Frederick Cook

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For other persons named Frederick Cook, see Frederick Cook (disambiguation).

Frederick Albert Cook (June 10, 1865 – August 5, 1940) was an American explorer and physician, noted for his claim of having reached the North Pole in April, 1908, a year before Robert Peary claimed to.

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[edit] Life

Frederick Cook on South Michigan Avenue in Chicago
Frederick Cook on South Michigan Avenue in Chicago

Cook was born in Hortonville, New York. His parents were Dr. Theodore A. Koch and Magdalena Koch (nee Long), recent German immigrants to the USA.

Cook attended Columbia University and subsequently New York University, from which he received his M.D. in 1890. In 1889 he married Libby Forbes, who died in childbirth in 1890. On his 37th birthday he married Marie Fidele Hunt; they had one daughter, Helene. In 1923 they were divorced.

[edit] Early expeditions

Cook was the surgeon on Robert Peary's 1891-92 Arctic expedition, and on the Belgian Antarctic Expedition of 1897-99 led by Adrien de Gerlache. He contributed greatly to saving the lives of the crew when their ship (the Belgica) was ice-bound during the winter. A fellow crew-member was Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, with whom he established a friendship and life-long relationship of mutual respect. In 1898, during this expedition, Cook visited Tierra del Fuego, where he met Thomas Bridges shortly before his death. As a result of that meeting, Cook brought back the manuscript of Bridges' Yamana dictionary, and several years later acquiesced in the attempted publication of the dictionary as his own work.[1]

In 1903 Cook led an expedition to Mount McKinley, and claimed to have made the first ascent in 1906 on his second attempt.

[edit] The Arctic Club and The Explorers Club

Dr. Cook was a founding member of two New York-based clubs: the Arctic Club (1894-1913) and The Explorers Club (1904-present). In 1907-1908 Cook served as the second President of The Explorers Club.

[edit] North Pole

A photo from Cook's 1909 arctic expedition, which he alleged was taken at or near the North Pole
A photo from Cook's 1909 arctic expedition, which he alleged was taken at or near the North Pole

After the Mount McKinley expedition, Cook returned to the Arctic in 1907. He planned to attempt to reach the North Pole, although his intention was not announced until August 1907, when he was in the Arctic. He left Annoatok, a small settlement in the north of Greenland, in the spring of 1908, taking with him only two Inuit men, Ahwelah and Etukishook. Cook claimed to have reached the pole on April 22, 1908 after travelling north from Axel Heiberg Island. Living off local game, his party pushed south to winter on Devon Island; from there they traveled north, crossing the Nares Strait to Annoatok on the Greenland side in the spring of 1909, allegedly [2] almost dying of starvation during the journey.

In the view of polar historians such as Pierre Berton (Berton, 2001), Cook's story of his trek around the Arctic islands is probably legitimate. He and his two companions were gone from Annoatok for 14 months, and their whereabouts in that period is a matter of intense controversy. It has been suggested that Cook’s account actually describes his attainment of Jules Verne’s "Pole du Froid" (Pole of Cold), not the geographic North Pole. For details, see Osczevski, 2003. Cook's claim was initially widely believed. But it was disputed by Cook's now-rival polar explorer Robert Peary, who claimed to have reached the North Pole himself in April 1909. Cook initially congratulated Peary for his achievement, but Peary and his supporters launched a campaign to discredit Cook, even enlisting the aid of socially-prominent persons outside the field of science such as football coach Fielding Yost (as related in Fred Russell's 1943 book, I'll Go Quietly).

Cook never produced detailed original navigational records to substantiate his claim to have reached the North Pole. He claimed that his detailed records were part of his belongings contained in three boxes, which he left at Annoatok in April 1909 in the keeping of Harry Whitney, an American hunter who had travelled north with Peary the previous year. According to Cook's account, he was unable to bring back the boxes, because his two companions had returned to their village and there was insufficient manpower at Annoatok for a second sledge for the onward 700 mile journey south to Upernavik. When Whitney tried to bring Cook's belongings with him on his return to the USA on Peary's ship, Peary refused to allow them on board. So Whitney left Cook's boxes in a cache in Greenland. They were never found.

Cook intermittently claimed he had kept copies of his sextant navigational data and in 1911 published some [3] which either have the incorrect solar diameter or place Cook on the asteroid 4 Vesta. [4] Ahwelah and Etukishook, Cook's Inuit companions, gave conflicting stories about where they had gone with him. Whitney, who spoke their language and spent considerable time with them, was convinced by their account that they had reached the Pole with Cook. The Peary expedition's people (primarily Matthew Henson and George Borup, who did not speak their language well) claimed that Ahwelah and Etukishook told them that they had traveled only a few days journey from land, although a map allegedly drawn by them correctly located then-unknown Meighen Island. [5]

For more detail see Bryce, 1997 and Henderson, 2005. The conflicting, and possibly dual fraudulent claims, of Cook and Peary prompted Roald Amundsen to take particularly extensive precautions in navigation during his South Pole expedition to leave no room for doubt concerning attainment of the pole. See Polheim. (Amundsen also had the advantage of travelling over an actual continent and was able to leave unmistakable evidence of his presence at the South Pole. Peary's claim that Cook could not have been at the Pole because he saw no evidence of his camp simply shows Peary's colossal ignorance of the north polar ice cap, which would have drifted many miles in the year between the competing claims.)

[edit] The 1906 Mt. McKinley Climb

Frederick Cook in arctic gear
Frederick Cook in arctic gear

Though some members of Cook's 1906 expedition (e. g., Belmore Browne) had privately doubted the 1906 McKinley attainment, it was in the newpaper-war atmosphere of the 1909 Polar Controversy that it was first publicly alleged by Peary's supporters that Cook's ascent of Mt McKinley was fraudulent. Ed Barrill, Cook's sole companion during the September, 1906 climb, signed an affidavit in 1909 denying that they had reached the top. He was paid by Peary supporters to do so (Henderson, 2005) (a fact which Henderson claims was covered up and Bryce claims was never a secret [6]), although Barrill had consistently until a month before asserted that he and Cook had reached the summit. Unlike Hudson Stuck in 1913 (Ascent of Denali, 1914, photograph opposite p.102) Cook took no photograph of the view from atop McKinley, and his photograph of what he claimed was the summit was found to have been taken of a tiny peak [7] 19 miles away. One expedition by the Mazama Club in 1910 reported that Cook's map departed abruptly from reality while the summit was still 10 miles distant, but another 1910 expedition allegedly verified much of Cook's account (Henderson, 2005)[citation needed]. The validity of the latter claim may be weighed by comparing [8] Cook's map of his alleged 1906 route versus reality, over the last 10 miles. Modern climber Bradford Washburn made it a personal mission to reveal the exact truth of Cook's 1906 claim. Washburn and Brian Okonek ultimately (1956-1995) were able to identify the location of every single photograph Cook took during his 1906 McKinley foray, including his "summit" photograph [9], and reproduce them. None were taken anywhere near the summit (and, as the thousands who have climbed McKinley subsequently can verify, Cook's descriptions of the summit ridge bear no resemblance to the actual mountain).[10] Washburn showed that none of Cook's 1906 photos was taken past the "Gateway" (north end of the Great Gorge), 12 horizontal bee-line miles from McKinley and 3 miles below its top. Barrill's 1909 affidavit included a map [11] correctly locating the Fake Peak of Cook's "summit" photo and showing that Cook and he had turned back at the Gateway. No evidence of Cook's presence between the Gateway and McKinley has ever been found: his photos' vistas, his two sketch maps' markers and peak-numberings [12] for points attained, his compass bearings, his barometer readings, his route-map's accuracy, even his camp trash — though samples of all such evidences are found short of the Gateway. [13]

[edit] Failed Reputation

Frederick Cook's final resting place
Frederick Cook's final resting place

Cook's reputation never recovered, while Peary's North Pole claim was widely accepted for most of the 20th century. Cook spent the next few years defending his claim and attempting to sue writers who claimed that he had faked the trip. In 1922 he became involved in the Texas oil business. In 1923 he was convicted of using the mails to defraud by signing mailers which overstated the oil discovery prospects of his company, and was imprisoned until 1930. (Roald Amundsen, who felt he owed his life to Cook's extrication of the Belgica, visited several times.) It has been claimed (Henderson, 2005) that the sentence was considered excessive even by the district attorney, and that the judge was a friend of the Peary family. More to the point, the actual oil finds eventually exceeded the expectations outlined by Cook. He was pardoned by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940, shortly before his death on August 5 of that year.

Cook is a major character in a fiction book, The Navigator of New York, by Wayne Johnston, published in 2003. In recent years Peary's account has encountered renewed criticism and skepticism (Rawlins, 1973; Berton, 2001; Henderson, 2005). Which man, if either, was first to reach the North Pole continues to be a matter of considerable controversy in the arena of popular publications, though among professionals Peary's North Pole claim is now generally disbelieved and both of Cook's claims have been almost unanimously rejected for nearly a century.

At the end of his 1911 book, Cook wrote: I have stated my case, presented my proofs. As to the relative merits of my claim, and Mr Peary's, place the two records side by side. Compare them. I shall be satisfied with your decision. Frederick Cook’s remains are at the Chapel of Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo, New York.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Bridges, E L (1948) The Uttermost Part of the Earth Republished 2008, Overlook Press ISBN 978-1585679560, Appendix II
  2. ^ Contra R. Bryce, 1997
  3. ^ F. Cook, My Attainment of the Pole, 1911, pages 258 and 274. Cook's first account of what he left with Whitney did not mention data, and Whitney knew of no data in what was left with him. See Rawlins, 1973, pages 87, 166, 301-302.
  4. ^ Rawlins, Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift (Oslo University), volume 26, pages 135-140, 1972
  5. ^ Rawlins, 1973, Chapter 6. A genuine Cook discovery, Meighen Island is the only island discovered in the American arctic by a United States expedition.
  6. ^ DIO, volume 9, number 3, page 129, note 18
  7. ^ An aerial photograph by Bradford Washburn (DIO, volume 7, number 2, page 40) dramatizes the mountain-versus-molehill contrast of claim-versus-reality.
  8. ^ DIO, volume 7, number 3, page 96 versus page 97
  9. ^ Compare rock-by-rock the left side of Cook's 1906 "summit" photo to the corresponding parts of the 1957 photo by Adams Carter and Bradford Washburn. Photos juxtaposed at DIO, volume 9, number 3, page 116. Compare also the background features in Cook's "summit" photo versus those in his own photo taken a few minutes later (towards the same direction) from the top of Fake Peak: DIO, volume 7, number 2, figure 4 versus figure 18; detailed-blowup comparisons in figures 6 and 8.
  10. ^ Washburn, Bradford; Peter Cherici (2001). The Dishonorable Dr. Cook: Debunking the Notorious Mount McKinley Hoax. Seattle: Mountaineers Books. OCLC 47054650. 
  11. ^ R. Bryce, DIO, volume 7, number 2, page 57
  12. ^ Ibid, pages 60-61
  13. ^ DIO, volume 9, number 3, pages 124-125

[edit] References

[edit] External links