Three Prior North Pole Claims: Each Unproven & Highly Suspect
In 2009 April & November
(letters),
Smithsonian Magazine published heartwrenching defenses
of North Pole-discovery claimants Frederick Cook (1908/4/21)
& Robert Peary's companion Matthew Henson (1909/4/6), respectively,
stating (November) that the-controversy-continues as to
whether Cook or Peary was first there.
This is a false choice since among explorers and scientists,
it is not controversial anymore that both claims
presented no proof but numerous suspicious oddities,
as did airman Richard Byrd's later 1926/5/9 claim. Moreover, Cook & Peary
had each committed now-obvious exploration-fraud in 1906, when Cook
faked the 1st ascent
of Mt.McKinley,
and Peary faked his sighting of
mythical “Crocker Land”, as well as his Farthest North,
the latter fraud proven
through the unexpected discovery by Sir Wally Herbert
(1st genuine dog-sledger to the N.Pole: 1969) of a lost typescript of
much of Peary's deliberately
destroyed 1906 April diary.
Upon reading Allen Counter's November letter to SM
(defending the skeptical-bullet-ridden corpse of the Peary N.Pole claim),
CalTech-JPL's E.Myles Standish, senior creator of the tables of Sun, Moon,
& planets used throughout the world for the last 1/4 century,
commented in understandable incredulity at artificial popular prolongation of
what has not been a legitimate controversy for years:
“Anyone who is acquainted with the facts and has any
amount of logical reasoning can not avoid the conclusion that
neither Cook, nor Peary, nor Byrd reached the North Pole;
and they all knew it.”
Standish shortly originated a fresh approach to the controversy:
just list the FACTS, e.g., of the Peary claim. This stark analysis is
now published at DIO.
SM's presumed desire to do justice to underdogs is commendable
but misplaced in this instance. The genuine underdogs here are
[1] evidence-oriented, academically competent scholars
of the Polar Controversy (customarily ignored by promoters,
who prefer selective and/or even irrelevant data,
such as race-card politicking); and, more important,
[2] the 1st provable North Pole attainer, Norwegian Roald Amundsen
who on 1926/5/12 arrived there in the dirigible Norge
with co-commander Lincoln Ellsworth (US);
also, the Norge's designer, Umberto Nobile
(Italy); and Norway's Oskar Wisting.
Amundsen & Wisting were also indisputably 1st at the South Pole
(1911/12/14). Despite his relative obscurity in the US, it is undeniable
that Amundsen's record
of firsts exceeds that of all other polar explorers combined.
It is notable that
those skeptical of the three dubious pre-Amundsen
claims constitute the party that encourages such citational evenhandedness
(including citing
even the most bizarre attacks on themselves), while flamekeepers
(DIO 10 [2000]
end-note 20 [pp.103-104]) for
the three indefensible claims are fearful of sending their readers
along to skeptical sites (for reasons that will quickly become clear
to anyone consulting said sites' lethally conclusive evidential analyses).
Particular care is taken not to let readers know of
DIO,
which is by far the most scientifically competent of
all the vying commentators.
Samples of DIO's findings & documentations:
Peary's diary-page,
for the precise 1906/6/24 moment when he later claimed to have discovered
(non-existent) “Crocker Land” on the horizon,
states: “No land visible”.
The hitherto-hidden precropped original
of Cook's 1906/9/18 Mt.McKinley “summit” photo was
recovered 90y later by librarian Rob't Bryce and 1st published by
DIO (as noted at New York Times 1998/11/26 p.1).
Its now-fully-visible background shows that Cook was 19 miles distant
from McKinley, at barely 1/4 its 20000' height: see Bryce at
DIO 7.2 [1997]
‡7 Figs.6&8 [pp.52&54],
side-by-side photo-blowups designed by Keith Pickering
(biographer of Ralph Plaisted, 1st surface attainer of the N.Pole: 1968);
DIO 9.3 [1999]
‡5 Fig.6 [p.116].
Neither Cook in 1908 nor
Peary in 1909
observationally controlled the compass each claimed
to have steered their dog-sledges by, to reach the Pole.
(DIO 1.1 [1991]
‡4;
DIO 7.1 [1997]
‡4.)
Henson's 1910/7/17 account
notes Peary's 1909/4/6 “disappointment”
(Peary at the North Pole, Fact or Fiction? 1973 p.151) right
after his sextant observations of the Sun located the “Pole” Camp.
At this very moment Peary ceased
writing in his diary for days (similar to
Byrd's 1926 behavior)
and avoided conversing with inquiring companion Henson for the rest of
the trip & beyond (Henson 1910; Rawlins 1973 p.152).
In nautical miles/day, Peary's 1909
speed over buckled, fractured
ocean-ice allegedly doubled from 13 with a light sledge as pace-maker to 27
with fully loaded sledges, suddenly streaking northward at ocean-ice-record
pace just as soon as he left his last qualified navigator-witness behind.
This re-doubled (to over 50!)
returning southward to that point, where he then
suddenly slowed to 20 despite ever-lightening sledges
on this non-stretched portion of the trip, from there back to land.
(Southward speeds were about 5/3 higher than northward, being
mostly over the freshly pickaxed and iglooed northward trail,
with lighter sledges than when on the outward journey. See also
DIO 10 [2000]
p.5 note.)
Peary altered
a key datum in the foregoing connexion when reading
his diary to Congress in 1911 (Peary Hearings p.301).
He also (understandably!) hid from Congress
the ludicrously-feeble
sole explanation in the diary, for his alleged perfect steering.
As to A.Counter & Matthew Henson:
Counter is in much the same bind as the “biographers”:
of Shakespeare:
no diaries or work-mss, etc. DIO alone has posted Henson's
entire extant handwritten legacy.
The long-secret Byrd 1926 diary's 1926/5/9 sextant data both
place him over 100 nautical miles south of where he later said he was.
(New York Times 1996/5/9 p.1;
DIO 10 [2000]
§E [pp.26-32].)
As 1st noted by DIO, Byrd's initial
official 1926/6/22 report's sextant data were inadvertently indoor-faked
waaay too precisely
to have been genuinely read off his outdoor sextant: data 30 times
more precise than the real sextant data he entered into his 1925-1926 diary.
So (ibid §G6 [pp.39-41])
he surgically excised these give-away data
from the report before distributing it to geographical societies
(1926/11/24 version). Sample before-after comparison
(6/22 vs 11/24) provided at ibid Fig.7 [p.34].
The American Geographical Society awarded medals for the considerable
genuine accomplishments of Peary & Byrd,
but never for their North Pole claims.
Partly on the basis of our findings, the New York Times,
one of the Peary claim's 1909 supporters, has
(both
editorially [1988] and in its Science section [2009/9/8])
unloaded its early support for the Peary claim, and equally
forthrightly (cited at idem) was first to publish —
on 1996/5/9 — the Byrd diary's contradictions of his claim
(a claim also originally backed by the NYT).
The 1996 New York Timespage-one story (John Wilford)
was openly based upon DIO's report
to the Byrd Polar Research Center (Ohio State University),
the full version of which was later simultaneously co-published by
the University of Cambridge and DIO vol.10 [2000].
The Amundsen-Ellsworth-Nobile 1926 Norge expedition produced shared
sextant readings, new scientific data, and crossed the Arctic Ocean virtually
straight through. The expedition's flight-chart (complete with slight
course-corrections — unlike the bee-line fantasies
of Cook, Peary, & Byrd — is reproduced at Rawlins 1973 p.280.
For balance if nothing else, Smithsonian Magazine readers
would presumably appreciate being informed of these sources.
Addendum on the various propaganda items contained in
A.Counter's November letter to Smithsonian Magazine:
Though Counter as usual tries to imply that Peary-skeptics are Cookites,
it has been decades since any non-cult Peary-doubting scholar has
believed that Cook got anywhere near as close to the Pole as Peary.
The “Navigation Foundation” report (funded by Peary's funder,
National Geographic) didn't convince leading science journals (e.g.,
Nature & Science: see citations at
DIO 2.2 [1992]
n.2 [p.55];
DIO 2.3 [1992]
‡8 §8 n.11 [p.101])
or indeed anyone else of a scientific bent.
As for the idea that Peary couldn't make-it without Henson,
Peary's actual private remarks
on Henson's 1906 & 1909 northward drive are painful to read.
No Henson diary survives, assuming such ever existed.
Counter is not (as SM-billed)
“Director The Harvard Foundation” but head of
a particular Harvard foundation, that particularly
lives to fan racial obsessions. Which is presumably why he continually
goes on about how (back 100y ago) Henson was utterly ignored, so that
an injustice needs to be rectified & rectified & rectified.
Well, in truth, Henson's accounts were repeatedly and prominently published
1910-1912, including a long, illustrated article
by him in then-widely-read World's Work (1910 April).
His book was published with Peary's help in 1912, while only one
other assistant on Peary's 1909 expedition was allowed to publish
a book at the time (Geo.Borup's 1911 charmer, aimed at the kiddie market).
For ethnic not scientific reasons, he is today promoted
enormously more than any other
assistant in the entire history of exploration
(if not the whole span of human civilization):
much more, ironically, than scientifically-gifted 1909 expedition-leader
Peary, who — even when his occasional exaggerations
are set aside — was the greatest of US arctic explorers.
He and Henson will always be remembered together for their 1900/5/13 discovery
of the northernmost point of land on Earth, Greenland's Cape Jesup,
the impregnable documentation for which is, however, entirely due to Peary.
His original chart of the discovery (reproduced at
Rawlins Polar Notes 10:24-54 [Dartmouth 1970] Fig.7)
typically marks observed compass variations throughout the region,
the exact opposite of his career's unique blank on such observations in 1909,
when he needed such steering-data
more than on any other expedition of his career.