My attainment of the Pole

by Frederick Albert Cook

Insofar as the earthly glory and applause are concerned, I should be only too glad to share them, with all material accruements, to any honest, manly rivals—those of the past and those of the future. But against the unjust charges which have been made against me, against the aspersions on my personal integrity, against the ignominy with which my name has been besmirched, I will fight until the public gets a normal perspective.

I have never hoaxed a mythical achievement. Everything I have ever claimed was won by hard labor, by tremendous physical fortitude and endurance, and by such personal sacrifice as only I, and my immediate family, will ever know.

For this reason, I returned to my country in the latter part of 1910, as I always intended to do, after a year's rest. By this time I knew that my enemies would have said all that was possible about me; the excitement of the controversy would have quieted, and I should have the advantage of the last word.

In the heat of the controversy, only just returned in a weakened condition from the North, and mentally bewildered by the unexpected maelstrom of events, I should not have been able, with justice to myself, to have met all the charges, criminal and silly, which were made against me. Even what I did say was misquoted and distorted by a sensational press which found it profitable to add fuel to the controversy. Sometimes I feel that no man ever born has been so variedly, so persistently lied about, misrepresented, made the butt of such countless untruths as myself. When I consider the lies, great and small, which for more than a year, throughout the entire world, have been printed about me, I am filled almost with hopelessness. And sometimes, when I think how I have been unjustly dubbed as the most colossal liar of history, I am filled with a sort of sardonic humor.

Returning to my country, determined to state my case freely and frankly, and making the honest admission that any claim to the definite, actual attainment of the North Pole—the mathematical pin-point on which the earth spins—must rest upon assumptions, because of the impossibility of accuracy in observations, I found that this admission, which every explorer would have to make, which Mr. Peary was unwillingly forced to make at the Congressional investigation, was construed throughout the country and widely heralded as a "confession," that garbled extracts were lifted from the context of my magazine story and their meaning distorted. In hundreds of newspapers I was represented as confessing to a fraudulent claim or as making a plea of insanity. A full answer to the charges made against me, necessary in order to justly cover my case, because of the controversial nature of certain statements which involved Mr. Peary, was prohibited by the contract I found it necessary to sign in order to get any statement of a comparatively ungarbled sort before a public which had read Mr. Peary's own account of his journey.

I found the columns of the press of my country closed to the publication of statements which involved my enemies, because of the unfounded prejudice created against me during my absence and because of the power of Mr. Peary's friends. It is almost impossible in any condition for anyone to secure a refutation for an unfounded attack in the American papers. With the entire press of the country printing misstatements, I was almost helpless. The justice, kindliness and generous spirit of fair dealing of the American people, however, was extended to me—I found the American people glad—nay, eager—to listen.

It is this spirit which has encouraged me, after the shameful campaign of opprobrium which well-nigh broke my spirit, to tell the entire and unalterable truth about myself and an achievement in which I still believe—in fairness to myself, in order to clear myself, in order that the truth about the discovery of the North Pole may be known by my people and in order that history may record its verdict upon a full, free and frank exposition. I do not address myself to any clique of geographers or scientists, but to the great public of the world, and herein, for the first time, shall I give fully whatever proofs there may be of my conquest. Upon these records must conviction rest.

Did I actually reach the North Pole? When I returned to civilization and reported that the boreal center had been attained, I believed that I had reached the spot toward which valiant men had strained for more than three hundred years. I still believe that I reached the boreal center as far as it is possible for any human being to ascertain it. If I was mistaken in approximately placing my feet upon the pin-point about which this controversy has raged, I maintain that it is the inevitable mistake any man must make. To touch that spot would be an accident. That any other man has more accurately determined the Pole I do deny. That Mr. Peary reached the North Pole—or its environs—with as fair accuracy as was possible, I have never denied. That Mr. Peary was better fitted to reach the Pole, and better equipped to locate this mythical spot, I do not admit. In fact, I believe that, inasmuch as the purely scientific ascertainment is a comparatively simple matter, I stood a better chance of more scientifically and more accurately marking the actual spot than Mr. Peary. I reached my goal when the sun was twelve degrees above the horizon, and was therefore better able to mark a mathematical position than Mr. Peary could have with the sun at less than seven degrees. Mr. Peary's case rests upon three observations of sun altitude so low that, as proof of a position, they are worthless.

Besides taking observations, which, as I shall explain in due course in my narrative, cannot be adequate, I also ascertained what I believed to be my approximate position at the boreal center and en route by measuring the shadows each hour of the long day. Inasmuch as one's shadow decreases or increases in length as the sun rises toward the meridian or descends, at the boreal center, where the sun circles the entire horizon at practically the same height during the entire day, one's shadow in this region of mystery is of the same length. In this observation, which is so simple that a child may understand it, is a sure and certain means of approximately ascertaining the North Pole. I took advantage of this method, which does not seem to have occurred to any other Arctic traveler, and this helped to bring conviction.

I shall in this volume present with detail the story of my Arctic journey—I shall tell how it was possible for me to reach my goal, why I believe I attained that goal; and upon this record must the decision of my people rest. I shall herein tell the story of an unfair and unworthy plot to ruin the reputation of an innocent man because of an achievement the full and prior credit of which was desired by a brutally selfish, brutally unscrupulous rival. I shall tell of a tragedy compared with which the North Pole and any glory accruing to its discoverer pales into insignificance—the tragedy of a spirit that was almost broken, of a man whose honor and pride was cut with knives in unclean hands.