Doug Davies, Douglas R. Davies, Navigation Report

Was there a "Race to the Pole?"

Date: Mon, 6 May 2002

I bought a VCR and took our TV out of the box, where it has been for the last two years. (My 3-1/2 year old is in physical therapy, and the therapist wanted us to see some video tapes.) My little boy wanted to put in a tape that he could watch, so I gave him the Race for the Poles. What a piece of junk.

Cook was not in any race to the pole with Peary. Cook never made a serious attempt for the pole. Bryce tries to defend him, saying he really did try, but turned back when he saw it was impossible. Balderdash! He supposedly had 80 days of supplies, but turned back 2 to 6 days after his supporting party turned back from a point 2 days out from Svartevoeg. But for Cook's audacious lie, he would be barely a footnote in any story about the race for the pole. He wasn't in it. Nansen, Cagni, Peary, and Markham and others in an earlier time gave it their best shot. If Peary hadn't succeeded, the next guy to try probably would have been Amundsen. The fact that Amundsen succeeded in Antarctica is far from a guarantee that he would have succeeded in the North, but he would have given it his best. These are the guys in the race.

Cook's suffering and survival at Cape Sparbo does not convert a half-hearted jaunt in the direction of the pole into a bona fide effort. He went south rather than returning along his outbound track by his own choice, probably to avoid running into his own supporting parties or running into Peary at Etah. He miscalculated how hard it would be to reach Lancaster Sound to catch a ride home with a whaler. By the time he realized he would not get to Lancaster Sound in time, he was committed to wintering over. With the help of his eskimo hunters he survived. This was no great exploration (the territory for the most part had been explored by Sverdrup), nor any great hardship imposed on Cook as a result of ice drift on the Arctic Ocean. It was a calculated gamble by Cook that he lost, but survived.

Suppose in 1967, some small country supported by the soviets (Albania, not to pick on anyone, but to pick a country at random) managed to strap a crude capsule with a guy in it onto one of the soviet era ICBMs and made a short suborbital flight. Upon returning, they claim the guy went to the moon. Would the story of the race to the moon be the story of NASA against the Albanians? One might admire the Albanians for getting someone into space at all, in this hypothetical, but it hardly would make them a contender.

Or take Rosie Ruiz, or whatever her name was, who faked winning the women's division of the New York marathon. Does the fact that she claimed to win make her one of the contenders? Was the race between the real winner and her? Suppose to stay out of view and get to the finish line, she had to slide through a sewer pipe on her elbows for half a mile. Maybe she suffered a lot. Maybe she suffered more than the winner. Does that give her the right to claim victory?

Peary was not in a race with Cook. He was in a race against the elements, against time, which was running out for him, and against the ever present general threat that some new real contender, like an Amundsen or a Shackleton or a Scott, would come along. He was worried about what Cook might claim, but he was not worried about what Cook might accomplish.

Doug