We all love a good race. The competition, the rivalry, the winner revelling in their victory at the finish line. But some races don’t have a clear winner. In fact, some destinations aren’t all that clear either.
In the early 1900s, the race to the North Pole was in full swing and there were two competing claims as to who got there first. The problem is, the North Pole is tricky to get to, it’s tricky to notice when you’re there and it’s also very tricky to confirm that you’ve been there in the first place.
Oh, and it also doesn’t stay still. It’s a moving target with a promise of frostbite.
Now, on September 2 1909, the front page of the New York Herald boasted that the North Pole was discovered by Dr Frederick A Cook, a lovely man, but also known to be wildly full of shit. It’s been shown that he clearly faked his claimed ascent of the highest mountain in North America. Okay mate.
Five short days later, The New York Times declared that the first person to reach the North Pole was in fact one Robert Peary, a shall we say, less lovely, man whose one mission in life was to obtain fame.
There was no one else more focused on Arctic exploration than Robert Peary. Heck, he’d dig up indigenous graves, steal remains and fake funerals to achieve his glory. And yes, he actually did that.
Well, perhaps he wasn’t as pigheaded as it sounds. He DID have a faithful African American field assistant join him on his adventures. Or maybe that was because he knew he wouldn’t have to share his honours with a black man. Yeah, he was probably a bigot.
So... who actually got to the North Pole first?
Throughout history, there have been many attempts to reach Santa’s homeland. One keen explorer was supposedly murdered by his chief scientist along the way. Another got caught in pack ice and drifted aimlessly for almost 2 years. 2 whole years. Yikes.
But Cook and Peary both lived to tell the tale. They even wrote about their journey’s in their top-secret diaries.
Now Cook and Peary were by no means strangers. In fact, they started out as companions and voyagers together, until it became clear that Peary was a bit obsessed with getting all the glory.
So they went their separate ways and they took wildly different approaches to their race to the North Pole.
Cook was described as being part of a new wave of explorers. Taking a keen interest in the indigenous people he came across in the Arctic, he learned their dialects and adopted their diet. Walrus anyone?
He left for the pole in February 1908 with a party of nine natives and 11 light sledges pulled by
103 dogs. His plan was to follow an untried but promising route.
Peary, on the other hand, took a more imperialistic approach. Chasing fame at any cost, he cared for the local people's well-being, but only to the extent that it might be useful to him.
In July 1908, Peary left on his voyage to the Pole with a very large party indeed, including over 40 Inuit men, women and children, 70 tonnes of whale meat, the meat and blubber of 50 walruses, tonnes of coal, and nearly 50 heavy sledges and 246 dogs.
Now, both men claimed to reach the North Pole. But what happened on their return is where the story really gets interesting.
See, along the arduous way home, Cook met an American Hunter named Harry Whitney who offered him a trip back on a boat that was coming for him at the end of the summer. But Cook thought it would be faster to sledge another 700 miles down to a Danish trading post and catch a ship from there. (We’d opt for the boat, but each to their own.)
Given he was travelling light, Cook left all his heavy luggage in Whitney’s safe keeping, including 3 trunks of his very precious equipment and expedition records.
Eventually, Cook reached the trading post where he wired the details of his successful mission to the New York Herald! Hooray!
In a weird quirk of fate, the boat Whitney was waiting for was none other than Robert Peary’s ship, returning from his own exciting polar expedition.
There was no way in hell Peary was going to transport the trunks filled with proof that Cook had gotten to the North Pole first! So, Whitney had no other choice but to stash the trunks somewhere safe. Somewhere on the rocks in northern Greenland should do it!
When Peary heard that the newspapers were boasting Cook’s triumph, he was furious! As soon as he could, he sent news to The New York Times that he was in fact the first to reach the North Pole.
The media was in a frenzy. They even put out polls (polls on the Pole?) for people to vote on the man who should get the glory.
Most people were on team Cook, until Peary started his campaign, critiquing Cook’s lack of evidence (those darn missing trunks) and spreading the word about his dodgy mountain climbing claim (fair point).
Meanwhile, Peary refused to show anyone his own diary. Was he hiding something?
None of that seemed to matter because President Taft signed a bill recognising Peary as the first Arctic explorer to reach the North Pole. Well if the president said it, it must be true!
For 75 years, Peary was considered by citizens and textbooks alike as the clear winner. But in 1988, National Geographic commissioned a reexamination of Peary's records that had long been secret.
Did Peary ever get to the North Pole?
Will Cook’s evidence ever be found? Maybe it’s for sale on ebay!
And what does this all have to do with an insurance salesman named Ralph?
SOURCES:
• Robert M Bryce’s Cook & Peary: The Polar Controversy, Resolved
• RK Headland et al’s Transits of the Northwest Passage to the End of the 2022 Navigation Season
• Bruce Henderson’s Who Discovered the North Pole?, in Smithsonian Magazine
• Jessie Kratz’s Mystery of the Arctic Ice: Who was First to the North Pole, in US National Archives Pieces of History
• John Tierney’s How Dr. Cook Scooped The Times, TierneyLab, New York Times
Previous Episode mentioned:
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Will 00:00
The fight was announced to the world in two duelling newspaper headlines. The first was September 2 1909, in the New York Herald. So they had had big photos of the hero. They had nice maps and juicy details of how he'd done the deed. And the headline took up a big chunk of the front page. The North Pole is discovered by Dr. Frederick A Cook, who cables to the Herald an exclusive account of how he set the American flag on the world's top. Cool stuff. What a champ. But it was the second banner headline that really excited the readers because it said something a little bit different. Five days later, this time in the New York Times, Peary and this they mean, Robert Peary , they just didn't use his first name, discovers the North Pole after eight trials in 23 years.
Rod 00:52
So everyone knew who he was. He's like Madonna.
Will 00:54
Look no, New York Times doesn't use first names. It's a it's a last name only paper. So two headlines. Two, according to the New York Herald, Frederick Cook had gotten to the North Pole first. But according to The New York Times, it was Robert Peary. It can't obviously be both.
Rod 01:12
Yes it could because I got it from opposite sides. Boom, dead heat. Solved.
Will 01:19
Okay, then you would say a dead heat to get to the pole.
Rod 01:21
No, I wouldn't because I want to compete with other paper.
Will 01:27
Writing at the time the journalist Lincoln Stephens rubbed his hands with glee? I mean, I assume he did. But his writing sounds like he did. Whatever the truth is, the situation is as wonderful as the poll. And whatever they found there, those explorers, they have left their story as great as the continent. I just love that journalist is like, I don't care. This is just this just cool story. I like the idea of a fight over who got first
Rod 01:51
19 something
Will 01:52
1909
Rod 01:52
With leather and wool. And wood
Will 01:55
Well, this is a leather wool and wood episode. So here's the question. Who was it? Who actually was first to get to the North Pole
Rod 02:05
the Sherpa
Will 02:13
Welcome to the wholesome show,
Rod 02:16
the podcast that has grown up and doesn't need to be first to discover the whole of science. It is true. We are growing ups
Will 02:23
we are
Rod 02:23
do you know the only review I've ever seen that actually means anything is "what a grown up podcast."
Will 02:28
Thank you. Thank you listener for describing us as that
Rod 02:31
It was your mom.
Will 02:32
Still.
Rod 02:33
Thank you, Williams mom.
Will 02:36
The awesome show is me, Will Grant
Rod 02:38
and me Roderick G. Lambert's.
Will 02:40
Before we dive in quick note on sources. There's a bunch out there on this topic. But two in particular, really pretty interesting. ROBERT BRYCE, in particular, his book, Cook and Peary, and some articles by Bruce Henderson, particularly worth looking at.
Rod 02:56
But not now, because you're going to tell us. It won't be necessary.
Will 03:00
So as far as we know, the earliest documented attempts to reach the North Pole were in like the 19th century
Rod 03:08
by the Mayans.
Will 03:09
Nope, not the Mayans. Well, look, it's possible. It's definitely possible that some indigenous people there is indigenous people living in in northern Canada and
Rod 03:17
Norwegian.
Will 03:19
Norwegians are involved in this story. But they weren't the
Rod 03:23
what about the clap clanders
Will 03:26
again, possible? We don't know. We don't know. Because they're not documented. It would be kind of surprising for many of the people that lived quite north to go that much further north. It's one of those things to go like 700 Miles is the sort of closest land to the actual North Pole and it's you go hunting out for walrus and polar bears and things like that. It's unlikely you go that far
Rod 03:47
because the roads are a little rougher. The north you go quite rough.
Will 03:50
Yep, quite rough. But in the middle of the 19th century, you get a whole bunch of naval folk who are like, Alright, we're gonna find this thing called the Northwest Passage. So this isn't this is the idea. You could sail from the Atlantic to the Pacific by going over the top over over Canada. You know that the other options are going south? I think you've you've gotten that down down down through Tierra del Fuego. Oh, yeah. Rough rough as guts and if you're in an old school sailing ship scary
Rod 04:20
we weren't, we were in a very nice boat
Rod 04:22
Can you imagine is that the expeditions, it's gotten to that point and you say, Look, we're just gonna take a slight detour chaps while we're here, chaps. Let's have a look. We're gonna go 700 miles north.
Will 04:22
in the 19th century very scary. So that's scary. Overland like over America, you know on a train or something like that on a boat or over like Nicaragua or something like you land your boat on one side and carry it carry it? Yeah, yeah. You'd carry your boat over you get some folk to rally but it's hard. It's hard. So this this idea that you could make it a little bit easier if you're going up around there. So it seems as well to these folks. If you're kind of getting Northwest Passage going through all there, maybe go a little bit further and just have a look at the North Pole to get some glory. Why not be that person that stands on the top of the world
Rod 04:56
Look, I'll tell you a few stories of the folks that that tried early on, and you might realise how much you don't want to
Rod 05:17
Wood, wool and leather. That's right, I got to the stone I think what I need is my wool and leather clothing and bits of wood
Will 05:25
clothing that does nothing to keep out the deep cold
Rod 05:28
to be fair though, they does tend to absorb moisture quite nicely.
Will 05:33
Also sweat from one side and sea moisture from the other side.
Rod 05:37
Blows my mind, I think about it so often when I'm in snowy environments in all my fancy gear and going HOLY SHIT technology rocks.
Will 05:44
Oh, God damn
Rod 05:45
just amazing. And you walk out there and you bulletproof and you think like when I was doing the South Pole thing I'll certainly Antarctica Sure. In Antarctica and thinking there were dudes there, they actually got to the point where they put nails backwards through the soles of their leather shoes to use so that wouldn't slip over. Yes, yeah. And the upside, the only upside I could see of having leather was when youre really starving, you can eat it.
Will 06:07
That's good. You are not long way from dying. Like the boat has to come in two days. If you're down to eating leather.
Rod 06:16
And you're not gonna look at my clothes. I'm looking at my GoreTex
Will 06:19
No, you're not see, there you go. That is that is a sad thing. The British naval officer William Edward Parry, was the first that we think we know of to have it give it a red hot go. In 1827 he was looking for north northwest passage. He got some small rowing boats off his ship the Heckler and he got up to 82 degrees 45 minutes north. So that was the record at the time, but they ran our supplies and went back to the ship.
Rod 06:44
The North Pole is what degrees?
Will 06:47
90?
Rod 06:48
Oh,
Will 06:48
by definition.
Rod 06:49
I don't know that. I don't know maps. So you got to 85 and a bit
Will 06:53
82 45. And this is that's in minutes. So it's 82.75
Rod 06:59
in a degree is how many billion kilometres?
Will 07:04
That varies depending on where you are on the earth. So you can invert degrees directly to kilometres, but it's getting close. What's the point? I'm guessing? I'm guessing that's around still 600 kilometres away for
Rod 07:19
closer than we've been close?
Will 07:20
Yes. Yeah. He published his memoir, narrative of the attempt to reach the North Pole, et cetera.
Rod 07:26
What was it about?
Will 07:27
Well, I just love the idea that in his title, he put the words and other. Another person who who made the effort was the American Charles Francis Hall. This is 1871 He got his ship the Polaris to 82 degrees 29 minutes north, but he was murdered by his chief scientist, and possibly, possibly the theory is they both love the same woman and a long way from everywhere, they could do a murder.
Rod 07:55
It's never the scientist. It's never the scientists scientists name one Agatha Christie novel, where it was the scientist. That's got to be one. Oh, Sherlock Holmes, Moriarty was
Will 08:07
oh, here's a good one, the US Naval officer, George De Long, who in 1879 He had a theory that if you went the other way, so coming from the west coast of America, that there was a warm current that went up around Alaska through the Bering Strait, and you could just coast through that warm current and be all glossy and nice.
Rod 08:26
Sounds lovely. And why wouldn't you think that? Hang on, warm current would be nice.
Will 08:34
There is a warm current going up the Pacific there but it doesn't get through the Bering Strait. Why not? Yeah, so he took his ship the Jeannette up there
Rod 08:44
that's a ship name.
Will 08:46
It's a name, but it's not great for ship as well. I should never be allowed to be in charge of naming ships.
Rod 09:02
I think you should always be allowed
Will 09:03
I'll only come up with stupid names.
Rod 09:04
I will allow it.
Will 09:05
Yeah, in your navy. It's not gonna
Rod 09:07
I'm gonna I'm gonna put in a letter of recommendation if you need it.
Will 09:10
Anyway, they got up through the Bering Strait. Yep. Up to 77 degrees 15 minutes north. But soon the Jeanette was caught in pack ice as tightly as a fly in amber. They then drifted in the slow moving ice for almost two years.
Rod 09:27
Oh, good God.
Will 09:28
There was a little bit where the ice punctured the ship but they stopped it they jammed it jam the ice back out and jammed it full of woollen leather, like that. And then they sat there for another year. Then I think on the day that the ice pulled away for a bit in there like fuck yeah, we're free. A little pool opened up and then the ice came back like an hour later. And came and crushed the ship. Series of harrowing marches, sled drives and small boat trips up in the middle of 13 of the 33 crew made it back to the US.
Rod 10:05
actually probably pretty good, pretty good survival, right?
Will 10:07
Yeah, there's the Nobel Prize winner Fridtjof Nansen and his buddy Hhalmar Johansen. In 1895 they tried, they broke out the skis after their ship became ice bound. They made they made good time initially, but they were the first to realise that the ice was moving away from the pole as they were trying to ski so they said okay, we're X number of kilometres away. Divided by whatever we need to make this many days. But the ice is making it harder against
Rod 10:35
so they're going the wrong way up the escalator
Will 10:37
Yeah, yeah, the ice is moving away from the pole. Okay, they got to 86 degrees 14.
Rod 10:41
The winner so far
Will 10:42
They are they are the last the last one. The last other one obviously is the Swedish engineer 1897. Salomon August Andrée. He took a hydrogen balloon, Örnen, the Eagle.
Rod 10:56
Oh, that is awesome.
Will 10:57
They went north from Svalbard they got about 300 kilometres north of the Svalbard then crashed onto the ice and then had to trek back to Svalbard and then they died.
Rod 11:05
Because they ate the ballon? And all the leather as well? Giant leather balloon, didn't they tend to make them in the olden days out of animal bits.
Will 11:18
Of course they did
Rod 11:19
I believe there were bladders. Yeah, yeah, literally, they sewn together intestinal bits of animals and going this will make a great flying machine. I don't agree.
Will 11:29
But when it comes down to it, there was no one else more focused at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century getting to the North Pole than not could not cook. But Robert Edward Peary. The story goes that Peary got his lust for getting to the North Pole when he read an account of a Swedish explorers failed journey across Greenland. It was it was a failed journey. So I don't know why he loved it so much. But he read this and he was like, This is the life for me. Before that he'd been a naval engineer. And he was in charge of doing like survey work on the on the potential Nicaragua canal. It was maybe an idea to build a canal there who's doing that kind of stuff. And it's like, I've got survey skills. I've got engineering skills. But damn, I want to go out to the Arctic, I want to go and do some exploring. So in 1886, he took six months leave from the Navy
Will 12:25
Borrowed $500 from his mom as a set sail, June 6 1886. He went to Greenland, he wanted to test his skills first. His idea was let's learn some Arctic skills by making a solo trek across Greenland. But and this this weirds me out, he landed at a Danish trading port in Greenland, and a young Danish official working in the town named Christian Maigaard convinced him that he would die if he went alone. So then said I will go with you
Rod 12:25
optimist.
Rod 13:01
I come. Sounds like fun.
Will 13:03
I don't have to say either it sounds like fun or it's like I'm so concerned for your safety. I will come with you. So they set off together. And they made it 160 kilometres due east across the, across the Greenland ice sheet. This is the second furthers they ever got. But they turned back when they were running, running short on food. Peary's like okay, this is this is the life for me. He wrote to his mum,
Rod 13:35
can I have 500 more dollars, I ate the last,
Will 13:39
my last trip brought my name before the world my next will give me a standing in the world. I will be foremost in the highest circles in the Capitol and make powerful friends with whom I can shape my future instead of letting it come as it will. Remember, Mother, I must have fame.
Rod 13:56
I love the honesty. Yeah, because we obviously don't seek that. But there are other ways to get famous to let less suicidal
Will 14:03
this was a very they loved it. There was a lot of men doing this at the time. They loved it
Rod 14:09
It's manly.
Will 14:10
So the next two decades would see Peary undertaking a series of ever bigger journeys in the Arctic. Cool always with his African American Field assistant first man personal Valette Matthew Henson, I mentioned his race, it'll come up later.
Rod 14:24
interesting too, because less common, it is less common. African folk. Well, this time delving into the far north or far south.
Will 14:31
The story was that after Peary got back to his go back to Washington, and the Navy said, right, go back to the canal down in Nicaragua. And so Peary goes into a shop to buy a sun hat and there's a there's a sales assistant there who gets talking to and says, I've just gotten back from the Arctic, and the sales assistant said, Well, I love sailing. Can I come? I was a cabin boy for six years, and Peary's like Alright, you're my assistant now. And so then Matthew Henson then became His lifelong assistant and gun goes on all his journeys together so
Rod 15:04
dare I worked in an army disposal store never got an offer like that. Not even an opportunity not even a hint not a sniff.
Will 15:09
Do you know if that's why you work in an army disposal store is to is to one day have an idiot explorer say I need volunteers
Rod 15:16
Four years. Nothing. I once got a $5 tip.
Will 15:20
Did anyone buy a sun hat from you?
Rod 15:22
Lots of stuff. Oh God, so many.
Will 15:23
But he also he also often took his wife, Josephine Diebitsch.
Rod 15:33
Now I feel like you've messed with the pronunciation to satisfy me and you have,
Will 15:36
I don't know. It says Diebitsch. Well as an S in there as well.
Rod 15:44
Great name. That was her maiden name?
Will 15:48
Josephine Diebitsch. Yes, she took on Joseph
Rod 15:50
married name. kill your wife.
Will 15:53
Josephine Diebitsch Peary. She kept kept the name.
Rod 15:56
God you make me happy man.
Will 15:57
Well, let's hear a little bit about the other participant in the race. Frederick Cook. Okay. So they started out as Bruce Henderson says in his article, as friends and shipmates, Frederick Cook was nine years younger than Peary. He'd worked as a milk boy first in Hortonville, New York and then gone to New York University Medical School where he'd received his doctorate in 1890. But just before he received his exam results, his wife and baby died in childbirth, emotionally shattered. The 25 year old doctor sought escape in articles and books. And just like Peary, reading the story of the Swedish explorer, Cook turns to the stories of explorers. He's like, Oh, well, this is the solution to my emotional shattering
Rod 16:47
that I get more than oh, here's a tale of how people fucked it up. I want to do that. That's true. This guy's like my life is empty, bereft and horrifying. I'm gonna go to a bleak land and see what happens.
Will 16:58
He soon learned that Peary was looking for volunteers, including for a doctor and Cook as a doctor
Rod 17:04
just so happens
Will 17:05
to go back to the Arctic. Cook later wrote, it was as if a door to a prison cell had been opened. I felt the first indomitable commanding call of the Northland.
Will 17:15
And so he took up the role of surgeon Perry's next expedition in 1891 at 1892 on this expedition, actually, Peary shattered his leg and so Cook set his broken bones it was like, anytime I hear the words anyway, so Cook, set his bones and Peary said the how the doctor was had unruffled patients and coolness in an emergency. So they started out, at least as companions and and voyagers together, potentially friends. I don't know how much Peary had friends but before we turn to the race, it's worth thinking a little bit about what these two men were like. Sure, we can't quite know completely. It's a long time ago, history and a lot of the things that were said might have been in the heat of the moment.
Rod 17:15
That's cool.
Rod 18:04
And they get cross with each other.
Will 18:07
And other people. Peary. So he was the older by nine years, was described as one of the last of the imperialistic explorers, chasing fame at any cost and caring for the local people's well being only to the extent that it might affect their usefulness to him. Other people described him as an all controlling micromanager of his expeditions, desperate for validation, terrified of failure, impatient and unwilling to share even the crumbs of glory,
Rod 18:34
I would definitely want to hang with him.
Will 18:38
Look, he got stuff done. For example, while he's in Greenland, he ordered his men to open the graves of some indigenous people who died in a recent epidemic. And then he sold their remains to the American Museum of Natural History in New York as anthropological specimens.
Rod 18:54
So this was his upside.
Will 18:56
It's him getting stuff done. Here's another here's another story. It is in 1894, he acquired a 30 tonne iron meteorite from northern Greenland, the local people there. It had fallen maybe 1000. Couple 1000 years ago. He had to construct a mini right railroad to get it out a bit. Like it's a huge boulder of iron. They've been using it to make tools. This is their only source of iron.
Rod 19:21
I've heard of this. And so yeah,
Will 19:25
and he acquired it and said, I'll take it back to America. And we'll bring you some tools that you can have
Rod 19:30
can I have this and will bring a box of hammers. And by box, I mean nothing.
Will 19:36
Be he convinced six people, six of the indigenous people including a man named Qisuk and his child Minik to travel to America with him, promising those tools and weapons and gifts but he left them at the museum Yeah, where he returned with them where they were kept in damp, humid conditions unlike their homeland. Within a few months four had died of tuberculosis, their remains were dissected and the bones of Qisuk were put on display after Minik, the kid, was shown a fake burial
Rod 20:15
where's Peary from? England?
Will 20:17
No he's he's American
Rod 20:19
good on your bro. What I mean, look, he wasn't alone and being an absolute shit stick to everyone No, no in his own country, but that's impressive.
Will 20:27
I don't know if he is more advanced in being shit stick than many of the time,
Rod 20:31
like for him was more art than science.
Will 20:32
I feel like there was certainly some choices he didn't need to make. There was another story. He was asked once now I don't know the truth to this matter. This might have just been him being talking differently to different people. He was once asked what why he took his African American assistant Matt Henson so often with him. And he apparently said I do not feel called upon to share the honours that might occur with any other man, basically, meaning if I don't need to, if I took a white man have to share the honours, whereas if I take an African American or indigenous people, they won't be marked in the in the victories. And that's true. No argument. I mean, it took a very long time for people to acknowledge that alongside Edmund Hillary was Tenzing Norgay alongside Well, I don't know how much there was any dragging to the top or whatever. But but there's definitely two people that went to the top of Mount Everest. Yeah. So by the early 20th century, Peary, as Henderson says, reckons the North Pole was his birthright,
Rod 21:34
his birthright interesting. As an American, of course, it is.
Will 21:39
Someone's birthright? I don't know, maybe, is it? Look. In contrast, maybe the younger Cooke has been described by Henderson as part of a new wave of explorers,
Rod 21:53
because we had weird here and eye make up
Will 21:55
it's totally hippie. Yes, he's the, you know, he's got all the colorings and everything. Maybe not really. I mean, this is still late 19th century, early 20th century, who apparently took a keen interest in the indigenous people they came across for years in both the Arctic and the Antarctic, he learned their dialects and adopted their diet.
Rod 22:14
Oh, that's cool. He actually tried
Will 22:16
he did try and and it's clear in his practices later, you know that there is certainly the imperialistic I'll tell you that their methods in a bit, the imperialistic method, and the Let's Let's live a little bit more in harmony with what's there
Rod 22:28
The noncurrent method
Will 22:31
he seems to have genuinely loved and hungered for the real meat of exploration mapping new routes and shorelines learning and adapting to the survival techniques of the indigenous peoples advancing his own knowledge.
Rod 22:42
Go down that whole sentence was so chock full of euphemisms that was killing me carry on.
Will 22:46
But just just just to point out here, he does seem to have been a nice guy and there's there's definitely people that speak very glowingly in his favour. He was also quite well, he's he's well known as a fraud as
Rod 23:00
fraud, but nice
Will 23:03
Yeah, yeah.
Rod 23:04
Oh, full of shit. But lovely.
Will 23:06
wildly full of shit. But there was there's one particular story that does colour some of people's thinking. In between before his trip to the North Pole. He claimed to have climbed the highest mountain in North America. At the time, it's known as mountain McKinley. Now it's known as Denali was known as Denali. Before that, it's pretty clearly shown he made up a lot of heat sort of got halfway up took photos pretending to be at the top, and then
Rod 23:32
Wouldn't the lump of mountain behind him and higher than his head still. Given that away,
Will 23:37
you get the camera, right, you know, you get the angles right
Rod 23:40
here over the top. What's that behind you?
Will 23:41
So it's a bit weird.
Rod 23:43
So he's a bit of a dick
Rod 23:45
Anyway, differences between the two men began to surface after their first trip, right? In 1893, Cook backed out of another Arctic journey, because of a contract prohibiting any expedition member from publishing anything before Peary did. Peary's like, this is my book, I'm publishing the book, no one gets published it and Cook's like I want to I want to do I want to do a study of like the the indigenous people, but he didn't say indigenous anyway. And Peary's, like No, can't do that. No, I'm publishing. So they went their separate ways.
Rod 24:15
I kind of get it. He's the chief of the mission. And that's, I mean, that's the only way to really do it. I get it. It's not arbitrarily as shitty as it could have been.
Will 24:26
I agree. They went their separate ways. Peary did a bunch more exploring in the Arctic. Cook did his own journeys down to Antarctica and the Arctic. He went with Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, first person to the South Pole. And Amundsen was a huge fan. He reckons he saved the whole ship that they're on from getting scurvy. So he was a big fan.
Rod 24:48
Was it boiling vomit and sniffing the vapours? Oh, no, no that episode was a while ago
Will 24:52
No, it was scurvy. It was maybe we should eat the walrus. It's so fresh meat is fine.
Rod 24:59
Yeah. Animals are full of vitamins, goodness, apparently.
Will 25:03
They are. But anyway, Cook and Peary sort of stayed in each other's orbit. There's a limited number of people that as doing this whole Arctic exploration club yeah, there's there's a story where in 1901 Peary got lost somewhere up in the Arctic, his family were worried and and they said, hey Cook, can you go up and look for him so he went up a went up, salvage ship north, found Peary treated him for a range of ailments, scurvy and heart problems and things and brought him back. So they seem to have been at least on decent ish terms.
Rod 25:35
It sounds so simple, isn't it? We're worried it's been 19 years. That's a bit long. Okay, I'll pop up and have a look.
Will 25:40
What is the period in which you get worried? I don't know. Like, like, if your boat is just drifting in the ice for two years.
Rod 25:47
We'll give it three.
Will 25:47
I was reading the story of that, you know, it's like, we're just do we do anything now we just stay with the boat for two years just everyday just going hoping it will break free
Rod 25:57
It worked for Shackleton ish. They all lived. spoiler alert.
Will 26:02
In the early 1900s, everyone knew that someone was going to get to the pole pretty soon. Cook left first. In July 1907. He left Massachusetts on a boat for northern Greenland. He got to an indigenous settlement up there that's 700 miles from the pole established a base camp and wintered. Then when it starts to thaw a little bit, not a lot. It's February. In 1908. He takes a party of nine indigenous people 11 Light sledges, and with 100 dogs. Well, you wait till the other description. He planned an untried but promising route to get to the North Pole. As he describes in his awesomely named book, my attainment of the pole. His party followed, like musk ox feeding grounds through a few islands in northern Canada, up through Greenland and their to Cape store worthy and the edge of the frozen Arctic sea. His party had the advantage of eating fresh meats from walrus and then using stores of the pemmican I think we've mentioned pemmican before it's like the it's like the fat and boiled protein from beef from beef and walrus and ox and things like that
Rod 27:24
distilled
Will 27:26
yeah just congealed, not delicious. But that's what they did. The party pushed northward, and he gradually turned people back the support crews back leaving just two indigenous hunters. Etukishook and Ahwelah. and they had 360 miles to go.
Rod 27:46
So he left them behind like stages of a rocket because he just didn't need them anymore.
Will 27:50
That's what they do. Like it's like, carry as much food as you can and then send people back as a as a way of carrying more food earlier on and then you send them back. Yeah,
Rod 27:58
that makes sense. It's very rocket like oh, okay,
Will 28:02
so he got out onto the frozen polar sea. And he got to 88 degrees north and he described an enormous, flat topped ice Island, higher and thicker than the sea ice. For days, he struggled against the violent wind that made every breath painful. And then at known April 21 1908, he used his custom made French sextant to look at the sun in a good way in a good way to work out though they were at a spot which is near as possible to the pole
Rod 28:32
were the French renowned for making the best sextants?
Will 28:35
I don't know but you need a sextant. He stayed there for two days, taking a few more observations to confirm you're at the North Pole. And before leaving, he deposited a note in a brass tube and buried it in a crevasse.
Rod 28:48
because someone might never find that?
Will 28:51
Well, yeah. I'll come to his return trip in a bit. But let's go with Peary's trip. Now Peary didn't know where Cook was hadn't been paying that much attention and most the Peary did broadcast more about I'm gonna go and do this Cook was a bit more. But you know, hadn't been heard from. July 1908. He left New York. So Cook has already apparently got to the North Pole, April 1908. But because of the journeys take a long time and information, you don't know that yet. Yeah, he planned he's going to do the same sort of thing he's going to overwinter in in Greenland. Before then taking the ride up to the pole.
Rod 29:34
It's interesting. We can say we winter somewhere and we summer somewhere but no one says over summer I'm ordering somewhere or I'm springing somewhere
Will 29:40
I'd like to autumn somewhere
Rod 29:42
but you ever heard of no one winters in in Provence and one summers in in the Amalfi Coast.
Will 29:48
Those are the seasons you got to endure. You don't spring anywhere spring and autumn are the working seasons. You know that's when you got to work. On winter you hibernate summer year, your party.
Rod 29:58
We should change our work.
Will 29:59
So here's Here's Perry's so in this northern Greenland town, he assembled his customary large party. So I think he'd done this before. He had 22, Inuit men, 17, Inuit women and 10 Inuit children
Rod 30:15
because they would come in handy for food?
Will 30:18
Well, probably not because you've got 70 tonnes of whale meat. The meat and blubber of 50 walrus, hunting equipment, tonnes of coal, and nearly 50 heavy sledges and 246 dogs to pull them
Rod 30:32
what in the shit are you talking about? Like this is? This is a parade of semi trailers.
Will 30:39
No, I don't understand. I don't know what 70 tonnes of whale meat looks like. I'm hoping it is just one whale like it like it's one whale that you're carrying by the tail to
Rod 30:48
cover it in water and keep it alive.
Will 30:50
The children are carrying the whale? I don't know. I don't know why he needed 10 children on his trip as well.
Rod 30:56
tonnes of coal.
Will 30:59
We're gonna burn something you do. You cut down no trees,
Rod 31:03
tonnes of coal. dragging that shit. I don't think he has enough people.
Will 31:08
So look and this is that difference between the imperialistic and let's learn some local methods.
Rod 31:15
I'm seeing something different. You're right. You're right. There's a subtle, subtle difference. But wow
Will 31:20
wow. Yeah, yeah. That bludgeoned your way through. He called this the Peary system, did he?
Rod 31:25
Because Mother, I must be famous. I don't know what it's called Sister. These are the Peary socks. This is a parry suicide method.
Will 31:33
It had failed him in the past. What are the main problem is it's so heavy and so big. The Arctic ice as I said before is moving in and out. And so occasionally little channels of water will open up and you can't get this big freight train full have colon whale blubber.
Rod 31:48
Although to be fair, when I travel, I tend to use the Peary system to which is what's the biggest suitcase I can stuff as much shit in as possible. anything I can find. So I think I've inadvertently used that system
Will 32:01
See me, I like to travel light using local and Indigenous ways of knowledge
Rod 32:05
You use the pocket system pocket,
Will 32:07
I do use the pocket.
Rod 32:08
I have. I don't have a wallet. I have a credit card. And a key. I don't know what it's for. But it has only one key one key.
Will 32:13
Okay, that's all you need. That's all you need. After the winter. He'd spend that in northern Greenland. And this is this is a year after cook. He left Greenland to the pole in February 1909. So this is so they're both left February but Perry's a year behind. They advanced 290 miles in a month, which came to like 13 miles a day, when there were
Rod 32:36
13 a day.
Will 32:37
Yeah, it's quite it's quite a good time. And let's say maybe maybe your timings when there are 134 miles from the pole. And I apologise to all our listeners who work in proper systems or metric listeners or metric listeners, but they all reported this in miles and how many miles wasn't 134.
Rod 32:56
500 kilometres? Give or take no give.
Will 32:59
He sent everyone back. It's like Alright, everyone go back and he made like little base stations full of coal and whale blubber and sledges at different spots
Rod 33:09
These are base stations. You mean he couldn't be fucked caring at all? No, no, it's a base station.
Rod 33:13
I don't know I don't have any toes
Will 33:13
So yeah, except for him four indigenous hunters and his personal assistant Matthew Henson. Naturally, at this point, Peary had lost so many of his toes to frostbite that he had to be dragged by Henson in a sled. A few days later, April 6 1909. At the end of an exhausting days march, Henson who couldn't use a sextant had a feeling they were at the pole. We're at the pole now, aren't we? Henson said he asked Peary.
Will 33:48
Well, at this point, Peary said they can't quite be sure. But and he got out of sextant and had a look. Henson reckons that he was in the lead and they'd overshot the mark by a couple of miles where he then went back and I could see that my footprints were the first at the spot. So just as a little bit of claiming who was first,
Rod 34:07
as he had Nikes and Cook had blubber, like he was walking in this trail of blubber, probably bits of coal and strewn in his wake.
Will 34:17
He said Peary then reached out into his outer garment and took out a folded American flag sewn by his wife Josephine Diebitsch and fastened it to a staff which Henson then stuck atop the igloo they'd built. Then everyone had a nap. they went to bed. The next day, Peary took out a navigational site with his sextant though he didn't tell Hanson the result. Peary put a diagonal strip of flag together with the noted in an empty tin and buried in the ice. They'd made the North Pole. Let's go home.
Rod 34:43
Alright, so I got a feeling there may be some nuances
Will 34:47
so at this point we've had Cook got there in April 08 and Perry got there in April 09. Now let's see how they go getting home.
Rod 34:57
Can you get there and you go we made it. Oh, hang on. We gotta go back.
Will 35:02
Oh, always, always the return journey. It's always sucks
Rod 35:07
but the upside is from the North Pole. It's all downhill
Will 35:11
science listeners, you might know how to critique that. Now Cook as he returns, He assumed that the ice is going to drift east. As he goes away from the polls, he just thought that's what the current was. Unfortunately, it didn't it drifted west. So they were carried 100 miles west of their planned route, or far away from the supplies that they had cased on different islands. In many places, the ice had cracked leaving open sections of water that they'd had to get across. Luckily, they had the collapsible boat so they could get across the boat. And then the end of 1908. Winter came and they couldn't get any further. So they're hunkered down for four months in a cave on Devon Island.
Rod 35:53
Lovely. We wintered in a cave on Devon island
Will 35:57
they ran out of ammunition. And then they had to hunt with spears.
Rod 36:01
But this is Peary or Cook?
Will 36:03
This is cook
Rod 36:03
Well he'll be fine, because he knew how to hunt with spears.
Will 36:06
Yeah. And he did. Yeah, he did have some indigenous people with him that knew how to do this. That would help by February 1909. As Peary was still heading north, the weather and ice had improved enough to allow Cook to wander across back to the town where they had left from. And by April 1909, 14 months after they left that town, they arrived, emaciated and arrived in rags of fur. He met a guy named Harry Whitney. So he's an American Hunter who'd gone up there to hunt walruses for fun, who told him that a lot of people believe that you just disappeared and died.
Rod 36:45
it's only it's only been three years.
Will 36:48
Whitney also told him that Peary had departed from the camp eight months earlier. At this point, Whitney said I've got a boat coming at the end of summer when I'm done with hunting. Do you want to catch that back and Cook which is this is a weird decision to me. He's like now I want to get back sooner. So I'm gonna I'm gonna sledge over Greenland 700 miles to a Danish trading post and catch a ship from there
Rod 37:11
bound to be faster. maybe just didn't like the guy.
Will 37:18
I just knew once they might give you the option of staying in a town and catching a boat in a few months time and remember, he'd spent four months in a cave at one point, the option of just going okay, you could keep sledging for 700 more miles out.
Rod 37:30
He was in a town it was already luxurious after the cove
Will 37:34
I would have stayed
Rod 37:35
anyway. I would have gone with the guy unless he was a colossal fuckwit
Will 37:38
so here's the thing. Not a colossal fuckwit but he did make a mistake. Whitney said to Cook. All right. Why don't you leave everything behind that's not essential to your sledging trip. So Cook boxed up all his expedition records except for his diary. He took one little diary crew and his instruments and his sextant, his compass, his barometer, his thermometer, all that stuff, and just took the lightest sledge he could just so he could get back to this other town.
Rod 38:04
And is Whitney sitting there going, I can't believe that worked.
Will 38:07
Well, I don't think it needs a baddy. But it's like Cook's like well, I won't be needing them because I'm just gonna follow the coastline south. And he left three trunk size boxes, with Whitney,
Rod 38:19
trunk size boxes are trunks. I don't mean to be picky.
Will 38:24
Okay. Yes, this is full of all of the records of Cooks trip to the North Pole.
Rod 38:30
You're not making me comfortable telling me this. I feel like there's a reason.
Will 38:34
Anyway. Cook left the town. And he arrived a month later at the Danish trading post, where he told the Danish officials of his conquest to the pole.
Rod 38:42
And they said show us your four trucks worth of evidence.
Will 38:45
They didn't they were they were fairly happy. Okay, this is delightful. In August, he got a ship bound for Copenhagen, where he told everyone about it and the captain was like, damn, this is so good. Let's stop in the Shetlands and you can send your send your news to the world. Cool. So he made an unscheduled stop in the Shetland Islands, where he wired the New York Herald with his story. I've made it to the pole. And then he got to Copenhagen met the king and then he's back to back to America. So that's Cook. He's he's back in the land of the living now and he sent his message to the New York newspapers. Hey, I made it to the Pole.
Rod 39:27
i am the man. What about Peary?
Will 39:32
Well, Cook was heading for Copenhagen. Whitney, the American Hunter. He's waiting in vain for his chartered vessel to turn up. In a weird quirk of fate though the boat that does turn up is Peary ship. So onboard Peary's coming back from his own trip to the
Rod 39:52
nice trunk of evidence you have there, pity if something happened to it. Oh my god.
Will 39:55
Oh my god. So at this point, Peary has told no one on this ship that he'd made to the North Pole. He wanted to keep the news like secret to himself. And that didn't seem that much of a hurry because he didn't know Cook was out there doing this. And they'd be making this leisurely journey back south. But then he started to hear rumours in this town that Cook and his two companions had made it to the pole the previous year.
Rod 40:19
He just said, Well done, sir. I'm stoked for you. I'm glad someone did.
Will 40:25
Yes. I that all I wanted was for humanity to make it that's that's all
Rod 40:30
and we have we all share in the glory. Yes. Your glory. Yeah, I will. I will. Yeah, I will acknowledge it.
Will 40:37
Back in the town. Peary found Cooks two companions. Etukishook and Ahwelah, those are the two that went to the pole with Cook. And he questioned them, brought him on his boat and said, so what did what? What did you do there? Now these people had no knowledge of longitude and latitude. They didn't use maps. They testified only about the distances a number of days travelled, in a later interview with a reporter Whitney, who was fluent in the local dialect. So the two told him they'd been confused by Peary's questions and didn't understand the papers on which they're instructed to make marks. Anyway, Whitney, who's still waiting for his boat, and it's probably bored of hunting at this point, accepted Peary's offer to leave Greenland. Whitney later told the New York Herald that all of the possessions that he was bringing back, I assume it's his hunting gear and walrusses and all of cooks records are being brought up onto the ship and Peary's like, haven't got anything there belonging to Dr. Cook, do you? And Whitney answered that, yes, I do have Cooks instruments and his records from the journey. Well, I don't want any of them aboard this ship, said,
Rod 41:50
look again, it says it. I want to be famous. And also fuck that guy.
Will 41:56
I don't want those records.
Rod 41:57
Let's ditch that shit.
Will 41:59
Believing that he had no choice, Whitney secreted Cook's possessions among some large rocks near the shoreline. Famous place for keeping your records and then the ship sailed south with Whitney aboard?
Rod 42:11
Did anyone know they were there other than Whitney.
Will 42:15
I don't know.
Rod 42:17
This is the perfect plan, except for all the gaps in it. Okay,
Will 42:20
the ships going back with Peary. And he starts to receive news when they dock into little ports and things along the way that Cook has announced his victory of the Pole. And Peary is like what, in fact, I am, I am furious. So he says steam as fast as we can back to New York on the way they stop in Labrador. And he sends an urgent telegram to the New York Times. He says Stars and Stripes nailed to the North Pole. So at this point, we've got the two headlines,
Rod 42:53
that would have been the giveaway. Like he thought there was actually a pole there to nail this the flag to so that's a giveaway that he didn't get there.
Will 43:02
But it's just five days apart. And suddenly, the world has two competing claims to who got to the North Pole,
Rod 43:08
you're gonna bring the third player
Will 43:09
So first thing, just to just to make an understanding here, the North Pole is obviously tricky to get to. I've heard rumours, also tricky to notice when you're there. And also very tricky to confirm that you have been there.
Rod 43:28
It's just a state of mind, man.
Will 43:30
Pretty much, pretty much so you can compare it with first like climbing to the top of the mountain, you can tell when you're at the top of the mountain, take a photo or you can be there and you can see this for yourself. You can see
Rod 43:40
there's nowhere further to go.
Will 43:41
Yeah. That's that's one thing. Yeah. The only way to determine at this time that you're there is with a sextant. And it's not super accurate determining how high the sun is in the sky.
Rod 43:51
Also, honestly, it's it's like it's the honour code. Yes, I totally got that because I looked at my sextant, and I did.
Will 43:58
Here's the thing, the South Pole, which is similar in the sense that it's just, it's gonna just be a bit of snow in the middle of a lot of other snow. Yeah, at least it stays still. So you can use land under it, you can build yourself a little rock, you can do what you like, and it will stay there. Whereas the North Pole is water and, and ice. And as we said before, you know it's actually drifting at quite a few kilometres every day.
Rod 44:23
So they could have both been right. I see where this is going now. They both got their first. there was different
Will 44:31
that you know how they both dropped like a tin or whatever, or a brass tube their stuff that literally drifted or it stayed it drifted away from the actual Pole of the Earth quite quickly. Right? It's, you know, they both stayed overnight for one or two nights. In that time, they would have moved five to 10 kilometres away from where the actual North Pole was. So that's why it's I mean, this is the thing, it's actually hard to demonstrate that you you were actually there
Rod 45:01
on, by the way, five to 10 kilometres because we're doing this in miles, two to 3000 miles
Will 45:06
as Cook was first, everyone had the story of Cook in the newspapers first and it was clear that Cook was there at least a year before or about a year before
Rod 45:15
a year
Will 45:16
April 1908. But it was the time to get back took a long, long time shot. So that made the difference. So in the short term, cooks claim looked pretty strong, right? Soon after newspapers started diving into this story I said at the beginning, okay, well, you know, that journalist is like, this is this is gravy. So newspapers are all sort of exploring this story. And there's some that are even taking polls, which one is which one is right polls about the Pole. So Pittsburgh press. They did a poll where 73,000 supported Cook and 2000 supported Peary.
Rod 45:50
I know where this is going, like I'm on team Cook too, which means fucking Peary
Will 45:55
Watertown, New York Times they've favoured Cook three to one, the Toledo Blade 550 votes for Cook 10 for Peary. People also this is this is weird to me that they began writing letters in support of their preferred story to Congress this so we'll have you know, there's actually this postcard of a letter right now you know, people for a political campaign. They go here's the letter you can send, just write your own name. And here, there was a version of this. Dear sir, the conquest of the North Pole has lifted the United States to a first position, blah blah, blah, blah blah. We say it's an injustice that Peary tries to claim it. Cook should get get the honours
Rod 46:32
so the gist is someone else said they did it. We don't like it. Yeah, so don't
Will 46:37
Cook's claim didn't maintain that strength. By October 1909. Peary was starting to campaign against him a fair bit. Firstly, Peary started spreading the stories which were true although he did pay people to tell the story of Cook faking the hike up Mount up Denali
Rod 46:58
You can pay people to tell true stories.
Will 47:01
Yeah, so So that started to spread the story that it wasn't very true.
Rod 47:06
So his ethos was detracted from
Will 47:09
another week later, and Perry released the transcript of the questions he asked his two native guides. The men were quoted as saying they and Cook had travelled only a few days north on the ice cap. And a map they were said to have marked on their route was often of evidence. And that seemed to point in the wrong direction. In October, the National Geographic Society which which had sponsored Peary's work, appointed a three man committee to examine his data, basically all his friends, and they looked at his stuff and said, Yes, Peary has made it to the to the North Pole. By that time, there was another inquest by the University of Copenhagen, where they drew on all of Cooks records. And here's the words they used, Cooks claim was not proven in terms of getting to the North Pole.
Rod 47:55
So the records, the ones that were stashed in the rocks, he's got there
Will 47:59
just his diary, his diary, his diary and his report to the University of Copenhagen. Okay, so a lot of the newspapers at this point took not proven to mean disproven. We know that's not the same. No, but a lot of people are saying at this point, well cooked it and do it.
Rod 48:17
The media, huh.
Will 48:18
The decision of the university is of course final, the US minister to Denmark told The Associated Press. Unless the matter should be reopened by the presentation of the materials belonging to cook which Harry Whitney was compelled to leave, these records have never been found. If you can find them. That will be cool. Still. No, I haven't. Three trucks worth of evidence somewhere up in northern Greenland. Just as a little aside here, there's chunks of evidence that keep turning up in this story over the decades. There was one of the researchers I think, Bryce, whose book book on this was really useful. He bought the first piece of evidence that he found just on eBay, like someone was selling, someone was selling one of Cooks letters, and he's like, Oh, damn, this looks interesting and unveiled new parts of the story. Syrup, wag.
Rod 49:07
There's a whole tail there. How the hell did you get that the provenance issue is remarkable. Okay,
Will 49:13
people questioning Peary as well. So 1911 Peary appeared before the Naval Affairs Subcommittee
Rod 49:20
and they said, Did you make it or did you really make it? Well,
Will 49:23
it's weird, like, like the questioning is a little bit strange. They're like, your diary is too clean. Normally, if you're a polar explorer, you'd be eating all that. pemmican Yeah, you think it'd be all greasy? How did you manage to keep your notebook so pristine?
Rod 49:41
That is actually not a terrible question.
Will 49:43
I don't know
Rod 49:45
think about it. Wool leather freezing, maybe months if not years.
Will 49:50
Only do your diary once you're in your tent and you've got your gloves off.
Rod 49:53
Yeah, but your fingers could be gross because the gloves are made out of the intestines of Wallace's and not very well clean. You've only got a piece of would declare your fingers with. I don't think that's a terrible critique.
Will 50:04
Anyway, so there's there's various people like representative Thomas Butler of Pennsylvania. We have your word for it, your Word and your proofs. To me as a member of this committee, I accept your word, but your proofs I know nothing at all about. They voted on it. And they said they voted for to three that they reckon Peary was was there for that His claims were real.
Rod 50:25
It's like real science, too. It's like, will this cure cancer or not? Let's vote.
Will 50:28
Well, let's have Congress vote. And four to three. Fine,
Rod 50:36
but it's strange, because all of it is on gentlemen's agreements. It doesn't matter how many trunks of shit you bring. No one can know.
Will 50:44
Unless Unless you've got there is evidence that you could bring if you've got if you've got well, measurements of where the sun is accurately
Rod 50:51
recorded by you. on parchment, by your hand,
Rod 50:56
kind of love the idea that the President said it happened. It's not science.
Will 50:56
in your trunks full of evidence must be true. Well, look, there's a few more bits of this that are interesting. After that subcommittee voted the bill recognising Peary, as the first person to get to the North Pole passed, the House passed the Senate and President Taft signed it. Although they crossed out the word discovery crediting Peary only with Arctic exploration reaching resulting in his reaching the North Pole
Will 51:26
After what Peary perceived was a hostile examination of his work. He never shows his polar diary never showed his field papers, or any of his other data ever again until well, a long time after he died
Rod 51:40
because people were mean to him.
Will 51:41
Because people were mean to him. He was put on the retired list given the rank of Rear Admiral and given a decent pension. He died in February 20 1920 at the age of 63,
Rod 51:52
is Rear Admiral the lowest Admiral
Will 51:57
for 75 years because of that vote perhaps. Yep, Peary was considered the clear winner. classrooms and textbooks. He was anointed the Discover the first person to reach the North Pole. In 1988, National Geographic commissioned a reexamination of Peary's records that had long been secret. So this is his diary, which he had he had never let anyone see when he was alive. And his family had not let anyone see until 1988. So this must be his grandkids or something like that.
Rod 52:31
So what does what does he do this when he's asked to testify? He goes, I have this diary and puts it
Will 52:35
it's a diary of your measurements of where the sun is. So this is the thing while he had he had successfully critiqued Cooks work. Yeah, and saying there's not enough evidence and he's a fraud in other ways. There wasn't as much critique of his work, so he was kind of by default, awarded this and he was more powerful. He was he had friends in National Geographic. He had friends in the right places. Anyway, 1988 National Geographic, when they really looked at Peary's records, they concluded he actually fallen short. So this is Bryce, the author of The Cook and Peary book. He reckons he never got closer than 100 miles from the pole. Oh, and when confronted with failure on what he knew to be his last try for the pole. Remember, he's got no toes. I don't know how many times he's lost a lot of toes enough to need to be dragged being dragged in a sledge by Matthew Henson. And at this point, it must have been at the end is like, Fuck it is. We're here. We're here. And he couldn't resist declaring he'd won. No. Meanwhile, Bryce reckons Cook never got closer than 400 miles from all damn. After years of research that included first outside look at cooks private papers and a discovery of an unknown unknown diary previously on Earth in a museum of astronomy in Denmark. Neither cook nor Perry ever got anywhere near the North Pole, and both falsified their accomplishments in a lunge for explores immortality. Neither of them neither of them got very close
Rod 54:10
very close. In their defence, they are immortal because they'd been on the show now
Will 54:14
So not Cook, not Peary, not even Hanson. None of those three were the first of the pop.
Rod 54:19
Are you saying we could be?
Will 54:20
No, no people have got their damage? So there's four other claims?
Rod 54:24
Are we sure do we have to wait another 100 years to unearth the trueality?
Will 54:27
if those trunks are ever found, then maybe Cook might be
Rod 54:32
They're not going to be found. It's unlikely, do you know why? They're made of wood they've been parked in the elements in some rocks for what 100 years more? They're mush now
Will 54:43
probably in terms of lists of treasures out there. This would be a fun treasure to go and find. that's a cool thing.
Rod 54:52
And I've learned anything if I've learned anything from this episode, it's put it on eBay. You know, you know maybe maybe they're Bronx or not
Will 54:59
There are some of the Inuit people up there that will that one day they'll be like Finally, let's put these trunks on the ebay. one at a time. Four other claimants to be first to the North Pole. The first is US Naval Officer Richard Ebert, not the May 1926 flew in Fokker tri-motor aircraft. He was verified at the time by the National Geographic but this claim has since been undermined by looking at his diary again in 1996 to show that you missed it by 160 kilometres, so he didn't make it
Rod 55:33
Freakin diary. Don't write a diary that's more lesson
Will 55:35
write an accurate diary.
Rod 55:37
Rely better.
Will 55:38
The first consistent verified scientifically convincing attainment of the pole was only a few days later. 12th of May 1926,
Rod 55:47
just a few days ago is like going
Will 55:51
by Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and his US sponsor Lincoln Ellsworth on the airship Norge. So they floated over in a in a in an airship in Zeplin. They floated over the North Pole, and all of their records seem to be legit, that they were first over the North Pole,
Rod 56:09
but they did not touch.
Will 56:12
Yes, so just just for the record, that does make Roald Amundsen first to both the North Pole and the South Pole.
Rod 56:18
Did he touch the South as well. Or did he fly?
Will 56:21
He was on that he was on the south. South he definitely he definitely got the South. I was with you on that. So I looked okay, who was first to put foot on the North
Rod 56:33
doesn't have to be a foot whatever. Tongue nose finger I don't care. Touch. Yeah. You have physical touch touch.
Will 56:39
So the next is a team of Soviet scientists. Okay. No. They were led by Ivan Papanin in May 1937 they landed five aircraft.
Rod 56:52
Were they Soviet in 1937? I suppose they were, definitely Balsmics had come in earlier. That's true.
Will 56:57
Yeah. 1970 1980 That's right. So they flew all the way up to the North Pole. And they established a little house there. Well, a North pole,
Rod 57:06
I station, a little house, a log cabin.
Will 57:09
They call it North Pole one or whatever the Russian was for, and they conducted scientific research for the next nine months, February the next year, when they are due to be picked up by icebreakers their station had drifted almost 3000 kilometres. This is how fast the ice 1000 in nine months so it's drifting like multi kilometres per day. So this goes back to the idea that you know, when they when they overnighted you moved away from the North Pole, it is moving like the ice is moving quite quickly.
Rod 57:38
I'm feeling a little more accommodating about the whole floating over thing because at least you can go it's definitely here magnetically speaking or whatever but that's okay, that's messy.
Will 57:47
So 1997 The Guinness Book of Records said okay, yep, they were first to be at the North Pole at ground level but they flew there
Rod 57:54
Yeah, wusses. Yeah, the Guinness Book of Records because some do to the bowler hat
Will 58:00
that's up there with nature like that's my Guinness Book of Records. Wikipedia Guinness Book of Records. What other place would document the world's longest toenails
Rod 58:16
what kind of fucking maniac would want to go for that record? I mean, I'm trying but it's getting tricky
Will 58:22
I get if you are you have the second longest toenails in the world. They're up to a foot long
Rod 58:31
you're not disgusting and it's only second
Will 58:33
and you go alright, I'm waiting for that fucker to die and then I can go a little bit long I get if you're that close you may want to go a bit longer. Jesus Christ though, I'm very happy to be world's 6 billion longest toenails. I'll
Rod 58:50
tell you like, what's the day like when you sit you wake up you have your morning coffee, your toaster, whatever and then you go on a go for the longest time now record. Fuck it. Those are staying everything else my life is going to be normal except for that.
Will 59:05
It's the moment where you say I never want to have sex again. Or walk. Well, both of those things are important.
Rod 59:12
I mean, look, I've walked more than I have sex. I know it's what a sad indictment on my relationship but you're not walking with words from his toenails which is entirely irrelevant to this episode. But holy shit. Oh, fingernails is bad number toenails.
Will 59:29
Anyway, they flew there. So the final claimants to being first to the North Pole proper, because they went there at least overland I touched it was an insurance salesman. Come on. In 1968. Ralph Plaisted from Minnesota. He and his buddies were having a bet like they were talking about snowmobiles and how easy or hard it would be to work out snowmobiles, and they were like, well, maybe I'm so good at snowmobiles, I could get to the North Pole. May 1968 Fry America roll on the snowmen, Ralph Waldo Jerry and John Luke. I don't think from America from somewhere. They were the first to go overland up to the North Pole.
Rod 1:00:13
God has made me happy I've written a snowmobile once I got to drive one. Oh, it's cool. It's fan bloody tastic.
Will 1:00:26
but maybe you have to do the Peary method of towing some coal and some Wallaces and some whale blubber. Yeah. Sounds wild. So Peary was assumed to have won but he didn't. In the end, Matt Hansen, got some attention. He was he was it took another 20 years, but he was anointed in 30 years sorry, anointed into the Explorers Club. And President Truman President Eisenhower both honoured him before he died in 1955.
Rod 1:00:51
Actually, Rob anointment on you?
Will 1:00:54
Yes, yes, they do.
Rod 1:00:55
Welcome you're an explorer. Now I'm gonna rub oil on your toe
Will 1:00:58
just like the king. Peary never travelled to the Arctic again, Cook did that in 1920. He was convicted of fraud in an unrelated mining matter and spent over a decade in prison. While he was in prison. He was visited numerous times by his friend Raul de Munson, first to the Pole, who believed that he owed his life to cook. Just finally, back to the Northwest Passage. I'm raising it because weirdly, I know that it was very hard to get through originally. The first person to get through the Northwest Passage was again Roald Amundsen in 1903 to 1906. It took him quite a while this rabbit in a little boat called the Goya. Oh, my God is a little bit it's a little boat, but every year, you'll be not pleased to know it's getting more navigable. Two trips in the 1940s, four in the 1950s, 10 in the 1970s, 27 in the 90s, 192 in the 2010s.
Rod 1:01:56
and by 2030, you'll be able to just paddle along on your stand up paddleboard. So an insurance salesman called Ralph. That is, I mean, I expect the unexpected, but that is not how I thought this would end.
Will 1:02:09
You're welcome.
