The North Pole postcards

Robert Peary and Frederick Cook fight over the North Pole in this postcard issued by the Kawin Company. The North Pole is portrayed as a desirable female. (Postcard from the Harper collection)

Before U.S. President Donald Trump’s bizarre interest in Greenland, another battle was fought over a point of geography even farther north — the North Pole.

In 1909, Robert Peary thought his long quest to “discover” the North Pole had finally been won. He had achieved the Pole, he claimed, on April 6.

But there was no means of communicating his triumph to the outside world from the Arctic. He had to wait until summer before his ship would be freed from the ice.

In August at Cape York, Greenland, he received mail that had been left for him by the Scottish whaler, Capt. Adams, telling him that his rival, Frederick Cook, was claiming to have reached the Pole a year earlier and was on his way down the Greenland coast, from where he hoped to catch a steamer to Copenhagen.

With that news, a new race was on — not for the Pole, but for a telegraph station from which to notify the United States and the world that the Pole had been reached.

Cook won that race. He sent a telegram from Lerwick in Shetland on Sept. 1 saying simply, “Reached north pole April 21, 1908.”

Six days later, Peary reached Indian Harbour, Labrador, and sent two messages.

The first was to his wife: “Have made good at last — I have the D. O. P.” The initials stood for “damned old pole.”

The second message was to the president of the Peary Arctic Club: “Pole reached. Roosevelt safe, Peary.” Roosevelt was the name of his ship.

He sent other messages, too. One read: “Stars and Stripes Nailed to the Pole.” Of course, there was no physical pole to nail anything to. There was nothing there but ice.

But the rhetoric used, especially by Peary, showed he would use patriotism to advance his claim to have been the first to reach the earth’s most northerly point.

Cook naively said that there was glory enough for two. That was easy enough for him to say, since he claimed to be first by almost a year.

Peary knew there was not glory enough for two, and that all the glory would go to the man who was first. So he was faced with the task of denigrating Cook and belittling his claim, alleging he had faked his trip over the ice with two young Inuit and had, in fact, been nowhere near the pole.

And so a public relations battle began. For Peary, it was to win the minds of the American people and show he was the only one to have reached the Pole.

For Cook, it was to show that he was first to reach the Pole, and therefore it didn’t matter whether Peary had reached it or not, for Peary would be second. Robert Peary set out to disparage, discredit and destroy Frederick Cook.

The battle was fought in the newspapers. But it was also fought in postcards. They were a relatively new means of communication and were often used to support various causes.

The Kawin Company issued a set of 50 cards, but they declined to take sides.

One of the last cards shows the explorers battling it out at the North Pole against a backdrop of the pole being portrayed as a desirable female, and a caption: “Whose little girlie are you?”

Uncle Sam celebrates the fact that both Peary and Cook are American in this postcard with blatant phallic imagery. (Postcard from the Harper collection)

One card, published by Jules Deutsch in 1909, shows Uncle Sam sitting atop a globe, holding hands with both Peary and Cook. Bizarrely, and without explanation, a caption in the upper right asks, “Who said Canada?” Is this a recognition of Canada’s claim to the pole under the sector principle?

The Ullman Manufacturing Co. issued the most bizarre card of all. With a caption proclaiming: “Hurrah for U.S.,” Uncle Sam sits atop a smiling globe with a phallic pole of ice flying the Stars and Stripes between his legs.

Taissumani is an occasional column that recalls events of historical interest. Kenn Harper is a historian and writer who lived in the Arctic for over 50 years. He is the author of Give Me Winter, Give Me Dogs: Knud Rasmussen and the Fifth Thule Expedition, and Thou Shalt Do No Murder, among other books. Feedback? Send your comments and questions to kennharper@hotmail.com.