Note 6 — BEGINNING PREPARATIONS FOR THE POLAR DASH

One of the charges which Mr. Peary circulated before he returned North in 1908, was, that I violated a rule of Polar ethics by not applying for a license to seek the Pole, nor giving notice of my proposed trip. There is no such rule in Polar ethics. The following letter, however, to his press agent, Mr. Herbert Bridgman, dated Etah, August 26, 1907, answers the charge:

"My dear Bridgman: I have hit upon a new route to the North Pole and will stay to try it. By way of Buchanan Bay and Ellesmere Land and northward through Nansen Strait over the Polar sea seems to me to be a very good route. There will be game to the 82°, and here are natives and dogs for the task. So here is for the Pole. Mr. Bradley will tell you the rest. Kind regards to all—F. A. Cook."

"It will be remembered," continued Mr. Bridgman, in his press reports, "that Dr. Cook, accompanied by John R. Bradley, Captain Moses Bartlett, and a number of Eskimos, left North Sidney, N. S., early last July on the American Auxiliary Schooner Yacht John R. Bradley, which landed the party at Smith Sound. Mr. Bradley returned to North Sydney on the yacht on October 1. The expedition is provisioned for two years and fully equipped with dogs and sledges for the trip. The party is wintering thirty miles further north than Peary did two years ago."

And yet Bridgman, in line with the indefatigable pro-Peary boosters, later tried to lead the public to believe that I had nothing but gum drops with which to undertake a trip to the Pole. This same Bridgman also printed in what Brooklyn people call the "Standard Liar" the fake about my using, as my own, photographs said to belong to the newspaper cub, Herbert Berri.

For fifteen years Bridgman used my photographs and my material for his lectures on the Arctic and Antarctic, generally without giving credit. Evidently, my work and my results were good enough for him to borrow as Peary did. So long as my usefulness served the Bridgman-Peary interests, there was no question of my credibility, but when my success interfered with the monopoly of the fruits of Polar attainment, then I was to be striped with dark lines of dishonor.

The most amusing and also the most significant incident of the Bridgman-Peary humbug was the faked wireless message which Bridgman printed for Peary in his paper. Peary claims he reached the Pole on April 6, 1909. In the Standard Union, Brooklyn, of April 14, 1909 (eight days after the alleged discovery), Peary's friend H. L. Bridgman, one of the owners, printed the following:

"PEARY DUE NORTH POLE TWELVE M., THURSDAY" (APRIL 15, 1909).

Is Mr. Bridgman a psychic medium? How, with Peary thousands of miles away, hundreds of miles from the most northerly wireless station, did he sense the amazing feat? Were he and Peary in telepathic communication? Or, rather, does this not seem to point to an agreement entered into before the departure of Peary, about a year before the attempt was made, to announce on a certain day the "discovery" of the Pole?

From other sources we learn that the timing of the arrival of the ship at Cape Sheridan seems to have been made good, but in an apparent effort on the part of Peary to keep faith with Bridgman on April 15, we find him in trouble. If Peary arranged his "discovery" for this agreed date, he would have had to take nine days for his return trip from the Pole. This would increase his speed limit 50 per cent., and since he is regarded with suspicion on his speed limits, to make his "Pole Discovery" story fit in between the known time when he left Bartlett and the time when he got back to the ship, he was compelled to break faith with Bridgman and went back nine days on his calendar, placing the date of Pole reaching at April 6.