retains staunch defenders today in the form of the Frederick A. Cook Society. In
True North, his 2005 examination
of
the case, journalist Bruce
Henderson paints a sympathetic portrait of Cook as a brave explorer quite possibly denied his due. "I think that Cook's
claim to have reached the pole is every bit as strong as Peary's," he says.
Moreover, says Susan
Kaplan, director of the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum, the continued emphasis on the competition "warps" our understanding of Peary's innovations, designing equipment and travel strategies and forging
ahead with the limited navigational instruments available at the time. Much the same could be said for Cook, whom many brand as a charlatan without
examining, for instance, his humane treatment of the Inuit when others regarded them as savages. Will the issue ever be completely resolved? "I don't think the question can ever be answered, which is why it is still in the news 100 years later," says Laura Kissel, polar curator of the Byrd Polar Research Center Archival Program at Ohio State University.
US News published a letter from Society Executive Director Russell Gibbons on August 28:
"I agree that the debate will continue well into this century following the 2008-2009 centennial of the Cook and Peary claims to being the first at the geographical North Pole, but there is reason to believe additional evidence is being advanced for the
onetime underdog.
Frederick A. Cook, that will ultimately vindicate his original attainment. Last year Canada's foremost Arctic archaeologist. Robert McGhee, the curator at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, said of Cook: "He was the most perceptive as well as the most vilified of Polar explorers. Cook had made a discovery that no amount of humiliation could take from him.
"Regardless of the
endless discussion, the fact remains that the first physical description of the central Arctic basin was by Cook in 1908, and as Walter A. Wood, president of the American Geographical Society, declared: "The more we understand the
Arctic...the more we recognize phenomena described by Cook but unknown at the time of his journey (a year before Robert Peary). "Incidentally, Cook was pardoned weeks before his death in 1940 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, after multi-millions were made from the oil lands he was convicted of promoting as
'worthless.'"
Return
to current Polar
Priorities and
Membership News
stories
or
Peruse
our online archive
of Polar
Priorities and Membership
News stories
Copyright
2007 - The Frederick A.
Cook Society
|
