Frederick Cook

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For the South African cricketer, see Frederick Cook (cricketer).

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

[edit] Life

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 was ice-bound during the winter. He also met Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, with whom he established a friendship and life-long relationship of mutual respect.

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

After the Mount McKinley expedition, Cook returned to the Arctic in 1907 for what he said was intended to be only a hunting expedition. But then Cook decided to make an attempt to reach the North Pole in the spring of 1908, taking with him only two Inuit men, Ahwelah and Etukishook. Cook claimed to have reached the pole on April 21, 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 the village of Anoatok on the Greenland side in the spring of 1909, allegedly ^[1] 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. But it is obvious from his lack of navigational skills and his companions' testimony that he did not go far from land and therefore never went within hundreds of miles of the pole. 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 because reporters were convinced of his honesty and sincerity. 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 eventually claimed he had left these irreplaceable purported documents behind (as one commentator put it) "in the keeping of a wandering sportsman in Greenland", American hunter Harry Whitney, rather than risk transporting them a few miles further by sledge. 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, possibly to avoid accusations of tampering. So Whitney left Cook's material including a sextant in a cache in Greenland. Cook intermittently claimed he had kept copies of his sextant navigational data and in 1911 published some ^[2] which either have the incorrect solar diameter or place Cook on the asteroid 4 Vesta. ^[3] Cook's Inuit companions allegedly gave conflicting stories about where they had gone with him; however, the map which the Peary expedition's people (primarily Matthew Henson and George Borup) elicited from Cook's two 1908 companions (showing he had never left sight of land) correctly located then-unknown Meighen Island. ^[4] This 1909 testimony correlates to Cook's 1906 claim, in that all three of Cook's companions for his two claimed attainments later stated that he had not succeeded.

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.

[edit] The 1906 Mt. McKinley Hoax

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 purported September, 1906 ascent, signed an affidavit denying that they had reached the top. He was paid by Peary supporters to do so (Henderson, 2005), a fact that was never a secret ^[5] and is in any case a point of questionable relevance considering that Barrill's account has repeatedly been independently verified. Unlike genuine first McKinley conqueror (1913) Hudson Stuck (Ascent of Denali, 1914, photograph opposite p.102) Cook took no photograph of the view from atop McKinley, and his photograph of the "summit" itself was found to have been taken of a tiny peak ^[6] 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). The validity of the latter claim may be weighed by comparing ^[7] 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 ^[8], 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).^[9] 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 ^[10] correctly locating the Fake Peak of Cook's "summit" photo and showing that Cook and he had turned back at the Gateway. Though loyalists (e.g., Henderson, 2005) repeat Cook's claim that Barrill's account is bought perjury, one notices that 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 ^[11] 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. ^[12]

[edit] Failed Reputation

Cook's reputation never recovered, while Peary's North Pole claim was widely accepted for most of the 20th century. Cook spent much of the rest of his life continuing to write defenses of his trip to the pole and attempting to sue writers who claimed that he had faked the trip. In 1923 he was convicted of stock fraud and use of sucker-lists, and was imprisoned until 1930. 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. ^ Contra R. Bryce, 1997
2. ^ 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.
3. ^ Rawlins, Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift (Oslo University), volume 26, pages 135-140, 1972
4. ^ Rawlins, 1973, Chapter 6. A genuine Cook discovery, Meighen Island is the only island discovered in the American arctic by a United States expedition.
5. ^ DIO, volume 9, number 3, page 129, note 18
6. ^ An aerial photograph by Bradford Washburn (DIO, volume 7, number 2, page 40) dramatizes the mountain-versus-molehill contrast of claim-versus-reality.
7. ^ DIO, volume 7, number 3, page 96 versus page 97
8. ^ 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.
9. ^ Washburn, Bradford; Peter Cherici (2001). The Dishonorable Dr. Cook: Debunking the Notorious Mount McKinley Hoax. Seattle: Mountaineers Books. OCLC 47054650. 
10. ^ R. Bryce, DIO, volume 7, number 2, page 57
11. ^ Ibid, pages 60-61
12. ^ DIO, volume 9, number 3, pages 124-125

[edit] References

• Berton, Pierre (2001). The Arctic Grail. Anchor Canada (originally published 1988). ISBN 0-385-65845-1. OCLC 46661513. 
• Bryce, Robert M. (1997). Cook & Peary: The Polar Controversy, Resolved. Stackpole Books. ISBN 0811703177. OCLC 35280718. 
• Bryce, Robert M. (December 1997). "The Fake Peak revisited". DIO 7: 41-76. ISSN 1041-5440. OCLC 18798426.
• Henderson, Bruce (2005). True North: Peary, Cook, and the Race to the Pole. W. W. Norton and Company. ISBN 0393327388. OCLC 63397177. 
• Osczevski, Randall J. (2003). "Frederick Cook and the Forgotten Pole". Arctic 56 (2): 207-217. ISSN 0004-0843. OCLC 108412472.
• Rawlins, Dennis (1973). Peary at the North Pole, Fact or Fiction?. Luce. ISBN 0883310422. 
• Robinson, Michael (2006: isbn=978-0226721842). The Coldest Crucible: Arctic Exploration and American Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 

[edit] External links

• Frederick A. Cook Society
• Frederick A. Cook: from Hero to Humbugbs:Frederick Albert Cook

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