HOW COOK STARTED 63 



about fifty Eskimos, men, women and children with him to a place farther 

 north of Etah and established winter quarters." 



From another source come further details of the Bradley expedition which 

 had so startling a result. The ship used was a Gloucester fishing schooner 

 before Mr. Bradley bought it, fitted the 1 1 1 ton craft with a gasoline engine 

 and rechristened it with his own name. He put the boat in charge of Capt. 

 Moses Bartlett, who had been first officer of the Peary ship Roosevelt, and 

 engaged a Newfoundland crew. 



It carried a twenty-seven foot whale boat with a ten horsepower gasoline 

 engine. The Bradley was fitted with everything needed on a polar expedition. 



The route of the Bradley was from Gloucester to Battle Harbor, Labrador, 

 thence across Davis Strait to the South Greenland coast. Ice first was en- 

 countered at Sisco, and it damaged the machinery. After shooting bear in 

 Melville Bay, the party reached Cape York and North Star Bay. Later it 

 touched at McCormick, Bowdoin and Robinson Bays, and reached Etah, 

 Greenland, Peary's old winter quarters. 



Taking the motor boat Bradley, Cook and some others went through 

 Smith Sound to 79 north, and brought back some Eskimos to Etah. * There 

 Cook decided to stay, and with him and the natives there also remained Ru- 

 dolph Francke, a member of the expedition. Cook's idea was to start about 

 February i, 1908, across Smith Sound and strike out in a northwesterly direc- 

 tion across Ellesmereland to find an open polar sea at about 83 degrees north 

 latitude. His reason for going in this direction was to avoid the easterly 

 drift of polar sea ice. He had with him a canvas boat in which to cross the open 

 polar sea. He expected to reach the pole and to get back to Kennedy Channel 

 in about three months. Three families of natives were to be left at three 

 separate stations, but he and two Eskimos were to make the dash, together 

 with two sleds. 



On March 3, 1908, he left his base of supplies at Annatok on the north- 

 western coast of Greenland, and with abundant supplies disappeared in a 

 northwesterly direction over Ellesmereland into the little known regions 

 toward the Arctic Ocean. 



Francke was left at Annatok, twenty miles north of Etah, which is the 

 northernmost inhabited settlement on the west coast of Greenland, and on 

 May 7, 1908, the last word from Dr. Cook came to Francke — a letter dated 

 March 17, and therefore written just two weeks after the start northward — 

 instructing Francke to go back to New York in case Dr. Cook did not return 



