Polar Postcards Heat Up The Peary / Cook North Pole Debate
By Kenn Harper

Kenn Harper is a writer and businessman who has made his home in the Arctic for the past 36 years. He is fluent in Inuktitut (Eskimo) and is the author of the best-selling book Give Me My Father's Body: The Life of Minik, the New York Eskimo. He has been collecting Arctic books and ephemera for more than three decades.

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April is a special month in polar exploration. It's the month in which Robert Peary claimed to have reached the North Pole in 1909.  It's also the month in which Dr. Frederick Cook claimed to have stood at the Pole a year earlier.

Almost a century later, the controversy refuses to die — its early course clearly marked by a trail of ephemera.

Cook and Peary, once friends and shipmates, became bitter rivals with Cook's decision to make an attempt on the Pole.  Cook claimed that he reached the North Pole with two Inuits on April 21, 1908. Peary claimed to have reached it a year later on April 6, 1909. But Cook was delayed for a year on his return, spending the winter with his Inuit guides in a cave on Devon Island, Canada. So in the summer of 1909 the race was not for the Pole, but for the nearest telegraph station from which each claimant could send news of his achievement to the world.

Cook won that race and for a time captured the public's heart and acclaim, but soon the Peary publicity machine roared into full gear. Peary, the "establishment man," used his power and influence to crush Cook, who was eventually discredited in the eyes of most of the public.

I have lived in the Arctic — Baffin Island (Canada) and Greenland — for the past 36 years, and collect polar books and ephemera. I avoid the Antarctic like the plague. The lack of native people or polar bears makes it very uninter-esting for me. But the Arctic in general, and the North Pole in particular, are rich collecting fields.

There's the paradox — until recently, a home in the Arctic was the worst possible place from which to collect Arctic ephemera. The material is not here. It is in what I call "the south," at shows and shops and fairs. The advent of e-Bay has changed all that and turned me into an avid on-line warrior.

I'm on the side of the underdog, so I'm a member of the Frederick A. Cook Society and not a Peary fan.  Both are collectible, but there is more Peary material to collect. And so my home is cluttered with Peary ephemera.

A large collection of Peary and Cook postcards helps define the controversy.

The Kawin series of 50 cards, published in Chicago in 1909 at the height of the Cook-Peary controversy, is hard to find as a set. I was fortunate to get a complete set at Brimfield a few years ago, although not in the slipcase in which they are said to have originally appeared. The cards, all black and white, are either photos or artists' conceptions. Each has a border of snow and a walrus in the lower left corner. The publisher's name is shown as K-win on the front, Kawin on the reverse.

The Kawin series judiciously refuses to take sides in the polar controversy; the last two cards show the explorers battling it out at the pole, and finally an unidentifiable explorer "hoisting the stars and stripes at the North Pole" with a dogsled in the foreground.

A few cards not from this series also champion the achievements of both explorers. One, probably the most common of all polar cards, shows portraits of both explorers, one on each side of the pole, with the captions "Stars and Stripes Nailed to the North Pole" and "Two Dauntless Americans Who Reached the Goal of a Thousand Years and Planted the Stars and Stripes Upon the Axis of the World."

Some publishers however, wanted it both ways. M. T. Sheahan of Boston simultaneously published a card of Peary and another of Cook, each with a brief history of the polar expedition, and labeled each:  "Discoverer of the North Pole." The Rotograph Company in New York published a Cook card (7179A) and two Peary cards (7180A and B), claiming each as the discoverer of the pole, and two more, for good measure, (7179 B and C) claiming both as "Discoverers of the North Pole."

Perhaps the oddest bipartisan card is one published by Slattery Co. in Boston. It is two cards held together with a grommet. The caption on the top card is "Who Discovered the North Pole?" Below that, an oval opening shows a portrait of an explorer — Peary or Cook. Underneath, on the first card, is the statement "I Did" followed by the instruction "Turn the bottom card around and see my rival." When the bottom card is rotated 180 degrees, the picture of the rival explorer appears above "I Did". On the back of the second sheet is a map showing both routes to the pole.

But most cards were decidedly partisan.

Of particular interest is the "North Pole Gravure Series" by Hampton's Magazine, a series of real photographs, all copyrighted by Peary, that were originally published in Hampton's under the title "The Discovery of the North Pole" in issues from January to September of 1910. I am fortunate to have all 13 cards in the series (without the original wrapper) at an original price of 25 cents per set. 

Cards published in 1909 by Jules Deutsch are quite scarce. The five that I have are in sepia and the art is quite rudimentary. One shows a polar bear about to sit in a barber chair at the North Pole, with the caption "Who's Next?" One, apparently denigrating a Canadian claim to the pole, shows Uncle Sam sitting atop the world, arms outstretched and holding hands with Peary on one side and Cook on the other. Another simply bears portraits of Cook and Peary, and the question "Who was there?"

Many publishers issued humorous cards during the Cook-Peary controversy. The Ullman Mfg. Co. of New York issued a number — one shows Uncle Sam sitting atop a smiling globe, a phallic pole of ice rising between his legs — with the caption "Hurrah for U.S." Another shows an American eagle on top of the world with the caption "I'm Roosting Here Now." F. and H. Levy Manufacturing Co. published a card showing Peary arriving at the pole to find a bone marked "North Pole" and a sign bearing the message, "Friend Peary – Enjoy yourself. Eat hearty, it's cold, but well COOKED. Yours F.A.C."

A number of cards, from various publishers, show explorers stranded at the top of poles, either wooden or ice, with polar bears at the base threatening their lives, while others show bears dancing around the pole.

Especially beautiful are the cards featuring the art of Albert Operti, who accompanied Peary north on two expeditions. These are the Tuck's Post Cards, printed in England by Raphael Tuck & Sons. Most are in color, but some are monotone. There are the obligatory cards bearing portraits of Peary and Cook, but others are paintings of Arctic scenes.

"Springtime at Lady Franklin Bay" shows Fort Conger, a Peary wintering spot. "Baffin's Bay – A November Gale" shows the vessel, Hope, in 1897, "The Highway to the Pole" shows explorers and dogsleds in difficult ice conditions. "Cape York Native" shows a Polar Eskimo man, perhaps one that Operti personally met on his expedition. "Fog Bank and Greenland Ice Cape Crevasse" show a pristine yet dangerous scene as an exploring party crosses a glacier.

It's ironic that it took the technological revolution of the Internet and the advent of e-Bay to allow an Arctic resident to seriously collect Arctic ephemera. That, combined with sporadic trips to shows in "the South," has led to the development of a large collection of Cook and Peary postcards, which have their home, appropriately, in the Arctic.