From Pole to Pole

by Garth James Cameron

  Even if Peary had reached the Pole his party were surface bound and their observations were limited to only a few miles either side of their route. Other travelers in the Arctic Ocean such as Fridtjof Nansen (1861–1930), who spent 1893–1896 firstly aboard the Fram iced into the pack ice in the Polar Ocean and then trekking over the ice in an unsuccessful attempt to reach the Pole, had also been limited to observing what could be seen from the highest masses of pack ice and the mast heads of their ships. That meant that much of the polar basin was unexplored, and there could be land masses waiting to be discovered.

  Aircraft had the dual advantages of covering in hours what could be covered by surface travelers in months or years, and the great tracts of the surface visible from high altitude. When visibility is perfect the horizon is 100 km away in all directions at the modest altitude of 1000 m. Even when the visibility was not perfect the occupants of an aircraft could expect to observe a huge swath of previously unseen surface.

  Amundsen wanted to be the first to reach the Pole by air and to make an important contribution to mankind’s knowledge of the planet. He was well aware that there had been a number of unsuccessful attempts to fly to the Pole.

  Chapter Two

  Before Amundsen (Part One): Salomon August Andrée

  Sweden–Svalbard–Polar Ocean, 1896–1897

  When Roald Amundsen made his attempt to fly to the North Pole in 1925, he knew that there had been unsuccessful attempts to fly to the Pole in a balloon in 1896 and 1897 and by airship in 1906, 1907, and 1909. The 1896 expedition had not got off the ground and the 1897 expedition had launched only to disappear without trace somewhere in the Polar Ocean. In 1906 the airship had not even been inflated, and in 1907, and 1909 the airship had taken off, flown a short distance, and then either blown ashore in high winds (in 1907) or suffered mechanical failure (in 1909). The airship expeditions had been high profile fiascos.

  Salomon August Andrée (1854–1897) was the leader of the 1896 and 1897 expeditions. He was born on October 18, 1854 at Gränna, Sweden. It was said that he inherited from both of his parents:

  “A keen intelligence, strong will, tenacious perseverance, and a rich fund of humor, together with the most upright of characters.”

  His “sober intellectualism” showed as he succeeded in gaining entry to the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm in 1869. He graduated in 1873, and after two years working as a draftsman he travelled to America. During his time in America he met the aeronaut John Wise (1808–1879) who encouraged his interest in aviation. In those days aviation meant ballooning. John Wise was a professional who made 463 flights before disappearing on his final flight. Andrée had detailed discussions with Wise although he did not start ballooning until he took delivery of the balloon Svea (Swede) in 1893. The balloon had been constructed for him by Gabriel Yon (1835–1894) in France and had a volume of about 1050 m3. It was inflated with hydrogen, which is the lightest of all gases, but inflammable when mixed with air. By the time he took delivery of the balloon, he had been appointed Chief Engineer of the technical department of the Swedish patent office and was a founder member of the Society of Swedish Inventors. He made nine flights in the Svea, the first of them on July 15, 1893, and the last on March 17, 1895. His longest duration flight was 10½ hours and the greatest distance covered was about 200 nm. On one of the flights the wind carried him across the Åland Sea (a part of the Baltic Sea) to the Finnish Archipelago. On several of these flights he experimented with a method of steering the balloon. Normally a balloon will be carried along by the wind and the only way of changing its direction or speed is to climb or descend into wind with a different velocity (strength and direction). Without accurate and detailed forecasts of the winds in the upper air (which were not available in the 1890s), changing direction was a hit and miss affair. Andrée believed that by trailing a rope or ropes in the sea he would slow the balloon, this would create a relative wind past the balloon, and a sail would cause the balloon to travel up to 30° off the wind direction. Eventually, by using three trail ropes and a spar with a sail attached, he satisfied himself that steering was possible and that a balloon especially designed and constructed for the job would be suitable for a flight across the ice of the Arctic Sea to the North Pole. The trail ropes also acted as an automatic ballasting system. If the balloon became lighter because of the sun, the ropes would be lifted until the weight of the extra rope lifted equaled the increase in buoyancy. Likewise, if the balloon got heavier because of cooling, lifting gas (which would happen if the sun went down or was hidden by cloud), the balloon would descend until the weight of the length of the trail ropes supported by the water would equal the decrease of the lift. If this automatic ballasting worked, the balloon would not run out of gas or ballast as conventional balloons did when they encountered night-time cooling (needing ballast to be dropped to lighten the balloon) and day-time heating (which caused a loss of gas due to its expanding). Andrée’s third idea was to create a balloon envelope which was much more gastight than existing envelopes, and would therefore be able to retain its gas and therefore lift for many more days than conventional balloons. He satisfied himself that the three improvements would enable a balloon to fly over the pack ice of the Polar Sea to the North Pole. He hoped that the balloon would remain airborne for up to 30 days and in that time it would drift to dry land or within reach of it. The balloon would carry three men, provisions for four months, and equipment for a surface journey over the ice to civilization. The equipment also included cameras and film. As fate would have it, our knowledge of the flight is provided, in part, by 30 or so photographs which were developed from negatives which were discovered on a barren Arctic island 33 years after being exposed by Andrée and his companions.

  Andrée chose Dr. Nils Ekholm as the second man in the expedition and set about looking for a third. He appointed Nils Strindberg (1872–1897), who was born at Stockholm on September 4, 1872. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1893 after studying at the Universities of Stockholm and Uppsala. Strindberg developed an interest in photography as a teenager and won first prize in a photography competition held at Stockholm in 1895. He had a scientific turn of mind and the summer of 1894 saw him doing geodetic work in Norrland in the north of Sweden. When Andrée announced his expedition in 1895, Strindberg was working as an assistant in physics at the University of Stockholm. He was given a number of tasks including selecting cameras and photographic equipment for the expedition. He designed a camera especially suited to the Arctic environment and had it built. Strindberg and Ekholm studied materials for the envelope of the balloon because an unprecedented degree of gastightness was essential if the balloon was to remain aloft for many days. In the spring of 1896 he travelled to Paris and studied aeronautics. He made seven balloon ascents so that the balloon would have two aeronauts aboard instead of just one (Andrée).

  The balloon Ornen (Eagle) was designed and constructed in France by Henri Lachambre (1846–1904) to meet Andrée’s detailed requirements. The Swedish engineer Per Nordenfelt supervised the construction. The balloon was spherical in shape (as was the normal practice) but was changed to a more elliptical shape when the balloon was enlarged to a capacity of about 4,800 m3 in the winter of 1896–97. The Ornen was almost five times the volume of the Svea. The envelope was made of several layers of Chinese silk coated with several coats of varnish. Instead of a valve at the top of the balloon it had two valves near the equator of the balloon. Rip panels were provided so that the gas could be dumped in an emergency, such as landing in a high wind. Without a rip panel the balloon’s envelope would act as a sail and would cause an out of control dragging of the basket until the gas escaped (slowly) through the valves. The envelope was covered by a net which was attached to a load ring which in turn was attached to the basket. Apart from the number and placing of the valves and the construction of the basket, the balloon was of conventional design. The basket was designed with a flight of many days in mind. It provided working and s
leeping areas, and had a number of unique features. One of them was a kerosene fueled cooker. To avoid setting the balloon on fire, it was designed to slide down a rope before the burner was ignited by line attached to it. Before bringing the cooker back on board, the fire was put out by one of the aeronauts blowing down a tube which opened on to the flame. A mirror showed the crew whether or not the flame was out.

  When Andrée’s plans became public there were many who thought the flight impossible. No balloon had flown for more than 36 hours or covered more than 1,000 km. There was plenty of data about what balloons could and could not do as balloons, including hydrogen balloons, had been flying since 1783 and some aeronauts had made hundreds of flights. The first problem was that even the best balloon envelopes, those made of gold beater’s skin, were porous and lost a significant part of their gas and lift each hour. It seemed most unlikely that the Ornen would retain most of its gas for 30 days of flight as Andrée believed. The balloon would be inflated and stored in the balloon house until the wind was right. It would lose gas steadily throughout this wait and would start its flight with less lift than it had when inflated. Andrée relied on the trail ropes to stop the balloon from rising too high and venting gas. The trail ropes would only work if the flight was over a smooth surface. The flight would be over the sea and then over the ice. They might be lucky and encounter smooth water to the edge of the ice, but it was certain that a large part of the journey would be over ice broken up by wind and currents into pressure ridges of considerable size. The ridges would jerk the balloon around and could snag the ropes. A related problem was the use of trail ropes and sails to steer the balloon. Andrée had only tested the idea on short flights in fine weather. The flight plan was to fly at low level and that exposed the balloon to icing up in the freezing fogs which were common in the Arctic. A coating of ice would bring the balloon down. The Ornen had never been test flown, and Andrée and Strindberg had only made a handful of flights each and were not experienced aeronauts.

  In spite of the hazardous nature of the enterprise, money was raised and the party left Stockholm for the Arctic on June 7, 1896 on board the ship Virgo. They were seen off by large crowds and the expedition was seen as heroic. Andrée chose Virgo Harbor on Danes Island as a base. This small island was located on the northwestern edge of the Svalbard archipelago. It was chosen because it was ice free when the pack ice retreated in the northern summer and it was close to the North Pole. On arriving work commenced to build a plant to generate hydrogen gas and a building to house the inflated balloon. Henri Lachambre, the French constructor of the balloon, accompanied the party to assist with the generation of the gas and inflation of the balloon. This was a lengthy process, so it had been decided to inflate and store the balloon until favourable winds occurred. The wind was the ideal southerly for a time while the work went on, but when the balloon was ready the winds were consistently unfavorable. While they were waiting, Nansen’s Fram arrived, having broken free from the ice of the Arctic sea after its long drift. Nansen was not aboard, having left the ship with a companion to try to sledge to the Pole. When the Fram reached Norway they found that the two men were safe, having not reached the Pole, but had set a new furthest north. Eventually the decision was made to deflate the balloon and return south. On August 17, 1896 the balloon was deflated, and three days later the Virgo sailed for home.

  Several things changed over the winter of 1896–98. The first was that the balloon was enlarged. The second was that Ekholm had realised during the wait at Virgo Harbor that the balloon lost so much gas and lift that the flight plan was not practical. He had the moral courage to drop out, and this meant a third man had to be found. Knut Fraenkel joined the expedition. He had been born on February 14, 1870, in Karlstad, Sweden. He qualified as a civil engineer in 1896, and was training to enter the State Engineering Corps when he joined the expedition. He had excelled at gymnastics, was a climber, and was the strongest of the three.

  In 1897 the expedition returned to Danes Island aboard the Swedish naval gunboat Svensksund, and the Virgo and set to work repairing the balloon house, generating the hydrogen, and inflating the balloon. Andrée was 43 years of age, Strindberg 25, and Fraenkel 26. The Ornen was leaking so much hydrogen that it was losing nearly 45 kg of lift per day. In spite of this they elected to go. On 11 July 1897 there was a strong, steady wind from the southwest. The walls of the balloon house were removed; the net covering the envelope was attached to the load ring and the basket to the load ring. With all parts of the balloon attached, the balloon was higher than the balloon house, and the balloon surged back and forward in the wind. Andrée waited for a lull and then ordered the restraining ropes cut. With a cry of “three cheers for old Sweden” from Andrée, the Ornen rose into the air and started to drift toward the shoreline. The time was 13:46 GMT. Within moments things started to go wrong. The couplings joining the upper and lower sections of the drag ropes came unscrewed, and they left the bottom two-thirds of the all-important ropes on the beach. The loss of the guide ropes subtracted about 270 kg from their ballast and further reduced their ability to steer the balloon. They were in the lee of the hills to the south and a down draft forced the balloon’s basket into the water and they dropped ballast to climb. The climb took them to 1,800 ft., which in turn caused gas to be lost through expansion and venting through the valves. So at the outset they had no means of steering, a leaky balloon, and had lost a large amount of lifting gas and ballast. Soon after the launch they passed over Amsterdam Island and could have landed on it. A few minutes later the balloon flew over the west coast of Vogelsang and they again chose not to land. Andrée had been treated as a national hero in 1896 and again in 1897. It would have taken an extraordinary amount of courage to land and return to Sweden not as a hero but as the author of a fiasco. He declined the opportunities and the balloon passed out of sight to the north.

  On July 11–14, 1897 Andrée, Strindberg, and Fraenkel flew the balloon Ornen from Danes Island in Svalbard toward the North Pole. The balloon was airborne for 65 hrs. 33 min. This photograph shows the balloon on the pack ice of the Polar Sea on July 14, 1897. The trio dragged sledges over the ice to White Island where they died in October 1897. Their remains, equipment, journals and exposed film were not found until 1930.

  In 1900 a buoy that had been dropped at 22:00 GMT on July 11, 1897 was found. The message in the buoy recorded that all was going well with the flight at about 800 ft. with the direction of flight northeasterly (about 10°), but later changed more to the east (about 45°). In 1899 a buoy had come ashore in Iceland recording that at 22:55 GMT on July 11, 1897 they had been at 1,950 ft. at position latitude 82° north, longitude 25° east. On July 15, 1987 a sealing vessel shot a bird which turned out to be a carrier pigeon from the Ornen with a message timed at 12:30 GMT on July 13 in position latitude 82° 2° north, 15° 5° east and saying that they were making a good speed to the east, 10° south.

  That was all that was known until 1930. On August 5 of that year, a party landed on White Island (the most northeastern of the Svalbard group) from the ship Braatvag and chanced on the remains of all three men. They also found diaries and journals which allowed the flight to be reconstructed in detail. It was even possible to develop some of the exposed film 33 years after the photographers’ deaths.

  The flight had lasted for 65 hrs. 33 min. Initially they traveled northeast, but most of the flight was along an east-west line with little gain to the north. They often bumped on the pack ice and suffered from icing of the envelope and rigging. Eventually they were too heavy to continue and they landed. The Ornen’s furthest north was about 82° 20°, well to the south of the furthest north of 86° 13.6° set by Nansen on April 7, 1895.

  The three men then made an arduous sledge journey across the pack ice and landed on White Island. All three had displayed the symptoms of some kind of illness on the journey. The last diary entry was made on October 17, 1897. Even though they were inadequately clothed for an Arctic winter this was not the c
ause of their deaths. The winter of 1897/1898 was a mild one and they should have survived it. A Danish doctor, Adam Tryde, read about the illness that they all suffered. He later chanced upon a report of an epidemic at Disko Island in Western Greenland in which an Eskimo suffered the same symptoms reported by Andrée, Fraenkel, and Strindberg. The epidemic was caused by a parasite which was carried by walruses and polar bears. He gained access to the artefacts recovered from White Island. He scrapped some meat from the inside of a polar bear skin and found trichina capsules. It is now thought likely that the explorers died from trichinosis, a malady attributable to having eaten undercooked polar bear meat.

  Even by the standards of the late nineteenth century, the flight was brave but foolhardy. They might have survived but for their understandable desire to conserve the fuel for their primus stove. If the bear meat had been well cooked they would have survived the winter and been able to sledge across the ice to North East Land.

  Chapter Three

  Before Amundsen (Part Two): Walter Wellman

  Svalbard, 1906–1909

  The next person to attempt to fly to the Pole was the American Walter Wellman (1858–1934). Wellman was a successful but largely self-educated journalist. He often created the news that he reported. Wellman was fond of having himself photographed in heroic poses with his head raised and looking into the distance. His five expeditions to the Arctic created copious amounts of newspaper column inches but little else. Before he turned to aircraft he made two attempts to reach the Pole by traditional means of surface travel. In 1894 he announced that he would make a “dash for the North Pole.” He sailed to Danes Island in the Ragnvald Jarl and set up a base on the Island. His forward base was in the Seven Islands, a group to the northeast of Svalbard. He intended to travel to the Pole and back using sledges and dogs. A few miles into his journey a messenger caught up with the news that his ship had been nipped in the ice and was in sinking condition, so he returned to the ship, saw to the safety of the crew, and set out again. A few miles into this journey he decided that the pressure ridges in the pack ice (a normal condition for pack ice) were so high and numerous that they were impassable and he abandoned his attempt and returned to civilization. The newspapers were unkind, and he was subject to many derisive comments.