Punk’s Reviews > The Noose of Laurels: Robert E. Peary and the Race to the North Pole > Status Update

Herbert puts a high value on the honesty and accuracy of Inuit oral tradition and its role in discrediting Cook's claim at the Pole, but Herbert fails to mention the time he was in Northern Greenland and a couple of Inuit told him Cook had made the Pole -- a statement contrary to what the Inuit had been saying for almost sixty years. So apparently there is room for corruption in that system.

"Clearly Peary's need to reach the North Pole distracted him from his obligation as an explorer to observe and to record, and this is a charge against him that cannot be ignored."

Herbert is really tearing a hole in Peary's claims, not just his attainment of the North Pole, but his farthest North, as well. No wonder the National Geographic Society is mad at him.

"Indeed, the whole journey [of 1906] from this point on becomes mysterious."

The print is so dense and the prose so tortured that it takes an hour to read 10-15 pages of this.

Josephine Peary in a letter to her husband: "The Belgian expedition is back from Antarctica. Beyond puffing up Dr. Cook a little more I don't think it has accomplished anything." Funny, but untrue. It was the first expedition to winter in the Antarctic and it returned with a significant amount of scientific data including a full year of meteorological observations.

Herbert's offering some new insights into Peary's state of mind, but the underlying structure of his argument is a mess. I know what happened and I still can't follow his description of events. If he'd just add the year to dates, it would help immeasurably.

I already know all this, and it's still difficult to wade through.

My consumer confidence in Wally Herbert is dropping. On page 57, Herbert writes that Parry set a new Farthest North of 82*45' (1827); then, on the following page, he says that Hayes' 81*35'N set a new record (1860-1). Now you could say Hayes made a new Farthest North while still on land, but Herbert doesn't say that. Instead he seems to be contradicting himself.

Herbert's used "She it was who..." to start a sentence three times now and it's made me gag every time.