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The Noose of Laurels
Recounts the rivalry between Commander Robert E. Peary and Dr. Frederick Cook, who both claimed to have been the first to reach the North Pole, and evaluates their claims
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
395 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 1989
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
November 7, 2017
Written by an accomplished polar explorer in his own right, this book examines the life of Robert Peary, the controversies surrounding his various explorations of Greenland and his attempts to reach the North Pole, the claims by Frederick Cook that he reached the pole before Peary and the subsequent efforts of public relations to preserve both claims. Although interesting and insightful, I would only recommend it to true junkies of the history of polar exploration.
Ultimately, Herbert concludes that Peary did not reach the pole but came very close. He meticulously examines Peary's history of inadequate record keeping which reached its culmination in the lack of supporting evidence cited contemporaneously in his journals. Herbert's portrayal shows a driven, cold, ambitious and manipulating man who, despite his faults, ultimately displayed flawed courage. Matthew Henson, his companion for all his polar ventures comes across as a sympathetic and admirable man whose contributions Peary never adequately honored.
One sentence summed up how I feel about Peary after reading the book: "On the polar pack ice he drove from the rear of his army of men with a frenzied passion to reach his objective, but never with that sense of awe and achievement which only the pioneer could know, and never with that fear and exhilaration which the man in the lead feels in his stomach when he knows he is going right out on a limb."
Although Herbert's book will interest those who like reading polar histories, Roland Huntford's books on Nansen, Scott and Amundsen, and Shackleton are much more captivating.
Ultimately, Herbert concludes that Peary did not reach the pole but came very close. He meticulously examines Peary's history of inadequate record keeping which reached its culmination in the lack of supporting evidence cited contemporaneously in his journals. Herbert's portrayal shows a driven, cold, ambitious and manipulating man who, despite his faults, ultimately displayed flawed courage. Matthew Henson, his companion for all his polar ventures comes across as a sympathetic and admirable man whose contributions Peary never adequately honored.
One sentence summed up how I feel about Peary after reading the book: "On the polar pack ice he drove from the rear of his army of men with a frenzied passion to reach his objective, but never with that sense of awe and achievement which only the pioneer could know, and never with that fear and exhilaration which the man in the lead feels in his stomach when he knows he is going right out on a limb."
Although Herbert's book will interest those who like reading polar histories, Roland Huntford's books on Nansen, Scott and Amundsen, and Shackleton are much more captivating.
May 16, 2009
In 1989, the controversy about Peary and whether he really reached the North Pole heated up again with a book by British polar explorer Wally Herbert (The Noose of Laurels,). Herbert is an experienced polar explorer himself. (Indeed, should Peary's feat be discredited, Herbert becomes the first man to reach the pole "overland," so to speak.) Herbert was asked by the Peary family in 1984 to review all the archival evidence after a British documentary claimed that Dr. Fred Cook was the first to reach the pole. (Actually he got nowhere near it.)
Peary was obsessed with the North Pole. His career began as a naval officer whose training in civil engineering led to an assignment working on the Panama Canal. While still a child he had read Kane's book on arctic exploration. As he grew older and studied more, he became convinced that the manner in which expeditions had been conducted was all wrong. He was certain that adopting native habits was the only way to survive the harsh arctic environment.
Peary was born with excellent political skills, and he cultivated the powerful and influential (not to mention rich) who could persuade the Navy to provide him paid release time for arctic explorations. For these adventures he received much adulation and fame - recognition he craved - much to the annoyance and consternation of his fellow naval officers.
Many of his explorations were flawed. His trip across the Greenland ice cap produced maps so inaccurate as to cause suffering and death to those who relied on them during later expeditions. No matter, he made sponsors happy by naming new land after them.
On several of those odysseys he was accompanied by Dr. Fred Cook, another explorer bitten by the polar bug. Cook produced some excellent ethnological studies of the Eskimos, but Peary refused to let him publish the material, insisting that all publications appear under the Peary imprimatur. He and Cook were to become bitter enemies. Cook later claimed to be the first conqueror of Mt. McKinley, an assertion soon discredited; he had no tangible evidence for the polar claim; and he went to jail for mail fraud in the twenties for selling land that he claimed was rich in oil. (Actually, the land did come in, producing billions of barrels, but he was not released until pardoned by FDR after serving half of a 14-year sentence. -- One interesting note: the Chicago Tribune, in an April 7, 1989 article on the controversy, claims that Cook died in prison. This is flatly contradicted by two other sources, so don't believe everything you read.)
Herbert believes Peary made the elementary mistake of not taking any longitude readings which made sextant sightings from the sun useless for determining precise position. Peary asserted he merely had to travel straight up the 80 degree meridian, but Herbert says ice drift would have taken him way off course and Peary realized belatedly that he was many miles to the west of the pole. A review by the National Geographic Society declared that Peary came close enough. Whatever.
Interestingly, much of Peary's success was due to Matt Henson, a black American and accomplished polar explorer who had accompanied Peary on most of his expeditions. Henson had a great deal of sympathy for the Eskimos and became quite fluent in their language. Peary used him to break trail in the dash for the pole so if indeed they reached the pole it was most likely Henson who got there first, but, of course, not being white, he, like the Eskimos, didn't count.
Peary eventually suffered a nervous breakdown. Herbert insists this was due to self-acknowledgment that he had not really reached the Pole and that he was essentially perpetrating a fraud like Cook, if not on the same scale. You decide.
Peary was obsessed with the North Pole. His career began as a naval officer whose training in civil engineering led to an assignment working on the Panama Canal. While still a child he had read Kane's book on arctic exploration. As he grew older and studied more, he became convinced that the manner in which expeditions had been conducted was all wrong. He was certain that adopting native habits was the only way to survive the harsh arctic environment.
Peary was born with excellent political skills, and he cultivated the powerful and influential (not to mention rich) who could persuade the Navy to provide him paid release time for arctic explorations. For these adventures he received much adulation and fame - recognition he craved - much to the annoyance and consternation of his fellow naval officers.
Many of his explorations were flawed. His trip across the Greenland ice cap produced maps so inaccurate as to cause suffering and death to those who relied on them during later expeditions. No matter, he made sponsors happy by naming new land after them.
On several of those odysseys he was accompanied by Dr. Fred Cook, another explorer bitten by the polar bug. Cook produced some excellent ethnological studies of the Eskimos, but Peary refused to let him publish the material, insisting that all publications appear under the Peary imprimatur. He and Cook were to become bitter enemies. Cook later claimed to be the first conqueror of Mt. McKinley, an assertion soon discredited; he had no tangible evidence for the polar claim; and he went to jail for mail fraud in the twenties for selling land that he claimed was rich in oil. (Actually, the land did come in, producing billions of barrels, but he was not released until pardoned by FDR after serving half of a 14-year sentence. -- One interesting note: the Chicago Tribune, in an April 7, 1989 article on the controversy, claims that Cook died in prison. This is flatly contradicted by two other sources, so don't believe everything you read.)
Herbert believes Peary made the elementary mistake of not taking any longitude readings which made sextant sightings from the sun useless for determining precise position. Peary asserted he merely had to travel straight up the 80 degree meridian, but Herbert says ice drift would have taken him way off course and Peary realized belatedly that he was many miles to the west of the pole. A review by the National Geographic Society declared that Peary came close enough. Whatever.
Interestingly, much of Peary's success was due to Matt Henson, a black American and accomplished polar explorer who had accompanied Peary on most of his expeditions. Henson had a great deal of sympathy for the Eskimos and became quite fluent in their language. Peary used him to break trail in the dash for the pole so if indeed they reached the pole it was most likely Henson who got there first, but, of course, not being white, he, like the Eskimos, didn't count.
Peary eventually suffered a nervous breakdown. Herbert insists this was due to self-acknowledgment that he had not really reached the Pole and that he was essentially perpetrating a fraud like Cook, if not on the same scale. You decide.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 7, 2012
Non-Fiction. After Robert E. Peary's claimed attainment of the North Pole in 1909, his personal papers were locked away from public view, closely guarded by his family and the Center for Polar Archives. But in 1984, when a dramatized television documentary credited Frederick A. Cook with the discovery of the North Pole, the National Geographic Society urged the Peary family to allow Peary's original diary and private memos to finally be examined in the hopes it would silence his critics.
The National Geographic Society, a group whose complete and unexamined support of Peary was instrumental in getting the world to accept the explorer's story, chose Wally Herbert for the task of digging through the Peary documents. An experienced polar explorer himself, Herbert was eminently qualified for the job, having sledged across the Arctic Ocean and over the North Pole as leader of the British Trans-Arctic Expedition of 1968-9. Herbert examines Peary's personal papers and his 1911 testimony before a Congressional subcommittee, and compares Peary's claims with his own experiences in the Arctic to build a damning argument against Peary ever having reached the Pole, a conclusion all the more believable, perhaps, because of Herbert's great admiration for Peary.
The history section in this is rough. I've been over this material twice before, so it should have been familiar, but Herbert somehow made it tangled and confusing. He quotes extensively from Peary's letters, diaries, and books, and while this helps to establish Peary's state of mind and his absolute fixation on the Pole, Herbert doesn't always do a satisfactory job of explaining where a quote comes from or when it was written. There's a difference between a letter or diary entry written during the day in question and an excerpt from a book written years later. The sources for direct quotes are listed in the reference section in the back, but a certain amount of detail needs to go into the narrative to provide context.
The analysis part, while occasionally too technical, finds the many holes in Peary's story, discredits Peary's and Cook's claims at the Pole, and even casts doubt on some of their earlier activities, such as Peary's Farthest North in 1906, and Cook's supposed climbing of Mount McKinley the same year. Herbert doesn't have any real evidence against Peary, who evidently did a much better job of hiding his lies and meeting his critics with bluster, misdirection, and arrogance than Cook, who ran and hid when confronted with the evidence against him, but the science and the circumstantial evidence against Peary is persuasive.
The book has some fairly useless maps with lots of lines and arrows that are never explained, dozens of glossy black and white plates, references for direct quotes, a bibliography, and an index.
Three stars. The first half with the history of Peary's expeditions is tedious, but as soon as Herbert gets into the analysis of Cook's and Peary's North Pole attempts and the resulting fallout, it gets interesting and much easier to read. Herbert presents a thorough and convincing argument that Peary never made it to the Pole.
The National Geographic Society, a group whose complete and unexamined support of Peary was instrumental in getting the world to accept the explorer's story, chose Wally Herbert for the task of digging through the Peary documents. An experienced polar explorer himself, Herbert was eminently qualified for the job, having sledged across the Arctic Ocean and over the North Pole as leader of the British Trans-Arctic Expedition of 1968-9. Herbert examines Peary's personal papers and his 1911 testimony before a Congressional subcommittee, and compares Peary's claims with his own experiences in the Arctic to build a damning argument against Peary ever having reached the Pole, a conclusion all the more believable, perhaps, because of Herbert's great admiration for Peary.
The history section in this is rough. I've been over this material twice before, so it should have been familiar, but Herbert somehow made it tangled and confusing. He quotes extensively from Peary's letters, diaries, and books, and while this helps to establish Peary's state of mind and his absolute fixation on the Pole, Herbert doesn't always do a satisfactory job of explaining where a quote comes from or when it was written. There's a difference between a letter or diary entry written during the day in question and an excerpt from a book written years later. The sources for direct quotes are listed in the reference section in the back, but a certain amount of detail needs to go into the narrative to provide context.
The analysis part, while occasionally too technical, finds the many holes in Peary's story, discredits Peary's and Cook's claims at the Pole, and even casts doubt on some of their earlier activities, such as Peary's Farthest North in 1906, and Cook's supposed climbing of Mount McKinley the same year. Herbert doesn't have any real evidence against Peary, who evidently did a much better job of hiding his lies and meeting his critics with bluster, misdirection, and arrogance than Cook, who ran and hid when confronted with the evidence against him, but the science and the circumstantial evidence against Peary is persuasive.
The book has some fairly useless maps with lots of lines and arrows that are never explained, dozens of glossy black and white plates, references for direct quotes, a bibliography, and an index.
Three stars. The first half with the history of Peary's expeditions is tedious, but as soon as Herbert gets into the analysis of Cook's and Peary's North Pole attempts and the resulting fallout, it gets interesting and much easier to read. Herbert presents a thorough and convincing argument that Peary never made it to the Pole.
October 12, 2025
Having read many books on the quest for the South Pole, I hadn't realised until a couple of years ago that there was an even more controversial story relating to the quest for the North Pole, and lighted on this book, which I found quite extraordinary. It is as much a biography of Peary as it is about the quest for the North Pole - since they seem to be one and the same thing. Herbert does a meticulous job on the Peary papers and related material, and arrives at a fair, balanced conclusion, even though, to my mind, he is not explicit enough in what he is arguing, always leaving (perhaps reasonably so) a modicum of doubt so that the reader can make up their mind. That's what makes this book something of a masterpiece in my view. It is all laid out for the reader to make up their mind as to whether Peary actually made it to the North Pole (Cook's claim was in its repercussions for Peary more than any seriousness in the claim itself). I've made up my mind.. I am surprised that this book is no longer in print and that it has received so few reviews on this site.
August 8, 2016
slow but fascinating.... maybe some day I'll finish it.
July 13, 2012
This was a very fair and well balanced book, looking at Robert Peary's claim to have reached the North Pole.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews