Did Peary Really Discover the North Pole?
Who really discovered the North Pole? Was it Admiral Robert Peary? Dr. Frederick Cook? Neither? Why is it so complicated? In this episode we’ll discuss who really discovered the North Pole and learn all about their expeditions. And there is some Arctic trivia at the end!
Transcript
Tzeela: Hi I'm Tzeela and I'm 16
Rina: Hi I'm Rina and I'm 14
Dalia: Hey, I'm Dalia and I'm 11
All: And this is Things You Thought You Knew About History!
Tzeela: Where we tell you the real story behind historical misconceptions.
Rina: I was thinking about moving…
Dalia: To where?
Rina: The North Pole
Dalia: Guess who discovered the North Pole?
Tzeela: Who?
Rina: Wait, so we are ignoring the fact I’m moving?
Tzeela: Shhhhhhh - I want to know who discovered the north pole
Dalia: Well it’s a little bit complicated. There are a few people who may have discovered the North Pole.
Tzeela: One of them is a man named Robert Peary.
Rina: Who’s he?
Dalia: Robert Peary was an explorer. Before that, he oversaw construction in Key West, Florida, and surveyed land in Nicaragua. Longing for adventure, he took his first trip to the Arctic in 1886, in an attempt to cross the Greenland ice cap. That mission wasn’t a success but it began his long obsession with the Arctic.
Tzeela: The other was a man named Fredrick Cook.
Rina: Cook had a sad life. Around the time he was graduating from medical school, his wife and baby died in childbirth. Learning and reading about exploration became an escape for him, so when he read that Peary was looking for volunteers to go on an expedition to Greenland he jumped at the opportunity.
Dalia: Originally, the two were friends. Cook helped set Peary’s broken bones when he shattered his leg in an accident.
Tzeela: So what happened? How did they become rivals?
Rina: Cook and Peary began to have disagreements because no one was allowed to publish anything about the trip before Peary did. Cook wanted to publish the results of an ethnological study of Arctic natives or a study about their culture, but Peary didn’t approve. So they parted ways until 1901.
Dalia: In 1901, Peary’s family turned to Cook because they thought Peary got lost in the Arctic on his expedition to reach the North Pole. Cook led a rescue mission to help him.
Tzeela: Both Cook and Peary lead some more expeditions after this. Cook traveled to Antarctica and tried to climb to the top of Mt. Mckinley/ Mt. Denali. He claimed to have reached it in 1906 but this claim was disputed later.
Rina: Peary made another attempt to reach the North Pole in 1905.
Dalia: Why was it so hard to reach the North Pole?
Tzeela: The North Pole is located in the middle of the Arctic Ocean so you have to travel on drifting ice to reach it. Also, once you reach it you can’t easily mark the spot because the ice will just move.
Rina: But in 1908 Fredrick Cook did reach it! Maybe…
Dalia: He describes his North Pole expedition in his book My Attainment of the Pole. He traveled from Massachusetts to Greenland where they camped in Anoatok for the winter. In February of 1908, he left with a team of 9 natives, 11 sleds, and 103 dogs. They traveled across Ellesmere and the Axel Heiberg Islands to Cape Stallworthy, at the edge of the frozen Arctic Ocean.
Rina: As planned, only Cook and 2 native hunters, Etukishook and Ahwelah (hope I’m saying that right), continued from there, covering on average 15 miles a day. On April 21, 1908, he claimed that according to his sextant, a navigation device, they were "at a spot which was as near as possible" to the North Pole.
Tzeela: Interestingly, though he had predicted an eastward drift, he reported drifting to the west and reported seeing a big, thick, flat-topped, ice island. Both these observations and some more of his were confirmed by later explorations in the North Pole.
Dalia: He got back to Anaotok in April 1909 where he heard that Robert Peary had set out on his own expedition to the North Pole!
Tzeela: Peary set out from just south of Anoatok with his usual big party of 50 men, many sleds, and 246 dogs to bring supplies ahead of them. Within a month they had traveled 280 miles, then he sent everyone back except for four natives and Mathew Henson, a Black man from Maryland who accompanied him on all his expeditions.
Rina: On April 6, 1909, Robert Peary supposedly reached the Pole. Henson later told the press that he’d had a feeling they reached the North Pole. He said Peary replied "I do not suppose that we can swear that we are exactly at the Pole," then he pulled an American flag from his pocket and set it on their igloo. The next morning he checked his sextant, said nothing about it to Henson, and started the journey home.
Tzeela: Around September 1909, the New York Herald released an article titled Discovered by Dr. Fredrick A. Cook. A week later The New York Times printed Peary’s story.
Dalia: And so the battle began. The public was split on who to believe. Newspapers polled their readers and Cook was heavily favored. But Peary started to gain popularity when he and his followers began to attack Cook's claim of having reached the top of Mt. Mckinley. [Dramatic voice]
Rina: Peary’s sponsor the National Geographic society verified his claim. A subcommittee of the House of Representatives voted to credit Peary for the discovery, but not everyone agreed.
Tzeela: So why is it still a question? It seems like most people agreed that Peary is the one who got to the North Pole.
Dalia: Well, Peary's claims have been disputed.
Rina In 1988, the National Geographic magazine published an article that claimed that Peary exaggerated how far he had gone but even before that others had expressed doubt about Peary’s claim, most notably someone named Denis Rawlins in his book Peary at the North Pole: Fact or Fiction? Rawlins was a trained astronomer and independent scholar.
Tzeela: Peary originally didn’t make his navigation notes available to the public. When his family later made his notes public they seemed to indicate that he knew he fell short of his goal.
Dalia: Another problem with verifying Peary's claim is that no one else in his crew was trained in navigation, making it impossible for them to confirm his claim.
Rina: Matthew Henson also reported a different route than Peary did.
Tzeela: Suspiciously, Peary also reported that they doubled in speed once the only other navigator, Captain Bob Bartlett, left.
Dalia: However some people still back Peary, National Geographic said that some of the photographs and depth soundings, a measuring of the depth of a body of water, taken by Peary and Henson seem to have been taken near the North Pole.
Rina: But if Peary’s claims are so questioned, why not say it was Cook who discovered the North Pole?
Tzeela: Cook’s claim couldn’t be proved because many of his navigation records and instruments were lost. He had given them to Harry Whitney, a friend of his, to bring back to the United States but Whitney’s ship didn’t come. Whitney joined Robert Peary for the trip back to the United States but was forced to leave Cook’s things behind.
Dalia: Cook sent a report to the University of Copenhagen in November 1909. They had been expecting original documents and all they could say with what they received was that Fredrick Cook’s claim was not proven. Not disproven, just not proven.
Rina: So who really did discover the North Pole?
Tzeela: Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian explorer, flew to the North Pole in 1926. This is the first verified expedition to the North Pole.
Dalia: The first people who were confirmed to have gotten to the North Pole by foot were a Soviet Research group in 1948.
Rina: In 1958, the USS Nautilus, a nuclear-powered submarine, was the first watercraft to reach the North Pole.
Tzeela: And now for some trivia!!!
Dalia: Here’s how it will work:
Rina: We will ask you some questions, then we count down from ten to give you a chance to think of the answer. Feel free to pause if you need more time.
Tzeela: Okay let's get started.
Dalia: Which is colder, the North or South Pole?
10 - 9 - 8 - 7 - 6 - 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1
Dalia: The South Pole! Its higher altitude causes even colder weather.
Tzeela: How many times does the sun rise and set each year in the Arctic?
10 - 9 - 8 - 7 - 6 - 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1
Only once!
Rina: How many animals can be found in the Arctic?
10 - 9 - 8 - 7 - 6 - 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1
Around 5,500
Tzeela: What does the word "Arctic" mean?
10 - 9 - 8 - 7 - 6 - 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1
It comes from the Greek word for bear, because of the bear constellations the Ursa Major and Minor that are found in the north?
Dalia: How many countries have land inside the Arctic circle?
10 - 9 - 8 - 7 - 6 - 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1
Eight: Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, and the United States.
Tzeela: Thanks for listening, we hope you enjoyed!
Rina: If you did, consider following us or leaving a review.
Rina: By the way, I'm not actually moving anywhere
BYE!