On his first Arctic expedition, in which fate first brought him together with Robert Peary.
Looking through the newspapers, I came across an ad about recruiting volunteers for an expedition led by Pir and to Greenland.
The young man was attracted by the opportunity to test himself in the harsh conditions of the Arctic, and soon he was accepted into the expedition as a doctor.
Cook did very well in Greenland. At the very beginning of the expedition, Piri broke his leg, and it was only thanks to the doctor Frederick A. Cook that he was successfully cured and continued the journey. At that time, Cook was not yet a rival of Piri, so the latter was not lying; assessing the talent of his doctor, he wrote: “I owe a lot to his professional skill, patience and composure… He was always a useful and tireless worker.”
They say that the harsh beauty of the icy expanses, like a magnet, attracts a person and makes him rush to the North again and again. Frederick Cook did not escape this attraction either, although he successfully got a job as a doctor in Brooklyn, he was tempted to be among the ice again. Having learned about the upcoming Belgian Antarctic expedition under the command of Adrien de Gerlache,
Cook gets a job as her doctor.
In 1897, the expedition went to the shores of Antarctica. Things are not going very well for her, the ship is covered with ice and remains for the polar winter. In this expedition, Frederick Cook gets to know the future great polar explorer Roald Amundsen. It was these two people who turned out to be the core around which the team of the wintering vessel, confused and discouraged, rallied.
For quite a long period, there was no certainty about who reached the North Pole first: Frederick Cook or Robert Peary. Then Piri was officially recognized as the conqueror of the northern “crown” of the planet, but many famous polar explorers did not agree with this. Decades later, after receiving new data about the Arctic, the facts push us to the conclusion that it was Frederick Cook, not Peary, who became the conqueror of the North Pole.
The story of this scandalous story, perhaps, should begin with a man who, according to many polar researchers, was the first to reach the North Pole, but became a victim of intrigues and lies on the part of another contender for the title of conqueror of the northern “crown” of the planet.
The name of this man is Frederick Kuzh. So that you can form your opinion about this man, let’s focus a little on his life and achievements preceding his expedition to the North Pole.
