My Attainment of the North Pole: Being the Record of the Expetition that First Reached the Boreal Center 1907-1909
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A wild epic journey by an American with two Inuit compa...)
A wild epic journey by an American with two Inuit companions, struggling to be the first humans to reach the North Pole. After reaching the Pole, the struggle continued with a year-long, near death journey back to civilization, without supplies, competing with animals of the wild without defensive weapons, crossing a shifting sea of ice and struggling for life during the long winter night.
Listen as Dr. Frederick Albert Cook, a respected physician and experienced explorer, tells how he became the first man to reach the North Pole on April 21, 1908 and how, upon his return to civilization, he faced the wrath of a powerful, unbelieving rival determined to destroy his reputation.
To the Top of the Continent: Discovery, Exploration and Adventure in Sub-arctic Alaska, The First Ascent of Mt. McKinley, 1903-1906 (1908)
(Dr. Fred. A. Cook gives a graphic account of how he ascen...)
Dr. Fred. A. Cook gives a graphic account of how he ascended Mount McKinley in Alaska, in "To the Top of the Continent." The volume is splendidly illustrated with photographs taken by the author. Unlike many tales of actual adventure, this is well written and holds the attention of the reader. We eagerly follow the Doctor through his harrowing experiences and many failures, and ultimately see him waving “ Old Glory " on the top of the highest mountain in North America, looking down on the one side over the Arctic Circle, and on the other over the rolling Pacific Ocean—all around the snow glittering ghastly white, and overhead the black dome of the sky. Dr. Cook thus describes the sensations of the party as they struggled to the summit:
"Our legs were of wood and our feet of stone. After prodigious efforts we were forced to camp at 18,400 feet with not enough energy left to talk or to eat. The silk tent was pitched, and as we crept into the bags we were so reduced by frost and the awful breath-reducing struggles that we were but half conscious of the surroundings. The best thing to dispel the shivers was hot tea. The water boiled at a point so low that the tea was weak and never very hot. To get the real flavour it was necessary to eat the leaves. It was a restless and exciting night. Restless, because the task of breathing less than one half an atmosphere and pumping blood through collapsing arteries abnormally taxed our powers. Exciting, because with heaving, pulsating bodies we felt as if the end of life had come and the door of Heaven was about to open. An advance of twenty steps so fagged us that we were forced to lean over our ice-axes to puff and ease the heart; another twenty steps and another test, and so on in a life-racking series of final efforts."
Cook's account of the ascent of Mt. McKinley was disputed by those who later claimed credit for this feat. As mountaineering author Edwin Swift Balch states: "The ascent of Mount McKinley by Cook can never be proved or disproved, unless perchance there is a big enough stoneman on top to withstand Alaska storms. This is the case also with thousands of other ascents."
Contents:
PART I
THE EXPEDITION OF 1903
I. With the Breath of the Tropics into the Arctic
II. From Volcanic Fires to Frigid Jungle
III. Westward through the Alaska Range into the Kuskokwim
IV. Through the World's Best Big Game Country
V. Up the Slopes of Mt. McKinley from the Southwest — The First Defeat
VI. Against the Western Face of Mt. McKinley— The Second Defeat
VII. Northward through the Range and into the Chulitna
VIII. Fording, Swimming, and Rafting the Chulitna
IX. Down the Susitna. Around the Alaska Range
PART II
THE EXPEDITION OF 1906
I. With the Prospector into a New Gold Country
II. Preparations for the Cross-country March Motor-boating in Cook Inlet
III. Through the Valley of the Yentna. Climbing Tumbling Waters in a Motor Boat
IV. Discoveries About Mt. Dall and the Yentna Headwaters
V. Into the Yentna Canyons
VI. Northward to Mt. McKinley over New Gold Diggings
VII. Over Gold-strewn Lowlands to Mt. McKinley from the South
VIII. With the Descending Cloud Waters Back to the Sea. The Party Scatters
IX. Up the Susitna and Chulitna by Motor Boat
X. Discover a Way to Reach the Summit of Mt. McKinley. Preparations for the Climb
XI. To the Northeast Ridge. In a Snowhouse at 12,000 Feet
XII. To the Brink of an Arctic Inferno. A Night in a Ditch at 14,000 Feet
XIII. Glory and Desolation above the Clouds from 16,300 to 18,400 Feet
XIV. To the Top. The World in White and the Heavens in Black
Through the First Antarctic Night, 1898-1899: A Narrative of the Voyage of the Belgica Among Newly Discovered Lands and Over an Unknown Sea about the South Pole
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Frederick Albert Cook was an American physician and polar explorer, noted for his claim of having reached the North Pole on April 21, 1908.
Background
Frederick Albert Cook was born on June 10, 1865 at Hortonville, near Callicoon Depot, Sullivan County, New York, United States. He was the third son and fourth of five children of Theodore Albert Cook, a physician, and Magdalene (Long) Cook. Both his parents were natives of Germany, his father having arrived in the United States in 1853 and changed his name at the time of the Civil War from Koch to Cook. He died when young Frederick was five years old, and the boy, while growing up, had to work to help support the family.
Education
After attending public schools in Callicoon and Brooklyn, New York and various night schools, Cook studied at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City, 1885-86, and then, working his way under considerable handicaps, at the University Medical College, New York, from which he graduated in 1890 with the Doctor of Medicine degree.
The University of Copenhagen awarded Cook the honorary degree of Doctor of Science for his explorations.
Career
After replying to an advertisement, Cook was appointed surgeon and ethnologist on the 1891-92 North Greenland Expedition of Robert E. Peary. He earned a good reputation both for medical work (Peary's leg was severely fractured aboard ship before reaching Greenland) and as a member of a support party which traveled 130 miles on the inland ice.
In 1893 he led an expedition to Greenland aboard the vessel Zeta, and in the following year he organized the largest Greenland expedition to set out up to that time.
Following three years of medical practice in Brooklyn, Cook joined the Belgian Antarctic Expedition (1897 - 99) aboard the Belgica as surgeon and ethnologist. This was the beginning of a lifelong friendship with the vessel's mate, Roald Amundsen, who later became world-famous as a polar explorer.
The Belgica was held in the Antarctic ice-pack for almost a year so that the expedition's objectives were not achieved, but Cook returned with a high reputation, both as a medical officer and as a leader of men under adverse conditions, and received several Belgian honors. His account of the expedition was published in London and New York in 1900 under the title Through the First Antarctic Night. One event on the expedition led to a lasting controversy.
While en route to Antarctica, Cook met a British missionary in Tierra del Fuego, the Rev. Thomas Bridges, who had compiled the first dictionary and grammar of the Yahgan Indian language. Cook offered to take the manuscript to the United States to secure a publisher and was allowed to do so. He was later accused of endeavoring to pass off the material as his own. (It was finally published in Germany in 1933 under the name of the author. ) In 1901 Cook again accompanied Peary to Greenland, this time as surgeon on the unsuccessful Erik expedition.
Turning from arctic exploration for a time, Cook led a party in 1903 on a first attempt to climb Mt. McKinley in Alaska, the highest peak in North America. This was unsuccessful, but he renewed the attempt three years later, this time as joint leader with Professor Herschel C. Parker of a well-equipped party, which was also unsuccessful. Cook subsequently claimed that later in the season he had succeeded in reaching the top of the peak, accompanied only by a single local guide, but this claim is not generally credited.
On July 3, 1907, Cook sailed from Gloucester, Massachussets, for Greenland aboard the John R. Bradley on what was thought to be a hunting expedition. After reaching Annoatok, somewhat north of Etah, Greenland, on August 27, the ship returned, leaving Cook and a single companion to prepare for a polar journey the following spring.
On February 19, 1908, accompanied by a group of Eskimos, he left his Greenland base, crossed the sea to Ellesmere Island in Canada, and continued west and north to the northernmost point of Axel Heiberg Island. He chose this route because it provided better hunting opportunities than Peary's more direct route farther east. Leaving his supporting party to return to Greenland, Cook set out with two sleds, twenty-six dogs, and two twenty-year-old Eskimos on a northward course over the sea ice. What happened after this remains a subject of controversy. Cook claimed, and his supporters have since maintained, that he reached the vicinity of the North Pole on April 21, 1908, remained there for two days, and set out to retrace his outward route. Because the westward-drifting sea ice carried him off his course, he failed to pick up the food caches laid down on the outward journey. After a dangerous sledge journey he finally reached Cape Sparbo on North Devon Island and wintered there in a semi-underground Eskimo shelter. With his two companions he reached Greenland the following April, utterly exhausted. The view is widely held, particularly by supporters of Peary, that Cook in fact traveled west and then south shortly after leaving Axel Heiberg Island and was never within five hundred miles of the North Pole. There is no question that he was away from his Greenland base for fourteen months, lived for most of this time by hunting, Eskimo fashion, and wintered as already described. This in itself was no mean achievement. Cook's return from Greenland to the United States followed a roundabout route. He first sledged southward across Melville Bay to the nearest large settlement of Upernavik and there eventually boarded a Danish supply steamer for Copenhagen.
The first news of his claim to have reached the Pole was released in a telegram sent on September 1 from Lerwick, Shetland Islands. His arrival at Copenhagen on September 4 was treated, both by the Danish authorities and by the world press, as a triumph. Drama was added to the reception when two days later, on September 6, Peary's message announcing his journey to the Pole was received from a remote Labrador settlement.
Cook failed to convince official and scientific opinion that he was the first to reach the Pole. The controversy was eclipsed by the outbreak of the European war in 1914, and because of the war Cook dropped the appeal he had made for a congressional investigation. There are those who believe that such an investigation might have turned out in Cook's favor and might also have thrown considerable doubt on Peary's claims, though Cook himself never challenged them. Nevertheless, Cook's assertion that he reached the North Pole is certainly open to serious doubt on the basis of his own evidence. In 1915-16 Cook led an expedition around the world, including anthropological explorations in Borneo. In 1917, after attempting to volunteer for war service, he went to Wyoming to carry out geological exploration, discovered oil, and made a substantial profit. This he used to found an oil company in Texas. In 1923 he was indicted for mail fraud for promoting the company; he was convicted and sentenced to serve fourteen years in prison and pay a fine of $12, 000. In Leavenworth Penitentiary, which he entered in 1925, he earned a high reputation among both his fellow prisoners and the authorities, and he was paroled on March 8, 1929. It has been asserted that the oil lands which were the basis for the original charge, far from being worthless, eventually proved to be a valuable investment.
On May 3, 1940, Cook suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, and on May 18 he received an unconditional pardon from President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Less than three months later he died in the New Rochelle (New York) Hospital. His death was attributed to pulmonary edema. Following cremation, his ashes were interred in Forest Lawn Cemetery, Buffalo, New York.
Achievements
He received the gold medal of the Royal Danish Geographical Society.
(Dr. Fred. A. Cook gives a graphic account of how he ascen...)
Personality
Cook was attractive and rather gracious; he drew large audiences on his lecture tours and told a convincing story.
Connections
In 1889 he married Libby Forbes. On June 10, 1902 he married Mrs. Marie Fidell Hunt, widow of a Philadelphia surgeon. He was survived by his second wife, by whom he had been divorced in 1923, and by a stepdaughter, Ruth, and an only daughter, Helene.
