Bradley Land

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title: "Bradley Land" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["phantom-islands-of-the-arctic-ocean", "exploration-of-the-arctic"] description: "Phantom island in the Arctic Ocean" topic_path: "general/phantom-islands-of-the-arctic-ocean" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Land" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Phantom island in the Arctic Ocean ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox fictional location"]

Field	Value
name	Bradley Land
image	Bradley Land.jpg
caption	Alleged location of Bradley Land, sighted by Frederick Cook, and Crocker Land, sighted by Robert Peary.
creator	First reported by Frederick Cook
type	Large phantom island
locations	Arctic Ocean
::

| name = Bradley Land | image = Bradley Land.jpg | caption = Alleged location of Bradley Land, sighted by Frederick Cook, and Crocker Land, sighted by Robert Peary. | source = | creator = First reported by Frederick Cook | type = Large phantom island | locations = Arctic Ocean ::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/Bradleyland2.gif" caption="Photo of Cook's 1909 expedition, with alleged Bradley Land in background"] ::

Bradley Land was the name Frederick Cook gave to a mass of land which he claimed to have seen between () and () during a 1909 expedition. He described it as two masses of land with a break, a strait, or an indentation between. The land was named for John R. Bradley, who had sponsored Cook's expedition.

Cook published two photographs of the land and described it thus: "The lower coast resembled Heiberg Island, with mountains and high valleys. The upper coast I estimated as being about one thousand feet high, flat, and covered with a thin sheet ice."

It is now known there is no land at that location and Cook's observations were based on either a misidentification of sea ice or an outright fabrication. Cook's Inuit companions reported that the photographs were actually taken near the coast of Axel Heiberg Island.

References

References

1. Balch, Edwin Swift. (1913). "The North Pole and Bradley Land". Campion and Company.
2. Cook, Frederick A.. (1911). "My Attainment of the Pole: Being the Record of the Expedition that First Reached the Boreal Center, 1907–1909". The Polar Publishing Co.
3. Bryce, Robert M.. (2008). "Fredrick A. Cook: From Hero to Humbug".

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::