Taissumani, Nov. 6
How Dr. Cook Killed Robert Scott
Every crackpot with a computer finds his audience on the Internet where mad ravings and conspiracy theories go unchecked but not unread. Occasionally some of these rants touch on polar history and provide amusement to those of us who stumble across them.
One site that provides no end of hilarity is that run by Verne Robinson, son of Bradley Robinson who was a serious writer and the first biographer of Matthew Henson, Robert Peary’s black travelling companion. Somehow, Verne did not inherit his father’s respect for the facts.
The musings on his web site are voluminous, sometimes even on the mark, but more often they degenerate into ridiculousness. Urged on by his own hatred of Dr. Frederick Cook, the American doctor who claimed to have reached the pole a year before Peary, Robinson becomes a parody of a scholar.
I thought Robinson had exhausted his ability to surprise me, but I was shocked recently to come across an article he had posted some time ago. The headline reads, “Dr Cook Killed Robert Scott!”
Now this would take some doing because Dr. Cook claimed to have reached the North Pole in 1908, whereas Robert Scott, a British explorer, died returning from the South Pole in 1912. Robert Scott never set foot in the Arctic.
Doctor Cook, however, was in the Antarctic, but that was from 1897 to 1899 on the Belgica expedition, over a decade before Scott’s unfortunate demise. Short of voodoo, I wondered, how could Frederick Cook have killed Robert Scott.
I read on. A sub-title in large type part-way down the page purported to shed light on the matter. It read, “Shocking evidence proves that Dr. Cook Killed the British South Pole expedition team of Robert Scott!” Now this was getting serious. Not only had Cook killed Scott; he had killed his entire expedition.
Robinson’s logic, or lack thereof, goes like this. Robert Peary reached, or claimed to have reached, the North Pole in April of 1909. But Peary had planned to organize an expedition to the South Pole as soon as he returned from the Arctic, claims Robinson.
With his North Pole success behind him, finding funding for his Antarctic venture would have been easy. But Peary’s attention was diverted from his new goal of reaching the South Pole by Dr. Cook’s claim to have reached the North Pole a year before Peary.
Suddenly, to save his reputation, Peary was forced to devote all his attention to saving his name and defaming Dr. Cook. Cook’s announcement of his “polar hoax” (to use Robinson’s term) “diverted all public attention and the resultant funding opportunities Peary needed. Peary was unable to dash off to the South Pole.”
The Antarctic was therefore left wide open for British and Norwegian rivals, Scott and Roald Amundsen, to rush to the Antarctic in a race to be the first to claim the “last great geographic prize.”
Scott’s expedition was hastily and poorly planned and inadequately equipped. His entire team starved or froze to death. Robinson’s illogical conclusion is this: “This death of an entire expedition would never have happened if Dr. Cook had not perverted history by lying. If he had never perpetrated his hoax, Peary and Henson would have dashed off triumphantly to the South Pole.”
He goes on to say that “the death of this brave Englishman and his brave men shall forever hang over the head of Cook.” And in a final flourish of hyperbole, he ends his diatribe with a fitting polar image, “Cook killed Scott just as surely as if he had harpooned him like a seal.”
And now you know how Frederick Cook killed a man he had never met, on a continent he had left over a decade earlier!
Taissumani recounts a specific event of historic interest. Kenn Harper is a historian, writer and linguist who lives in Iqaluit. Feedback? Send your comments and questions to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).