Gold Brick?

In Pelham, N. Y. last week a tired-looking, mild-mannered oldster of 74 sat at lunch with an explorer whom he had never before met--Sir Hubert Wilkins, who has dreamed for years of traveling under the ice to the North Pole in a submarine. The two talked of the trials & tribulations of men fighting the Arctic.

Sir Hubert's new friend was Dr. Frederick Albert Cook, ex-convict, ex-explorer, only living man who ever claimed that he led a party to the North Pole on foot.

Only other man who ever made such a claim was Rear-Admiral Robert Edwin Peary, who died in 1920. Both Cook and Peary were once presidents of Manhattan's famed Explorers' Club. Their portraits now hang there, side by side, although over Peary and Cook, three decades ago, exploded one of the fiercest controversies in the history of exploration.

In Sullivan County, N. Y., to a German immigrant named Koch, Frederick Albert Cook wa's born in 1865. He worked his way through medical school, hung out his shingle in Brooklyn. Interested by the plans for Peary's Arctic expedition of 1891, he volunteered, was accepted. Later Cook went on a Belgian Antarctic expedition and won the admiration of Roald Amundsen. Cook's other expeditions were to Greenland, Alaska, Mount Everest, Borneo. He was rated a popular and able explorer.

In 1908 Cook made his own first and only "dash to the Pole." He left the land in March, trekked across the pack ice with only two Eskimos, two sleds, 26 dogs. He claimed that he reached the North Pole on April 21, spent two days taking observations of the sun. On the way back he had a dreadful time, spent the following winter in a cave.

Meanwhile Peary, a Navy engineer, was starting his eighth try for the goal he had missed for 20 years. In the spring of 1909, at latitude N. 87DEG 47', he began the famed last lap, alone except for his Negro servant and four Eskimos. His claim: That in five days he covered the remaining 150 miles to the Pole (April 6), made the necessary observations, left a fragment of the flag and a message in a snow cairn, traveled the 150 miles back to the camp at 87DEG 47' in 56 hours.

On Sept. 1, 1909, word of Cook's claim reached civilization. Five days later Peary cabled his own claim from Labrador, followed it shortly by a bitter denunciation of Cook: "Do not trouble about Cook's story. . . . He has not been to the Pole. . . . He has simply handed the public a gold brick. . . ."

Meantime Cook had arrived in Copenhagen, where he received a tremendous welcome, including a gold medal from the Royal Danish Geographical Society. A handful of exploring notables--Roald Amundsen, Knud Rasmussen, Otto Sverdrup, Major-General Adolphus Washington Greely--favored Cook's claim over Peary's. But in the U. S. the National Geographic Society assembled a quorum of experts who gave the decision to Peary, and a bigger gold medal (four inches across). The controversy has not yet died.

Cook partisans have argued:

1) That Peary, a man of 53, by no means rugged, minus several toes lost on a previous expedition, could not possibly have sledged 150 airline miles in 56 hours over rough pack ice; that Cook did not claim much more than 15 miles a day.

2) That Peary did not take enough observations on the last lap, took no longitude observations at all.

3) That Peary had previously shown himself unreliable by claiming, on Green-TIME, December 4, 1939 land expeditions, discovery of "Peary Channel" and "Crocker Land" which subsequent travelers found were not there at all; that there were many discrepancies in his Pole story, that he contradicted himself many times in verbal testimony.

4) That Peary never admitted that his book on the attainment of the Pole was ghostwritten.

Peary partisans have argued:

1) That Cook could not possibly have carried on two dog sleds enough food for three men and the dogs for 82 days of travel.

2) That Cook used a wrong formula for computing the elevation of the sun.

3) That for a suspiciously long time he would not reveal his astronomical observations.

4) That when his observations were finally submitted to the University of Copenhagen, they were shrugged off as worthless.

Against both claimants it has been urged:

1) That each took care to have no competent witness of his "arrival" at the Pole.

2) That neither ever submitted his original records, but only copies.

The question thus became, not "Who got there first?" but "Did anybody get there at all?" Perhaps neither Cook nor Peary first saw the North Pole: perhaps it was first sighted, from the relatively cozy cabin of an airplane, by Richard E. Byrd and Floyd Bennett in 1926.

In 1911 a motion came up in Congress to make Peary a rear-admiral on retired status. The bill was finally passed, but not without some catcalls of "bogus hero," "braggart," "selfish egotist."

Cook, too, had his troubles. In December, 1909, the Explorers' Club expelled him because it disbelieved his claim to have climbed Alaska's 20,300-ft. Mount Mc-Kinley, highest peak in North America, in 1906. He got mixed up in some oil stock frauds, served five years in prison. His friends said he was an innocent figurehead who had been deceived by the embezzlers. Three years ago he sued the Encyclopaedia Britannica, two publishers and a writer for "discrediting" his claim to the discovery of the North Pole. To date he has collected nothing.

Last week, though much of his old ebullience was gone, old "Doc" Cook still held high his white head, as he chatted with Sir Hubert Wilkins. His talk was still of exploring. Said he, holding his fingers to his temples: "Most of all we have got to explore this area here--that lies back of the eyes and between the ears. When that cranial sphere is fully explored men will have no reason to fight wars."

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