Dr Frederick Cook is the most discredited polar explorer of all time. He claimed to have reached the North Pole before Peary. I did not think much of Dr Cook until I read in one of Wally Herbert's books that there was a Cook Society. I was amazed at the thought that anyone could possibly be out there trying to defend the most discredited explorer of all time. Dr Cook's claims to the North Pole and also to being the first to climb Mt McKinley (the highest mountain in North America) have been thoroughly refuted. He was held in contempt by almost everybody of note and none of his claims were taken seriously at all.

I contacted the Cook Society and asked them outright how they could possibly be defending someone as discredited as Cook. I expected to find a small group of embittered people skulking darkly in the shadows. Their open responses and detailed replies to my queries impressed me.

I spent some time assessing Cook's credibility and the scandals which surrounded him. I was amazed to discover how weak the evidence was which suggested that he had faked his North Pole trip. Indeed, Dr Cook's information about his trip was far more detailed than that which Peary produced for his trip which occurred 1 year after that of Cook. Top Russian scientists have actually stepped forward and stated that they acknowledge Cook as the true discoverer of the North Pole. The Cook/Peary controversy is one of the most heated debates in the history of exploration. It has now raged for most of this century and both sides have some good arguments in their stead. Wally Herbert tried in 1989 in his book The Noose of Laurels, to do a hatchet job on both Cook and Peary. He tried to discredit both of them even more.

As I went through the evidence I realised that Dr Cook was getting a raw deal. His scientific evidence was actually of a very high standard. Many polar experts now agree that much of what he wrote could not have been faked or guessed at beforehand. It was simply too detailed and too accurate. Often he discovered things which no one had expected to find. He maintained right to the end of his life that he had in fact never lied. His good friend, Amundsen, the discoverer of the South Pole believed in him to the end as well. Amundsen had only high praise for Dr Cook.

The Eskimo testimony which was used to damn Cook was similarly very weak. In fact, it turned out that other people who had interviewed the Eskimos (e.g. Rasumussen) had got a completely different story which vindicated Cook. Much testimony existed which favoured Cook, but Peary and his military associates engaged in a very ugly propaganda campaign to discredit and destroy him.

The most fascinating aspect of Dr Cook's story was his photograph of a place he called Bradley Land. He had taken a photograph of a very large piece of land out in the Arctic Ocean.

In Cook's Bradley Land photograph (above), we can see his sledges in the foreground and large hills in the background. Those are the hills of Bradley Land - a land which does not exist! Cook marked Bradley Land on his maps. I was struck by the fact that Bradley Land was very close to Peary's Crocker Land! It is very interesting that the two foremost polar explorers of that time should both give solid reports of land in virtually the same area. Since Cook was discredited he was simply accused of faking this photograph.

I also discovered my first physical evidence that perhaps there is an unknown land in that part of the Arctic. It comes in the form of mystery sediments on the ocean floor. Mirages cannot do that! It seems to me as if Bradley Land and Crocker Land may be related to one another.

Finally, I came across an interesting series of discussions between some scientists regarding the movement of low-level radioactive material after the Chernobyl nuclear accident. My own thoughts on the matter lead me to suggest that some of this material found its way through the Hollow Earth to the South Pole. Are there two Polar Holes on our planet?

Could it be that both Dr Cook and Admiral Peary came close to a North Polar Hole? Is there land up in the Arctic which has been removed from our maps simply because it is too close to a Polar Hole?

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Some after-thoughts:

As I finished this book and as I thought about what happened to Dr Cook I couldn't help but be apprehensive about this entire business of Polar Holes. The implications of the problem are tremendously far-reaching. Consider for example the basic thrust of my arguments that there may be Polar Holes on Mercury, Venus and Earth and their existence is suppressed. If such things exist then several Governments must therefore have gone to a considerable amount of trouble to keep it quiet.

This is where the legacy of Dr Cook troubles me. Here was a genuine man who did the honest thing but he was completely destroyed for it. He eventually went to prison for a crime he never committed. His life was completely destroyed. He was spat upon and lies were told about him for long after his death. Nobody listened to him. Nobody took anything he said seriously. He was constantly called a fake and a liar. He was a very good man who did much for his fellow man and he had great friends like Amundsen the discoverer of the South Pole who could vouch for his character. But even so he was was completely destroyed by military men like Peary and his associates. Could what happened to Dr Cook ever happen again to someone else who dares to go out in search of the truth?