The Great Polar Fraud

 INTRODUCTION

January 1926, Leavenworth Prison, Kansas

The tall, handsome man walked into the warden’s office and sat on the long wooden bench. Though he was getting older and his blond hair was turning gray, he still carried himself well and retained the distinguished look of a prosperous country doctor. His eyes were as piercing as ever. But his face was pale and his body had lost the firmness of his glory days. The years in Leavenworth had done that.

Dr. Frederick Cook was nervous. He got few visitors, not because he was forgotten but because he discouraged them. He did not want people to see him like this. Even his ex-wife, whom he remained close to, was barred. Though he still loved her dearly and she was in his thoughts every day, she would no longer be in his life. Every request for an interview had been turned down. Journalists, old friends, people who had been part of his earlier life when he had been celebrated coast to coast, they were all on the no visit list. But for the man who was on his way to the prison, he had to make an exception. Their lives were entwined in so many ways.

Cook and his guards heard the sound of approaching footsteps, doors clanging open and banging shut, as the visitor made his way to the warden’s office. Then the door opened and a guard stepped in. Behind him was a big, ruddy-faced man, dressed well but looking slightly uncomfortable in his fashionable clothes: Roald Amundsen, the famous polar explorer, and the first man to the South Pole. Amundsen stepped around the guard and stood facing Cook, who had risen on his entrance. The two men stared at each other for a moment, then broad smiles broke out on their faces. As if of one mind, each man stepped forward and grasped the other firmly by the hand.

They sat on the wooden bench, side by side. Amundsen did not let go of Cook’s hand. He was European, and comfortable with the intimacy.  Cook was glad to feel the warmth of friendly companionship. After an exchange of pleasantries, under the watchful and curious eyes of the warden and a few prison guards, talk turned to the future—specifically to Amundsen’s plans to fly to the North Pole.

They avoided the past, as if by a mutual pact. The past was like a ghost in the room, brooding over them. It was one of two ghosts they were both acutely aware of. But they brushed them aside, as Amundsen spoke of the failure of his attempt to fly to the Pole in 1925. The next time, he planned to use an airship. He grew animated as he told Cook about the Norge, and his plans for a transpolar flight. He had seen so many features on the ice during the 1925 flight, features which confirmed sightings Cook had made nearly two decades previously. As he listened, Cook got excited. Although he would not say it to the younger man, he knew those sightings could back up his claim, the claim that had both crowned his life’s achievements and blighted them.

On April 15, 1909, Cook had arrived in Annoatok, northern Greenland, with a tale of unbelievable survival against the odds. He had disappeared fourteen months earlier with two Eskimo companions, last seen heading north across the frozen polar sea. When he reappeared—long after he was given up for dead—he told a delighted world that he had reached the Pole on April 22, 1908, but the drift of the polar sea had meant that it took him a full year to return to civilization.

Unluckily for Cook, another American explorer had also set his heart on achieving the Pole. Naval Commander Robert Peary had impressive backers; even President Roosevelt had been behind him. Peary set out a year later than Cook, but had not got lost on his return. He reached civilization within five days of Cook, and also claimed to have reached the Pole. He said he got there on April 6, 1909. Cook was happy to share the glory; Peary, less so. The naval commander immediately threw the weight of his considerable circle of friends into a frenzied effort to discredit Cook. The two men, once friends, ended up in an unseemly media war. Bit by bit, all of Cook’s previous achievements came under scrutiny. Peary even paid a massive bribe to one man to discredit Cook’s claim to have been the first to climb Mount  McKinley, the highest point in North America. It was a campaign of dirty tricks and intense bitterness, and it worked. Within a year, Cook was seen by everyone as a fraud.

The stigma followed him for the rest of his life. Now Peary was long dead, but as Cook languished in Leavenworth Prison, he knew that it was the ghost of Peary that put him there; the judge at his trial had been a personal friend of his rival, and had imposed a sentence far harsher than his offense warranted.

The other ghost that brooded over Cook and Amundsen in the dank visiting room was the elemental spirit of the Pole itself. It had shaped and dominated both their lives. Cook had known from his early twenties that he wanted to reach 90 degrees north; Amundsen had known from his teens, when he had started sleeping naked on top of his sheets, with his windows wide open. The frozen Norwegian air hardened his body for the adventures he dreamed of, and there had been many adventures. Amundsen had spent the first winter in Antarctica with Cook, and had been the first to navigate the Northwest Passage. In 1908 he was ready to make his own dash for the Pole. Then, within a week, he had heard that both his rivals, Cook and Peary, claimed to have snatched the prize.

Devastated, he altered his plans and secretly sailed south, becoming the first man to reach the South Pole, an accomplishment he considered a sort of consolation prize. As he sat with Cook that day in 1926, he must have wondered how things might have turned out if Cook and Peary had not both claimed the main prize. He knew that there were considerable doubts over Cook’s claim, and he suspected that there was doubt over Peary’s—the brash American had never had a high reputation in Europe. But history had decided, at least then, to accept Peary’s claim, and Amundsen had to go along with that verdict.

To Cook, Amundsen appeared pensive and almost depressed that afternoon.

“Our lot has been a hard one,” Amundsen said with a sigh. “From the depths of poverty to the heights of glory. From brief spells of hard earned success to the scourge of condemnation. I have wondered for  years how you stood it all. I have had the same, with perhaps not so much of the knife in it, but with quite as much of the pain of envy.”

After forty-five minutes the warden signaled the end of the visit. As Amundsen turned to go, he said, “I want you to know that even if all the world goes against you, I believe in you as a man.”

Amundsen left to continue his lecture tour, a fundraiser for the airship flight over the Pole. If he succeeded he would be the third man to reach the spot, and the first to fly there. But life is never that simple, and he was very aware that he had a rival, a young Navy aviator named Richard Byrd. Although he did not know it at the time, theirs would be a very closely contested race, a race he would lose by hours.

And he would die without ever knowing that Byrd’s claim to the Pole was as dubious as Cook’s. Eventually, Peary’s claim was also discredited. The three American heroes had knowingly and deliberately tried to pull a con on the entire world. Cook got away with it for a couple of months. It took decades before Peary and Bryd were found out. The spirit of the Pole was a dark one, inspiring greed, envy, deceit, and outright fraud. If the race to the South Pole was a tale of courage and self-sacrifice, the race to the North Pole was a sordid tale of great men with great flaws who allowed their soaring ambitions to overcome their ethics and honesty.

As Cook was escorted back to his cell, his step was lighter. The visit had done him a lot of good, and his jaunty air belied his sixty years. Some part of him hoped that Amundsen would find something in the bleak but beautiful polar landscape to back up his own claim to have been the first there. Despite his lengthy incarceration, he could still dream. . . .

***

EPILOGUE

ROBERT PEARY

All his life had been a buildup to the Pole. When he failed to reach it in 1909, he knew he was too old and too frail to mount another attempt. So exaggerating his distances on the final few days was his only option, particularly when it became obvious that Cook was claiming to have snatched the prize.

The following year he exercised all his ingenuity and cunning to shape the narrative in his own favor. He succeeded magnificently, breaking the reputation of his rival. In October 1910 he was promoted to the rank of captain in the Navy, a remarkable achievement for a man who spent so little of his career in the service.

But he knew he could not rest on his laurels. His own claims were as doubtful as Cook’s, and he could not afford to let them come under scrutiny. He headed off a move in Congress to have his claim to the Pole evaluated by an independent panel of explorers. He headed off many such moves, and consistently refused to make his papers available to researchers. His intransigence made no difference. He was given the Thanks of Congress for discovering the Pole by a special act in March  1911, and later the same month, Congress promoted him to the rank of Rear Admiral in the Navy Civil Engineer Corps. The promotion marked his retirement from the Navy.

Peary retired to a spacious home on Eagle Island, in Casco Bay, Maine, where he lived out his final decade. He received numerous foreign honors, and in 1916 became chairman of the National Aerial Coast Patrol Commission, a private organization which advocated the use of aircraft in detecting enemy warships and submarines. This led directly to the formation of the Naval Reserve aerial coastal patrol units—and paved the way for the later successes of Richard Byrd. He was also involved in the planning of a system of eight air mail routes, which became the basis of the US Postal Service air mail system.

Admiral Peary died in Washington on February 20, 1920. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. His companion Matthew Henson returned from the polar expedition and spent the next thirty years working at the US Customs House in New York. He died in in 1955, and was reinterred in Arlington in 1988.

Peary’s personal papers, including his diaries and notes from the final polar expedition, were not made available to researchers until 1984. When they were finally analyzed, they revealed nothing to support Peary’s claim to have reached the Pole. The verdict of history is clear: he fell a hundred miles short.

ROALD AMUNDSEN

Umberto Nobile did his best to hijack the success of the Norge expedition, defying his contract by going on a lecture tour of America, and claiming all the glory for himself and Mussolini. But even a braggart can only go so far on old glory; eventually he decided to mount his own Arctic expedition. This would be an entirely Italian affair. During 1927–1928 he prepared an N-class airship, Italia, which was slightly bigger than the Norge and could travel at seventy miles per hour. He got it to Spitzbergen in May 1928, and on May 23 took off for the North Pole, repeating the first leg of the journey he had made with Amundsen. Nobile was both pilot and expedition leader.

 The following day they reached the Pole, then turned south, heading back to Spitzbergen. But a huge storm broke out. The airship weathered the storm as best it could, but on May 25, still well short of home, the Italia crashed onto the ice. They were just twenty miles short of Spitzbergen. Ten of the crew were thrown clear in the crash, while six remained attached to the dirigible, which took off into the air after the smash. Nobile watched helplessly as the six men disappeared into the sky. The dirigible and the six men were never found. One of the ten men thrown clear was killed instantly. That left nine injured men on the ice.

Nobile himself suffered a broken arm, broken leg, shattered rib, and a head injury. Others were equally battered. They managed to salvage some survival items, including the radio and a tent, and one of the six carried away to their deaths threw supplies of food from the air as he was swept up. The nine survivors set up camp on the ice, which was slowly drifting toward nearby islands. After a few days three made a dash across the ice. One, the meteorologist who had failed to see the storm coming, disappeared on that march. There were persistent rumours that he was killed and eaten by the other two.

The incident was an international disaster, and quickly many nations offered to help, including the Soviet Union and the Scandinavian countries close by. Amundsen despised Nobile, but he could not watch a fellow explorer die on the ice and do nothing. By now he was in semi-retirement, touring the world, lecturing, and enjoying being a public hero. He even did a lecture tour of Japan, a completely alien culture to Europeans of that era. But when he heard about Nobile’s disappearance, he knew where he had to be.

He did not have an aircraft of his own, but he volunteered to be part of a private French effort to save the missing airmen. On June 18, 1928, he boarded the Latham 47 Flying Boat at Tromsø for the flight toward Spitzbergen. On board were five French men, including two experienced pilots. The plane rose into the gray mist and turned toward the Barents Sea. It was beset by fog for most of the flight, with visibility very poor. At some point, the plane simply disappeared. Some wreckage, including  a wing-float and part of a gasoline tank, were eventually recovered. Of Amundsen there was no sign. He had simply vanished in the cold air.

It is believed that the plane crashed into the sea due to poor visibility, and all on board were killed on impact. Roald Amundsen, the last of the Vikings, was fifty-five years old. He had overcome his financial woes, and had established a reputation as the greatest of the modern explorers. He never got the chance to enjoy his golden years. Like his great rival Scott, he died in harness, actively exploring the frozen lands that had given his life meaning.

As the years have passed, Amundsen’s reputation has continued to grow. It is now widely accepted that he was the first man to reach both Poles, and his list of other achievements is staggering. He was the noblest of men, fearless and incorruptible.

His partner on the North Pole flight, Lincoln Ellsworth, remained interested in exploration, switching his attention to Antarctica, where he led four expeditions, all air based. He completed the first trans-Antarctic flight in 1935.

As for Umberto Nobile, he was rescued by a Russian ice-breaker after a month on the ice. Eight of the sixteen crew returned to safety. The Italian authorities blamed him for the loss of the Italia, and it took him several years to rehabilitate his reputation. He ended up an academic at the University of Naples, and he never returned to the Arctic. He died in 1978, still a legend in his own mind.

FREDERICK COOK

Cook lost his media war decisively, and with it his reputation. The whole of America—and most of the world—accepted Peary’s version that he was a knowing fraud. The attention on his polar con caused scrutiny of his earlier achievements, and his conquest of Mount McKinley was wiped off the record books.

This was followed by his imprisonment for mail fraud. He was a model prisoner. He worked as night warden of the prison hospital, as well as on a literacy program. He gave lectures to the other inmates, and wrote uplifting articles in the prison paper, The New Era, which were  widely reprinted. His behavior behind bars did much to rehabilitate him in the eyes of the American public. In 1926 Roald Amundsen took time out of his lecture tour to visit his old friend. The publicity from that meeting also helped rehabilitate Cook.

On his release in 1930, Cook chose not to go back to his beloved but estranged wife. He felt his disgrace too keenly, and felt his family were better off without him. Though they had been divorced before his imprisonment, they remained close for the rest of their lives, getting together several times a year. Cook found no market for his writings, and ended up moving to Chicago, where he helped out with a friend’s ophthalmology practice. His own medical qualification was long out of date.

The last few years of his life were spent shuttling from Chicago to New York and New Jersey, where he stayed with his daughters and a sister. Always a gentleman with a charismatic air, he did win back some support. But his stories of great discoveries in the Arctic and in Alaska were no longer believed by the public.

At the very end of his life, Cook received a Presidential pardon from President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was delighted. It was some vindication, but not the vindication he wanted. He would have been happier if his claim for the Pole was accepted. A few months later, in early August 1940, Cook suffered a cerebral hemorrhage. He died of complications a few days later, on August 5, and is buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery, Buffalo, New York.

He is now remembered as a talented ethnographer and anthropologist, and a gifted explorer, but also as a deeply flawed man with a penchant for exaggeration which led to claims everyone accepts were fraudulent.

RICHARD BYRD

Like Peary, Byrd knew that if he was to shine in the Navy and build up a career, exploration was his ticket. His 1926 flight close to the North Pole achieved that for him. He became a national hero, and was promoted to the rank of commander. He and Floyd Bennett were both presented with the Medal of Honor.

 In 1927 he took part in the race to be the first to do a non-stop transatlantic flight. But the plane he and Bennett were flying crashed, and Bennett was injured. Charles Lindbergh made the first successful crossing on May 21, 1927. With a new pilot (Bernt Balchen), Byrd became the second man to achieve a non-stop transatlantic flight, on June 29.

Bennett eventually recovered from his injuries, but they left him in a weakened state. A year later, on April 25, he was flying a rescue mission for the crew of the Bremen, which had crash landed on Greenly Island in the province of Quebec, Canada. He had pneumonia at the time of the flight, and succumbed to his fever in the air. There is a persistent rumour that he admitted to a friend shortly before his death that he and Byrd had not reached the North Pole during their historic flight, but turned back an hour short of their target due to engine problems. This is entirely consistent with what is known of the flight.

Byrd switched his attentions to Antarctica in 1928, leading an expedition with two ships and three planes. They established a base at Little America on the Ross Ice Shelf, and in the second summer, on November 28, 1929, Byrd flew to the South Pole and back again, becoming the first man to do this. His fame at an all-time high, he was promoted to the rank of rear admiral by a special act of Congress, becoming the youngest admiral in the history of the United States Navy. Not bad for a man whose career looked to have been cut short by a gymnastics injury.

Byrd led four more Antarctic expeditions (1933–’35, 1939–’40, 1946–’47, and 1955–’56). His adventures, recounted in his popular books, became the stuff of legend. He spent five months alone during the Antarctic winter, manning a meteorological station on his own, and nearly died of carbon monoxide poisoning due to a poorly ventilated stove. In 1946 he led the largest ever Antarctic expedition, involving four thousand men, and in his last expedition he established a permanent base at McMurdo Sound, which is still in use, as well as bases at The Bay of Whales and at the South Pole itself.

He managed to take time out to serve during the Second World War, mostly as a consultant to the Navy top brass. From 1942 to 1945  he headed important missions in the Pacific, surveying remote island groups and setting up airfields, and he was present at the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945.

Admiral Byrd passed away peacefully in his sleep at his home in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Boston on March 11, 1957, and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

His later career established him as one of the true greats of Antarctic exploration. His reputation never suffered because of his deception on the North Pole flight of 1926. This is probably because, at the time, he was believed to have been the second or third man to have reached the spot, not the first. So his claim never came in for the intense scrutiny that could ruin reputations.

Anthony Galvin