Survival in the Wilderness

by Steven Otfinoski

  When they arrived in Toronto a crowd of six hundred people turned out to greet them. Hinton tried to compensate for what he had said earlier about Farrell with kinder, if not truer, words. “Farrell is the hero . . . He broke the trail and did the hardest work,” he declared to the crowd.

  “Where are the pigeons?” one man asked. Kloor grinned and rubbed his stomach in reply.

  The next morning they arrived by train in New York City in the middle of a rainstorm. Despite the bad weather, a cheering crowd of ten thousand had turned out to greet the heroes. “We’re all good shipmates again,” Kloor reassured the crowd. “That other little affair was just the devil of the wilds that cuts loose in every man’s blood in the North . . .”

  A six-mile parade accompanied the three men to the Rockaway Air Station. Three bands played music and the air was filled with floating miniature gas bags in honor of the balloonists.

  While the public hailed the men as heroes, the navy wasn’t so sure. It held a court of inquiry to judge if any neglect or misconduct was responsible for the loss of the balloon and the men’s subsequent ordeal. The inquiry ended with no charges leveled against any of the three.

  “There was no one particular hero, and we do not consider ourselves heroes,” Kloor told the court. “Each one did the best that was in him. Sacrifice after sacrifice prevailed.”

  Epilogue

  After their amazing adventure faded from the newspaper headlines, Kloor, Hinton, and Farrell went on with their lives. Louis Kloor continued to fly balloons for the navy and years later retired to San Joaquin County, California, with his wife, where he died in 1971.

  Stephen Farrell spent seven months after their return to New York in a state of “neurasthenia exhaustion,” which required medical care. Today he would probably be diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He retired from the navy in 1926, after thirty years of service. When World War II began, Farrell tried to reenlist, but was rejected due to a heart condition. He spent his last years in Watertown, New York, and died of a heart attack on July 12, 1946. He was sixty-eight years old.

  Walter Hinton turned his interest in aviation southward and attempted to make the first successful flight from New York to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. On his initial try, his plane crashed off the coast of Cuba and he was rescued from shark-infested waters, clinging to the wing of his plane. On his second try, he succeeded. Hinton went on to make the first aerial exploration of Brazil’s Amazon River by hydroplane. He founded and was president of the Aviation Institute of USA in 1927 in Washington, DC. There he published periodicals promoting flying, including Opportunities in Aviation and Aviation Progress. He became an enthusiastic spokesperson for aviation, taking his message across the United States.

  Hinton retired to Pompano Beach, Florida. One of the thrills of his later years was being a special guest on a transatlantic flight of the supersonic jet the Concorde. The flight that took him nineteen days back in 1919 now took under four hours!

  In July 1981, a few months before his death, Hinton was honored by the Brazilian government for his exploration by plane of the Amazon. Speaking of his achievements in early aviation he had this to say: “There weren’t many people interested in it in those days. The majority of them thought it was just a bunch of daredevils. But I’m still very proud of everything.” And that sense of pride would have surely included surviving the ordeal in the Canadian wilderness after that fateful balloon crash of December 1920.

  The History and Traditions of the Cree People

  PENNY M. THOMAS, Fisher River Cree Nation/Peguis First Nation, author of Nimoshom and His Bus and Powwow Counting in Cree

  The Cree people of North America, who also identify themselves as the Nehiyawak, make up more than 300,000 of the Canadian and American population today. The majority of Cree people live in Canada in the Subartic region from Alberta to Quebec, as well as Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, and the Northwest Territories. In the United States, the Cree reside in Montana and North Dakota.

  The word Nehiyaw stems from the Cree number four, Newo, and means a four-bodied person. The Cree people believe that the self is made up of four different quadrants: the physical, the emotional, the mental, and the spiritual. Along with many other indigenous people, sometimes called First Nations people in Canada, the Cree believe that keeping these four areas in balance is the key to good health.

  The Cree people hunted, gathered, fished, and lived in different areas of Canada and the United States long before European settlers came. Depending on where they lived, they hunted game such as, moose, elk, deer, and buffalo. When big game was sparse, they often lived off smaller animals such as rabbit and beaver. The Cree were nomadic; they followed the herds of game animals and visited specific areas where they gathered berries, roots, wild vegetables, and medicinal plants. Fish was also a large part of their diet. Because of their nomadic lifestyle, they lived in tipis and wigwams, which were easy to disassemble and transport.

  After the European settlers came, the Cree traded with them for items such as guns, beads, blankets and foodstuffs. Beaver pelt was most commonly what they traded for other goods. Eventually, the Cree replaced their tipis and wigwams with canvas tents and wood cabins. Their traditional clothing, made of animal hides and skins, evolved to incorporate cloth.

  In 1876, almost fifty years before Tom Marks met and rescued Kloor, Hinton, and Farrell, the government of Canada, which was made up of European settlers, passed the Indian Act. The Indian Act allowed the government to control most aspects of aboriginal life, including Indian status, land, resources, wills, and education. Part of the act made it mandatory for First Nations children to attend residential schools, or boarding schools. Children as young as four were sent to the schools, where they were forced to learn English and were punished if they spoke their first language. Because of this, the Cree, along with many other tribes in Canada, lost their language and many other cultural practices. In 1996, the last residential school was closed. The Iroquois Seventh Generation Principle says all choices have effects for seven generations. It is believed by many that overcoming the effects of the residential schools will take seven generations.

  First Nation people believe in respecting nature and all living things, and that the great creator Kitchi-Manitou (Cree interpretation) gave everything in nature a spirit, even inanimate objects. Connection to the creator is established through ceremony, prayer, fasting, visions, and dreams. Storytelling is key to passing on these traditions, to teaching life lessons and medicinal knowledge, and for healing the mind and body.

  Author’s Note

  The story of survival you have just read actually happened. The three men who experienced it in the winter of 1920–21 were real people. However, some of the details were made up by me, the author. Why? For one thing, the information about the events depicted is limited. Nearly all that is known about this adventure in the Canadian wilderness is taken from newspaper articles written at the time it happened. None of the three men, to my knowledge, wrote a published account of the events. To fill in the gaps, I had to add details. For example, Kloor’s birthday did take place during their trek to Mattice, but I created the details of that celebration. Secondly, I wanted to have the men think and speak for themselves as they lived this gripping story. That meant imagining their thoughts from their personal point of view and giving them words to speak. Where I could find their actual recorded words in newspaper accounts, I used them, but most of the dialogue had to be invented. Finally, I added specific details and descriptions to make the story more exciting and real for the reader, such as each man’s falling down in their desperate journey along the river.

  Having said this, many of the most dramatic moments of the story were already there—Hinton misplacing his flight suit as he searches for water, Farrell telling the other two to leave him behind, their rescue by Tom Marks, and the fight between Hinton and Farrell witnessed by the reporters in Mattice. It proves once again, that fact is often stranger, and more fa
scinating, than fiction.

  Selected Bibliography

  “Aeronauts Rest on Eve of Inquiry.” The New York Times. Jan. 16, 1921. New York, New York.

  “Balloon Drops Navy Airmen in Canadian Wilderness.” Popular Mechanics. Chicago, IL: March 1921.

  “Balloon Flight Will Be Probed.” The Daily Telegraph. Jan. 13, 1921. Bluefield, West Virginia.

  “Balloonists Back on American Soil.” The New York Times. Jan. 14, 1921. New York, New York.

  “Balloonists Welcomed by Rockaway Citizens.” The Flathead Courier. Jan. 17, 1921. Polson, Montana.

  “Battle for Life in Frozen Northland First Told by One of Lost Balloonists.” The Philadelphia Inquirer. Jan. 9, 1921. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

  Dash, Mike. “World War I: 100 Years Later: Closing the Pigeon Gap.” Smithsonian.com.

  “Fatted Pig Killed for Feast for Kloor.” The Boston Globe. Jan. 12, 1921. Boston, Massachusetts.

  “Kloor Praises Companions in Balloon Flight.” Cornell Daily Sun. Jan. 19, 1921. Ithaca, New York.

  “Lt. Kloor Tells of Balloon Failure.” The New York Times. Jan. 19, 1921. New York, New York.

  Martin, Bob. “Ordeal: Lost and Facing Death in a Remote Frozen Forest.” Smashwords, 2013.

  “Naval Airman Tells of Trip.” The Richford Journal and Gazette. Jan. 21, 1921. Richford, Vermont.

  “Navy Balloonists All Friendly, On Way to New York.” The St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Jan. 13, 1921. St. Louis, Missouri.

  “Stephen Farrell on Lost Balloon.” The New York Times. July 13, 1946. New York, New York.

  “Story of Flight Told by Farrell.” The New York Times. Jan. 12, 1921. New York, New York.

  “Walter Hinton, 92; Aviation Pioneer.” The New York Times. Oct. 31, 1981. New York, New York.

  “Watch Trail Airmen Take.” Buffalo Evening News. Jan. 6, 1921. Buffalo, New York.

  Excerpt from Great Escapes #5: Terror in the Tower of London

  Turn the page for a sneak peek at the next

  DEATH-DEFYING GREAT ESCAPE!

  Chapter One

  Under Siege

  Preston, England—13th of November, 1715

  William Maxwell, 5th Earl and Lord of Nithsdale, clutched his musket with sweaty hands and gazed at the battle before him. All around, Scottish rebels were being ripped apart by British artillery, their blood spilling on the cobblestone street.

  The tall, bearded Maxwell, or Lord Nithsdale as he was better known, crouched behind a wooden barrel as musket and cannonballs flew through the sky overhead. Black smoke from burning houses clogged the air and reddened every man’s eyes, making it difficult to see.

  The kilted Scottish Highlanders—Nithsdale’s comrades from the mountains—were fighting to keep a hold over Preston, the northern British town they had invaded just four days earlier. Unfortunately, they were greatly outnumbered by red-coated British soldiers. They’d set up barricades to keep the British from entering the city, but holding them became increasingly difficult as the redcoats swarmed the town like fire ants.

  Cold sweat ran down Nithsdale’s bearded face, and his thumping heart felt as if it was going to beat out of his chest. He peeked around the wooden barrel and saw another Scotsman fall, killed by British musket fire as they tried to hold the makeshift barricade.

  What are you doing? Nithsdale scolded himself silently. You’re the commanding officer in charge of that barricade! Get up and fight!

  And yet he stayed hunkered down. He thought of his wife, Winifred, and his son, both safe back home in Scotland, and wanted nothing more than to be back with them at their castle.

  Why did I ever agree to go to battle? I’m no soldier!

  Something zoomed through the air close by. Nithsdale jerked back as a cannonball crashed down on the street a few feet away, showering him with piercing shards of cobblestone fragments. The heavy iron ball bounced and then tore through a crowd of oncoming Scots like they were nothing more than sheets of paper.

  The men’s screams almost drowned out the gunfire. One of the Highlanders lay only a few feet away from Nithsdale, writhing in agony.

  If you’re not going to fight, you must at least try to help that man! Nithsdale thought. He closed his eyes, said a quick prayer, then hunched down and scrambled over to the fallen Scotsman.

  The man lay in a pool of blood, his red eyes looking skyward, his teeth clenched. The cannonball had taken his arm off.

  “Easy, lad,” Nithsdale said.

  He dropped his musket and, with some effort, managed to a scoop the screaming Highlander up over his shoulder. The two lumbered down the street and out of the line of fire, the Highlander cursing with every step.

  By the time Nithsdale handed him off at the hospital tent, the Highlander was deathly pale. Nithsdale watched as others tried to stop the bleeding.

  Poor devil. He ran into battle as I cowered behind a barrel, and yet he’s the one who pays the price.

  “Nithsdale!” His friend Lord Kenmure approached. “The British have us surrounded. There’s no escape! We should have fled with the others when we still could.”

  Nithsdale didn’t want to admit it, but perhaps Kenmure was right. The previous night, dozens of the Scottish rebels managed to silently slip out of town. A few of them had tried to convince Lord Nithsdale to join them.

  “To stay is suicide,” one said. “It will only end with your head on the chopping block.”

  Nithsdale had considered it. Though born in northern England, he had deep Scottish roots. On his twenty-first birthday, he had sworn his allegiance to the exiled Scottish king James—the same king the rebels were fighting to put back on the throne.

  Feeling bound by honor and duty, Nithsdale chose to stay in the besieged town.

  As he looked upon the dying Highlander, he couldn’t help but regret that decision.

  That night, Nithsdale and the rest of the leaders of the Jacobite forces met in a house. Jacobites were those who were fighting to get a Scottish king back on the throne. As the others talked about what to do, Lord Nithsdale peered out the window. Flames from the burning town licked the night sky. Beyond, camped on the hills just outside the city walls, was a sea of British tents with no end in sight. They clearly aimed to crush this rebellion now before the Scots made it farther south.

  There must be at least three thousand redcoats out there, he thought. When the Jacobites had arrived in Preston, they numbered four thousand. Now they were less than half that.

  “The British have the advantage,” Nithsdale’s friend Lord Derwentwater said. “It’s over. We must surrender!”

  “Aye!” Lord Kenmure said.

  “Nithsdale,” Thomas Forster, the general of the Jacobite forces, said from across the room. “What say you? Are you for surrendering, or shall we fight it out?”

  Lord Nithsdale turned toward his fellow Jacobite leaders. He ran a hand through his black hair and took a deep breath.

  “The British have the town surrounded,” he said. “And we’re heavily outnumbered. I see no other option but to surrender and throw ourselves at the mercy of King George.”

  “Never!” barked the Highlanders’ leader. “You noblemen may do as you wish, but there’ll be no surrender from us. Our men can crush these British, and to surrender in an effort to save one’s own skin would not only be foolish but an act of cowardice. We’ll have no part in it.” He let the words sink in. “Good night, gentlemen.”

  The Highlanders turned and walked out of the room.

  No one said a word for a good minute. Nithsdale and the others waited on their general to speak first.

  “Farmers,” Forster finally said with a sneer, speaking dismissively of the Highlanders. “Those cattlemen are obviously ignorant of the reality of our predicament.”

  But they are brave, Nithsdale thought. They fought while I hid behind a barrel.

  “I agree with Nithsdale and Derwentwater,” Forster said. “To stay and fight is suicide.”

  At seven o’clock the next morning,
Nithsdale and the rest of the Jacobite leaders surrendered to the British.

  * * *

  THE JACOBITE UPRISINGS

  From 1689 to 1746, a series of wars were waged between England and Scotland over who should be king.

  Both countries shared a single ruler, but otherwise they were very different states—especially in terms of religion. Most Englishmen practiced a form of Christianity called Protestantism, while most of Scotland was Roman Catholic.

  In 1688, when Nithsdale was twelve years old, James II was the king. James was born in Scotland and practiced Roman Catholicism. In 1707, England and Scotland became one kingdom known as Great Britain. The British parliament was Protestant, so they wanted to dethrone James. Parliament started a war called the Glorious Revolution, in which the British parliament asked Dutch Prince William III and Britain’s William of Orange to be joint monarchs. The effort succeeded, and a new Protestant king was crowned.

  Naturally, Scotland thought that wasn’t fair, and had doubts that parliament’s removal of a Scottish king was legal. So over the next fifty-plus years, the Jacobites and their sympathizers—like Nithsdale—fought to put the rightful Scottish heir back on the throne. They were called Jacobites because Jacob is Latin for James, the deposed king for whom they were fighting.

  The war ended in 1746, when the Battle of Culloden proved to be the final Jacobite uprising, which the Jacobites lost. Prince Charles, the

  Scottish heir who organized the failed revolt, ran off to France. He tried to get support for another revolt attempt while in Europe, but couldn’t find any takers.

  * * *

  London, Mid-December–10:22 p.m.

  Lord Nithsdale felt nauseated as the stagecoach careened down the cobblestone street. He and the two other lords sat in silence as they bumped up and down in their seats. What was there to say? The three men were being taken to the dreaded Tower of London, where they would be held until they were sentenced.