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[photo] Frederick Cook, in Arctic gear - a medical doctor, respectful of Inughuit culture
The sky and weather I do not understand. It is very cold.
On 18 March 1908 a 42-year old American, Dr Frederick Cook, set off onto the vast field of treacherous sea ice that surrounds the north pole. He had with him four sleds, 26 dogs and four young Inughuit men, Ahwelah, Etukishook, Koolootingwah and Inugito.
Without the funds for an ice-breaking ship to take them north they’d already walked 200 miles, and spent the winter before that making their own clothing and sleds.
Cook led the way with a compass and an axe to cut through the ice, which near the coast gets pushed up into enormous ridges, sometimes 20 metres high. He was aiming west by north, on the assumption that the sea ice was drifting east and would carry him toward the pole. Only once the sun was up could he take longitude measurements.
After an entire day they had made only 16 miles. They made igloos and caught some sleep. After two days Koolootingwah and Inugito headed back to land – they had seen Cook, Ahwelah and Etukishook past the worst of the ice. Just 460 miles left to go.
Cook had been to the Arctic at least 4 times before. But after weeks and weeks on the polar ice, even Cook was finding the trek almost unbearable.
‘..there was an inhuman strain which neither words nor pictures could adequately describe. The maddening influence of the sameness of Polar glitter, combined as it was with bitter winds and extreme cold and overworked bodies, burned our eyes and set our teeth to a chronic chattering. To me there was always the inspiration of ultimate success. But for my young… companions, it was a torment almost beyond endurance.’
In the end, on 13 April, nearly a month into this daily struggle, Ahwelah bent over his sled, silently weeping. He could not move. In his Inuktun language he said, 'It is well to die—Beyond is impossible—Beyond is impossible! I will go back. The sky and weather I do not understand. It is very cold.'
His companion Etukishook looked equally troubled. 'I do not understand the sun', he said.
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[photo] Ahwelah and Etukishook at the North Pole 21 April 1908 (a year before Peary)
The world was unrecognisable. Their shadows were unrecognisable.
Cook knew the Inughuit were preoccupied with their shadows – because for them the shadow is where the soul lives. None of them had seen the sun like this before, never dipping, as only happens very close to the pole. Cook, of course, had expected it. But for his companions the world was unrecognisable. Their shadows were unrecognisable.
At last, encouraged by Cook, Ahwelah was able to go on. Cook wrote later that he realised that he had himself been lost in his own struggle to put one foot in front of the other. He not given enough support to his Inughuit friends, who were doing this for him and for the meagre reward of a gun and a knife each. Cook had no wealthy backers to be able to afford anything more.
On 21 April 1908, at last Frederick Cook pinned the stars and stripes on a tent pole. He knew it was almost impossible to get accurate readings for his location, with the constant drifting of the ice and the refraction of the low sun, and the probability that his watch was no longer correct. But he took as many readings as he could, and they all suggested he was at or near the pole.
He also took a series of hourly measurements of Etukishook’s shadow. It was always the same length. For the Inughuit it was bewildering. For Cook it was a sure sign that they were at the pole since such a phenomenon only occurs there.
The temperature was minus 38, the barometer falling, suggesting the weather was changing. The dogs were exhausted but happy to be given double rations. They all rested for two days.
Cook’s main thought, he wrote later, was that it had all been a waste of time. Far better to have spent these months in a laboratory, studying germs, saving a child from disease, going with the women who visited the slums and nursed the sick, or teaching, or helping any of those many people ‘who engage in social service humbly, patiently, un-expectant of any reward.’
They are the words of a very different kind of man from Robert Peary, whose expedition had yet to set sail from New York.
#99 Shadowlands - Ep 3 Murder. Mystery at the North Pole
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A full year before US commander Robert Peary claimed he had been the first man to reach the North Pole, a younger, medical doctor, also from America, had beaten him to it
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