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North Pole Controversy Just Won’t Die

One hundred years ago this week, the New York Times reported that Robert Peary had successfully discovered the North Pole, just five days after the New York Herald trumpeted that Frederick Cook was the discoverer. Who was right? As it turns out, probably neither. In the century since Peary and Cook made their claims, supported by their newspaper partisans, both have been dismissed as liars or frauds, neither of whom likely reached the pole. And the controversy, which so dominated discussions of 20th Century exploration, would appear to be dead. But it isn’t. National Geographic, which supported Peary’s efforts, continues to stand by Peary. Staking out an opposite claim is Smithsonian magazine, which in a recent issue threw its weight behind Cook.

It’s not easy to generate much sympathy for either of them. Cook rather notoriously faked an ascent of Alaska’s 20,320-foot Mt. McKinley, offering a photograph from the summit of a peak 15,000 feet lower, and later spent the better part of seven years in prison for mail fraud. The dour Peary, on the other hand, desperately sought the spotlight–in a letter home, he wrote, “I will be foremost in the highest circles in the capital, and make powerful friends with whom I can shape my future instead of letting it come as it will….Remember, mother, I must have fame.”

There’s no question that tackling the pole was burly. Cook was in the Actic for a year, during which people assumed a lack of word or return meant he was dead. Peary was no slouch in the coldest climes, either, although he tackled the quest with a siege mentality that included 50 men and nearly 250 dogs. But the results of their missions were dubious at best. Cook’s own teammates refuted his polar claim and judges at the University of Copenhagen, whom Cook himself selected, rejected his evidence.

And Peary claimed a nearly straight line route to the pole, even though the pack ice was shifting and compasses are unreliable in the far north. He was an expert with a sextant (Cook was not), but, writes the New York Times, “After five weeks, [he] made an observation and refused to reveal the results to his companions. He was reported to look disappointed, and he left his diary pages blank that day. But he would later tell the rest of the world that his observation had confirmed his arrival at the pole.”

Uh-huh.

Most of the rest of the world has deduced that neither man actually reached the pole, which makes the continuing support of Nat Geo and Smithsonian all the more head-scratching. Geographic was a sponsor of the Peary expedition and in 1988 it revisited the case and commissioned the Navigation Foundation to study the evidence (photos, celestial sightings, diaries) with contemporary techniques. It concluded that Peary had gotten within four or file miles of the pole and that his claim of discovery was valid. Critics who examined the evidence argue otherwise–and point out that four or five miles isn’t actually at the pole. Smithsonian’s endorsement is even more baffling, as Cook’s claim was refuted 90 years ago–and it kind of loses credibility when it’s illustrated with a photograph of Robert Peary…but the picture is actually L. L. Dyche, an Arctic explorer and professor at Kansas State University.

All this makes me think of the summer I turned 12, when my dad packed up the wood-paneled station wagon and we drove west, eventually landing at Four Corners, where the borders of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah come together. It seemed so cool to starfish on the ground and be in four states at once, but now, having spent much of my adult life outside, where borders are most often indistinct, it seems little different from South Dakota’s Corn Palace: manmade, arbitrary, tourist-friendly. So, too, the North Pole. Hey, I know–it’s the top of the world. And exploration for exploration’s sake, well, you won’t find a greater enthusiast than me. But this hyped-filled, lie-riddled race to the farthest north, which seemed solely motivated by the hunger for glory, is man striving for the best while driven by the worst. How appropriate that it’s all collapsed in a pile of bickering and wasted energy.

And ironic, too, that the first man to make his was to the pole over the ice was Minnesotan Ralph Plaisted, who piloted his snowmobile there in 1968. “Oh, well, jeez, ya know, Marge was kinda pesterin’ me and it was gettin’ a little tiresome and so one day I went out on the snow machine to get a little Rolling Rock and do a little ice fishin’ and I bought a few extra cases and there it was strapped to the back and so I thought, what the heck, I’m already headin’ north…”

A sledneck from Minnesota was the first undisputed member of the North Pole club. Serves ‘em all right.

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Want more on the race to the North Pole?

The New York Times concludes neither Cook nor Peary succeeded. LINK.

Polar scholar dismisses both, but skewers Cook and Smithsonian magazine particularly hard. LINK.

Smithsonian says, “How did Cook get so much right if he never got to the North Pole in 1908?” LINK.

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http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Cook-vs-Peary.html

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