South with the Sun

by Lynne Cox

  Amundsen landed facedown on his broken shoulder and with gashes in his back. Unable to move, he waited for the bear to finish him off, but Jacob returned to play with the cub and distracted the bear. When she turned to chase Jacob, Amundsen managed to flee. Amundsen thought that it was the closest he had come to death, but a short time later, he had a more dangerous experience. He was working in a small observatory without windows making some observations. The room was heated and lighted by a kerosene lamp he had used on previous expeditions. He noticed that he felt sleepy and his heart was beating erratically, but he did not realize he was about to pass out. He dragged himself outside and got some fresh air. He was not sure what had happened, but he suspected that the flame used up the oxygen in the room or the fumes from the kerosene lamp had nearly killed him. For months after the incident Amundsen was weak, and his heart was seriously affected.

  When the ice broke, Amundsen and his crew sailed past the New Siberian Islands and reached Aijon Island, where they befriended the Tsjuktsji people, who Amundsen noted were related to the Inuit throughout North America and Greenland, but spoke a different language. Amundsen bought caribou from them for his winter meat supply, and when the ice broke in July 1920, he sailed to Nome and became the second man to sail through the Northeast Passage.

  While Amundsen was exploring the Arctic regions, Nansen was becoming more involved in humanitarian efforts. After World War I, Nansen was named the high commissioner for refugees by the League of Nations. He created the Nansen passport for refugees, and he helped 450,000 people resettle after the war. From 1921 to 1922, during the Russian famine, Nansen helped to feed up to 22 million people, and in 1922 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He continued his humanitarian work and became a pioneer in the study of oceanography and in fluid dynamics.

  Amundsen had become convinced that the only effective way to explore the Arctic and Antarctica was by flight. In the spring of 1922, he began to fulfill this vision by discussing the possibility with the officers of the Curtiss Aeroplane Company. He purchased a Junkers, an airplane that had broken the world record for sustained flight of twenty-seven hours. He hoped he could use the plane to fly from Point Barrow, Alaska, to Svalbard, Norway. The aircraft was built from a new metal called duralumin, and it was supposed to be stronger than steel and lighter than aluminum. To make the Junkers more suitable for landing on snow, Amundsen tried something new. He had the wheels removed and substituted skis, but during the first test flight, the skis shattered on landing.

  Amundsen thought about trying another aircraft and making another attempt, but he was financially strapped, his lecture series had not been successful, and he was exhausted and depressed. He was fifty-four years old, sitting alone in his room in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City, and he was about to give up on any further expeditions when the telephone rang.

  CHAPTER 18

  Flying Boats

  Lincoln Ellsworth, a wealthy American businessman whom Amundsen had met in France a few years before, called and told him he would like to join Amundsen on his upcoming expeditions. Amundsen told Ellsworth that he wanted to be the first to fly to the North Pole. He was well aware of past attempts and disasters.

  Around the time of Amundsen’s Belgica expedition to Antarctica, Salomon Andrée, a Swedish engineer and polar explorer, attempted to fly a hydrogen balloon from Danskon, an island west of Svalbard, to the North Pole. Andrée and two friends—Knut Fraenkel, an engineer, and Nils Strindberg, a photographer—launched the Eagle on July 11, 1897, and they managed to remain aloft for sixty-five hours, but it began to rain, and the rain turned to ice. The weight of the ice made the balloon drop from the sky like an asteroid. Andrée made an emergency landing on the Arctic ice pack.

  They were prepared. They had three sledges, a boat, and enough food for three months inside the balloon. They trekked 295 miles across the Arctic ice, and in October they finally reached Kvitøya—White Island. There they died, probably from eating polar bear meat containing trichinella parasites.

  This tragedy did not deter other men from dreaming of polar flight. Australia’s Sir Douglas Mawson, a geologist and explorer who had accompanied Shackleton on his 1907 expedition, and who had turned down an invitation from Scott to participate in his Terra Nova expedition, decided to lead the Australasian Antarctic expedition in 1911. His goal was to explore King George V Land and Adélie Land, the region directly below the southern section of Australia. Mawson thought that flight was the way to explore Commonwealth Bay in Antarctica. His pilot used an airplane built by Vickers, an REP monoplane with a detachable sledge-runner undercarriage so the airplane could land on snow, but during a test flight in Adelaide, Australia, the pilot crashed the plane and nearly died.

  Mawson scrapped his plans for Antarctic flight, but he sailed on the Aurora to Antarctica and established a base camp in Commonwealth Bay that he named Cape Denison and went on to explore Antarctica by sledge.

  Amundsen and Ellsworth decided to attempt polar flight. In 1924 Lincoln Ellsworth purchased two Dornier flying boats, the N-24 and N-25, and Amundsen gathered a crew together: Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen and Leif Dietrichson, the pilots, and Oskar Omdal and Karl Feucht, the mechanics. Their goal was to be the first to complete a crossing of the Arctic Ocean from continent to continent over the North Pole. But as the crew discussed the plan, it was amended. They decided to use the N-24 and N-25 for making reconnaissance flights over the Arctic Ocean, to study the ice as far north as they could fly.

  On May 21, 1925, Amundsen and his crew took off in the flying boats from Svalbard, an island off the north coast of Norway. Each airplane was built for water landing and taking off, and each carried enough fuel for a twelve-hundred-mile flight. As they flew toward the North Pole, Amundsen immediately realized that they could explore the polar regions much more rapidly than by ship or dogsled and far more exploration could be achieved by airplane.

  They flew north across the Arctic Ocean, and when they reached 88 degrees north, six hundred miles from civilization, the N-25 suddenly developed engine trouble; they had to make a forced landing. They scanned the ice and water and knew they had to land immediately or they would crash, but all they saw were hummocks up to twenty feet high, which would destroy the aircraft. They continued their uncertain descent until they saw a small patch of open water between the hummocks and the sea ice. The pilot wasn’t sure if the water runway was long enough to attempt a landing, but he had no choice.

  The crews of the N-25 and N-24 splashed down in the small pool and hit the ice at the edge, which slowed their momentum. They thought they could relax for a moment, but the pool was turning into ice, and the crew had to work frantically to free the N-25 from the water and drag it up onto solid ice. But they were unable to save the N-24. They salvaged the provisions from the N-24 and loaded everything into the N-25.

  They were six hundred miles from Svalbard and from any kind of help, with barely enough provisions to last them three weeks. Worse, the N-25 was designed to take off from the water, and they were on ice. The only way out of this situation, Amundsen decided, was to build an ice runway. For twenty-four days they worked frantically, flattening the hummocks and creating an ice runway that was as smooth as a skating pond. By then they were at the end of their food supply.

  The six men crowded into the cockpit. Riiser-Larsen opened the throttles to the limit, and as their speed increased the crew was thrown violently from side to side. Amundsen feared that one of the wings would be crushed.

  They reached the edge of the runway, and leaped over a small pool. The aircraft began to rise, but a twenty-foot hummock was immediately in front of them. They cleared it only by inches and began heading south, but they were not sure if they were on the right heading. They weren’t sure if the fuel would last with the additional men on board. The fuel was burning fast, and they were down to only a half hour’s supply. When they saw the mountain peaks of Svalbard, they cheered. They thought they were home, but they didn’t know that Riiser-Lar
sen was forcing the lever for the aileron control, trying to make a wide sweeping turn, but the aileron control had stopped working. Riiser-Larsen had to land. Somehow a stretch of water magically opened before them, and they splashed down, at last back home.

  CHAPTER 19

  Amundsen and Byrd

  After the flying boat experience, Amundsen was convinced that the best way to fly from continent to continent—from Svalbard, Norway, to Barrow, Alaska, over the Arctic Ocean—was with the N-1 dirigible Norge. Lincoln Ellsworth purchased the N-1 from the Italian government and employed Colonel Umberto Nobile, the N-1’s designer, to pilot the dirigible for the flight. Tensions developed, however, between the Norwegian and Italian crews, as both groups vied to be in control of the expedition.

  Amundsen clarified his position for Colonel Nobile and explained that he and Ellsworth were the commanders of the expedition and Nobile had been hired to pilot the Norge. Nobile believed differently; he was the N-1’s designer and he would be the pilot and he wanted to be the commander of the expedition and receive all the credit. Amundsen would later believe that Nobile was pressured by Mussolini to do this to gain acclaim for himself.

  Nobile kept focusing on the goal of flying to the North Pole. Amundsen clarified the continent-to-continent goal, but when Nobile heard that Richard Byrd and Floyd Bennett, the Fokker’s pilot, were on the beach in Svalbard making final preparations for the Josephine Ford, a Fokker Trimotor plane, to attempt the first flight from Svalbard to the North Pole, Nobile told Amundsen that they could have the Norge ready in three days, and they could reach the North Pole before Byrd. Amundsen explained that he had no interest whatsoever in racing Byrd to the North Pole. They were good friends, and they had different goals. When Byrd and Bennett returned from their sixteen-hour flight, Amundsen and his crew were there to congratulate them on their success.

  The Norge flying over Svalbard with a combined crew of Norwegians, Italians, and an American. They became the first to fly from Svalbard over the North Pole and landed in Teller, Alaska.

  Amundsen, deeply fatigued after the challenge and stress of expeditions and financial concerns, 1924.

  Two days later, on May 11, 1926, a light breeze was blowing, and Nobile was nervous about how it would affect the Norge. He told Riiser-Larsen, Amundsen’s pilot, that if he took responsibility for the Norge, he could fly the Norge out of the hangar. Riiser-Larsen accepted the offer and at 10:00 a.m. they lifted off from Svalbard. They flew 3,391 miles, crossed the Arctic Ocean, and landed in Teller, Alaska. The flight took a total of seventy-one hours.

  The disdain between Amundsen and Nobile grew as they vied for credit, and other disagreements ensued, until they would have nothing to do with each other.

  Two years later, on May 24, 1928, Nobile and an international group of sixteen scientists and support crew attempted to fly to the North Pole on the Italia, an N-class airship. The Italia got caught in a storm on the return trip and on May 25 crashed onto the ice about twenty-five miles from Svalbard. Ten men were thrown onto the pack ice, and the Italia was swept skyward by the wind where it exploded, killing those still on board.

  Many of the survivors were injured, including Nobile, who had a broken leg. The men managed to salvage a radio transmitter and a tent that they painted red to maximize visibility on the sea ice. They drifted on the ice toward Foyn and Broch Islands.

  When Amundsen heard that Nobile was in trouble, as well as Amundsen’s old friend Dr. Finn Malmgren, a Swedish meteorologist who had flown with him on the Norge and drifted with him on the Maud expedition, and that the Italian government had not initiated a rescue effort to save the men, Amundsen put all of his differences aside and joined an international team from Soviet Russia, Norway, Sweden, the United States, Italy, France, Finland, and Denmark to rescue Nobile, the scientists, and the crew.

  On June 18, 1928, Amundsen flew with five aircrew on a Latham 47 flying boat, named for Hubert Latham, a French pioneer in aviation who had attempted to be the first to fly a powered aircraft across the English Channel. Latham’s plane’s engine failed when a loose wire was caught in the engine, and he made the first successful landing on the water.

  Amundsen returned home to Norway to a hero’s welcome, and his North Pole achievement was celebrated through the streets of Bergen, July 12, 1926.

  Amundsen’s home, Uranienborg, overlooking the fjord, as he left it. His study was filled with nautical charts and maps and books, a resistance cord to exercise his upper-body strength, and mementos, including a photograph of himself with the king and queen of Norway and one of Amundsen with Nansen. His study has a sextant and a bathroom designed like one on board a ship.

  Roald Amundsen, standing in front of the French navy’s Latham 47, before Leif Dietrichson, and the French aircrew of Rene Guilbard, Albert Cavelier de Cuverville, Gilbert Brazy, and Emile Valtte used the aircraft to search for Nobile.

  The day Amundsen and his crew took off from Tromsø, the weather was very foggy. The Latham 47 disappeared somewhere in the Barents Sea. The crew’s last radio transmission was picked up on June 18, 1928, at 6:45 p.m., when they should have been about nineteen miles south of Bear Island.

  A month after the Italia crashed, Lieutenant Einar Lundborg, of the Swedish air force, landed a Fokker ski plane and evacuated Nobile to Ryss Island, Svalbard, the base camp of the Swedish and Finnish air rescue crews. Nobile had argued with Lieutenant Lundborg to take the wounded men out first, but that was not Lundborg’s orders. When Lundborg returned to evacuate another survivor, his plane crashed, and he was trapped with them. The Soviet icebreaker Krasin ultimately rescued the survivors.

  Amundsen’s body was never found. Like the artifacts from George Washington De Long’s crushed ship that showed Nansen the way through the polar seas, a pontoon from Amundsen’s plane rose from the depths and was discovered floating on Arctic waters.

  The Fokker F-VIIA-3m Josephine Ford flying over Kings Bay, Svalbard, Norway. Byrd and Bennett claimed to be the first to fly to the North Pole. It is believed that Amundsen is the man in the foreground, watching the flight, 1926.

  It was as if the pontoon had been found as a way to underscore Amundsen’s remaining vision—that flight was the way to explore the polar regions. Flight would give modern-day explorers the ability to see far beyond ships’ masts and high above the dogsled trails. Flight would give them speed, allow them to cover expansive distances, and give them entrée into the unknown—the unexplored wilderness of Antarctica.

  Amundsen shared this vision with Admiral Byrd on May 10, 1926, the same evening Byrd and Floyd Bennett returned from the first flight to or near the North Pole.

  They had dinner with Amundsen and Lincoln Ellsworth, who were preparing to fly in a few days in the Norge over Byrd’s route and land in Barrow, Alaska. Near the end of the evening, Amundsen asked Byrd what he was planning to do next. Byrd told Amundsen that he wanted to fly to the South Pole. Byrd wrote that when he told this to Amundsen, he was half serious and half jesting, but Amundsen took him completely seriously. Amundsen told Byrd that it was “a big job, but it can be done” (Little America, 24).

  Byrd and Amundsen standing side by side on Svalbard Island, Norway, before Amundsen attempted his flight over the North Pole.

  Amundsen took Byrd under his wing, as Nansen had done for Amundsen. He told Byrd that flight was the way to explore Antarctica: “The old order is changing. Aircraft is the new vehicle for exploration. It is the only machine that can beat the Antarctic.” He advised Byrd to purchase the Samson, a ship, to launch his expedition, which Byrd did. He later renamed her the City of New York.

  Before Byrd set off on the South Pole expedition, he needed to complete a different objective. He had been competing with Charles Lindbergh to become the first to fly nonstop across the Atlantic. During a test run, though, Floyd Bennett crashed the Fokker Trimotor airplane, the America, and was badly injured.

  On May 20 to 21, 1927, Charles Lindbergh began his attempt and took off from Roosevelt Fie
ld, New York, in the Spirit of St. Louis, a tiny single-engine monoplane.

  As a child Lindbergh had dreamed of flying across the Atlantic. He had taken flying lessons, worked as a mechanic, barnstormed, and wing-walked. And he wrote a letter to his father to convince him that this was what he had to do with his life, and he offered to help his father run for Congress by flying him around Minnesota, from one campaign stop to another. His father supported Lindbergh’s aspirations,

  Lindbergh joined the army, and in 1924 he began flight training in the U.S. Army Air Service in San Antonio, Texas, at Brooks Field (now Brooks Air Force Base). Lindbergh graduated first in his class, earned his pilot’s wings and a commission as a second lieutenant, and continued to fly with the Missouri National Guard. He convinced Ryan Aeronautical Company in San Diego, California, to build the Spirit of Saint Louis for his attempt, and he invested his own money in the venture.

  Lindbergh, in his unpressurized, unheated monoplane, flew into the unknown over Canada, to altitudes of more than ten thousand feet to avoid thunderstorms. When the wings of the Spirit of St. Louis became iced up, the airplane dropped from the sky to within ten feet of the surface of the Atlantic, and the wind off the ocean waves buffeted the plane. Somehow he managed to stay in the air, but when he flew over Greenland his magnetic compass stopped working. He completely lost his sense of direction and couldn’t see where he was going. The fuel tank positioned in front of him completely obscured his view. He flew over what he thought was Ireland, over the English Channel, and landed on Le Bourget Field in Paris. He became the first man to fly across the Atlantic, from New York to Paris; he did it in thirty-three and a half hours.