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In the centennial year of
the return
of both Cook
and Peary
from their
respective
expeditions
to the North
Pole, and in
the
centennial
month of
Peary’s
attainment,
renewed
views on
both
explorers
have come
from a
leading
periodical
and a
prominent
Canadian
Arctic
historian.
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In the April issue
of
The
Smithsonian
Magazine,
published
by
America’s
premiere
institution
of
history
and
discovery,
author
Bruce
Henderson
takes
the
case
for
Cook
to a
new
audience,
asking
“how
did
Peary’s
claim
trump
Cook’s?”
Henderson
has
authored
a
well-reviewed
history
of
the
Greeley
expedition
and
an
acclaimed,
balanced
volume
on
the
controversy,
True
North:
Cook,
Peary
and
the
Race
to
the
Pole.
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Author Bruce Henderson
(‘True North: Cook, Peary and the Race to the
Pole’)
has a lead article in the April ‘Smithsonian Magazine’ which asks
“How did Peary’s claim trump Cook’s?
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And in Canada’s
north
country,
the
quarterly
journal
Up
Here
has
a
significant
essay
by
the
person
considered
by
many
as
the
country’s
leading
historian
of
the
Arctic,
Ken
McGoogan,
who
has
the
Pierre
Berton
Award
for
History
and
the
University
of
British
Columbia
Medal
for
Canadian
Biography.
McGoogan
begins
his
account
with
the
assertion
that
“one
hundred
years
ago
this
month
one
of
the
worst
injustices
in
Arctic
exploration
history
began.
”Henderson’s
article,
“Cook vs.
Peary”
begins with
the respective
discovery
stories which
came from Cook
in the New
York Herald on
Sept. 1, 1909
and from Peary
in the Sept.
7, 1909, New
York Times,
both occupying
the full front
pages in what
was to become
the “storyof
the century”
according to
crusading
journalist
Lincoln
Steffans.
McGoogan even
cited True
North by
Henderson, who
he says argues
convincingly -
that Cook’s
story rings
true. Cook, a
master of
Inuit travel
methods,
completed
several
remarkable
sledge
journeys. And
his
unprecedented
reports,
including
about
ice-drift
patterns near
the pole, have
since been
vindicated.
“Henderson also
rebuts fraud
charges
leveled
against the
doctor-explorer
by his
enemies, and
repudiates
allegations -
and this will
astonish
aficionados -
that
Cook made
false claims
about climbing
Mount McKinley
in Alaska.
He
offers telling
evidence that
a fellow
climber was
bribed to
offer false
testimony;
reveals that
the first
verified
summiteer
supported
Cook’s
description of
the climb; and
shows that
Cook never
claimed that a
photo taken on
McKinley had
been taken at
the
summit.
”“If Henderson
is correct,
then Robert
Peary, having
failed to
reach the
pole,
destroyed the
man who first
succeeded.
Maybe this
month, 100
years after
Peary launched
his
juggernaut, we
should begin
to set the
record
straight.”
Historian
McGoogan
concluded.
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