THE AMUNDSEN-ELLSWORTH POLAR FLIGHT
BY LINCOLN ELLSWORTH
THE AMUNDSEN-ELLSWORTH POLAR FLIGHT
So long as the human ear can hark back to the breaking of waves over
deep seas; so long as the human eye can follow the gleam of the
Northern Lights over the silent snow fields; then so long, no doubt,
will the lure of the unknown draw restless souls into those great
Arctic wastes.
I sit here about to set down a brief record of our late Polar
experience, and I stop to try to recall when it was that my imagination
was first captured by the lure of the Arctic. I must have been very
young, because I cannot now recall when first it was. Doubtless
somewhere in my ancestry there was a restless wanderer with an
unappeasable desire to attain the furthest north. And, not attaining
it, he passed it on with other sins and virtues to torment his
descendants.
The large blank spaces surrounding the North Pole have been a challenge
to the daring since charts first were made. For nearly four generations
that mysterious plain has been the ultimate quest of numberless
adventurers.
Before this adventure of ours explorers had depended upon ships and
dogs. Andrée and Wellmann planned to reach the Pole with balloons, but
theirs were hardly more than plans. Andrée met with disaster soon
after leaving Spitzbergen. Wellmann’s expedition never left the ground.
What days they were--those ship and dog days! What small returns came
to those men for their vast spending of energy and toil and gold! I am
filled with admiration for the courage and the hardihood of the men who
cut adrift from civilization and set out with dogs or on foot over the
tractless ice fields of the Far North. All honor to them! Yet now what
utter neglect it seems of the resources of modern science!
No doubt the men who have been through it best realize what a hopeless,
heart-breaking quest it was. Peary’s land base at Camp Columbia was
only 413 miles from the Pole; yet it took him twenty-three years to
traverse that 413 miles.
[Illustration: LINCOLN ELLSWORTH AND N 24 JUST BEFORE THE START]
Curiously enough, Peary was the first man with whom I ever discussed
the matter of using an airplane for polar work. That was shortly before
his death, and he was enthusiastic about the project. Eight years
later, in 1924, Captain Amundsen arrived in New York. He had already
announced his belief that the Polar Sea could be crossed in a plane,
and for those eight years my mind had not freed itself of the idea. We
had a long talk and, as the result, I brought Amundsen and my father
together. My father, too, became enthusiastic and agreed to buy us two
flying boats. Thus the adventure began.
[Illustration: THE POLAR SEA FROM THE SKY]
The island of Spitzbergen, lying just halfway between Norway and
the North Pole, is ideally situated to serve as a base for Polar
exploration. Besides its nearness to the Pole--ten degrees, or 600
nautical miles--a warm current, an offshoot of the Gulf Stream, follows
along the western and northern coasts of the island, and has the effect
of producing ice-free waters at the highest latitude in the world.
These were the principal reasons which prompted Captain Amundsen and
myself to choose Spitzbergen as a base for our aeroplane flight to the
Pole.
We wanted to be on the ground early in the spring and to make our
flight before the summer fogs should enshroud the Polar pack and
hide from view any possible landing place beneath us, for it was our
intention to descend at the Pole for observations. From April 19th to
August 24th (127 days) the sun never sets in the latitude of King’s
Bay, Spitzbergen, where we had established our base. Here one may find
growing during the long summer days 110 distinct species of flowering
plants and grasses. But from October 26th to February 17th is another
story; the long Arctic winter is at hand and the sun never shows above
the horizon. Many houses have been built along the Spitzbergen coast
during the last twenty years by mining companies who annually ship
about 300,000 tons of coal, and King’s Bay boasts of being the most
northerly habitation in the world.
May 21st, 1925, was the day we had long awaited, when, with our two
Dornier-Wal flying boats we are ready to take off from the ice at
King’s Bay to start into the Unknown. We are carrying 7,800 pounds
of dead weight in each plane. As this is 1,200 pounds above the
estimated maximum lift, we are compelled to leave behind our radio
equipment, which would mean an additional 300 pounds. Our provisions
are sufficient to last one month, at the rate of two pounds per day per
man. The daily ration list per man is:
Pemmican 400 gr.
Milk Chocolate 250 „
Oatmeal Biscuits 125 „
Powdered Milk 100 „
Malted Milk Tablets 125 „
At 4:15 P.M. all is ready for the start. The 450 H. P. Rolls-Royce
motors are turned over for warming up. At five o’clock the full
horse power is turned on. We move. The N 25 has Captain Amundsen as
navigator. Riiser-Larsen is his pilot, and Feucht mechanic. I am
navigator of N 24, with Dietrichson for pilot, and Omdal my mechanic.
Six men in all.
The first two hours of our flight, after leaving Amsterdam Islands,
we ran into a heavy bank of fog and rose 1,000 meters to clear it.
This ascent was glorified by as beautiful a natural phenomenon as I
have ever seen. Looking down into the mist, we saw a double halo
in the middle of which the sun cast a perfect shadow of our plane.
Evanescent and phantom-like, these two multicolored halos beckoned us
enticingly into the Unknown. I recalled the ancient legend which says
that the rainbow is a token that man shall not perish by water. The
fog lasted until midway between latitudes eighty-two and eighty-three.
Through rifts in the mist we caught glimpses of the open sea. This
lasted for an hour; then, after another hour, the ocean showed, strewn
with small ice floes, which indicated the fringe of the Polar pack.
Then, to quote Captain Amundsen, “suddenly the mist disappeared and
the entire panorama of Polar ice stretched away before our eyes--the
most spectacular sheet of snow and ice ever seen by man from an aerial
perspective.” From our altitude we could overlook sixty or seventy
miles in any direction. The far-flung expanse was strikingly beautiful
in its simplicity. There was nothing to break the deadly monotony of
snow and ice but a network of narrow cracks, or “leads,” which scarred
this white surface and was the only indication to an aerial observer of
the ceaseless movement of the Polar pack. We had crossed the threshold
into the Unknown! I was thrilled at the thought that never before had
man lost himself with such speed--75 miles per hour--into unknown
space. The silence of ages was now being broken for the first time by
the roar of our motors. We were but gnats in an immense void. We had
lost all contacts with civilization. Time and distance suddenly seemed
to count for nothing. What lay ahead was all that mattered now.
“Something hidden. Go and find it.
Go and look behind the Ranges--
Something lost behind the Ranges,
Lost and waiting for you. Go!”
On we sped for eight hours, till the sun had shifted from the west to a
point directly ahead of us. By all rights we should now be at the Pole,
for our dead reckoning shows that we have traveled just one thousand
kilometers (six hundred miles), at seventy-five miles per hour, but
shortly after leaving Amsterdam Islands we had run into a heavy
northeast wind, which had been steadily driving us westward. Our fuel
supply was now about half exhausted, and at this juncture, strangely
enough, just ahead of us was the first open lead of water that was
large enough for an aeroplane to land in that we had encountered on
our whole journey north. There was nothing left now but to descend
for observations to learn where we were. As Captain Amundsen’s plane
started to circle for a landing, his rear motor backfired and stopped,
so that he finally disappeared among a lot of ice hummocks, with only
one motor going.
This was at 1 A.M. on the morning of May 22nd.
The lead ran east and west, meeting our course at right angles. It was
an awful-looking hole. We circled for about ten minutes, looking for
enough open water to land in. The lead was choked up with a chaotic
mass of floating ice floes, and it looked as if some one had started to
dynamite the ice pack. Ice blocks standing on edge or piled high on top
of one another, hummocks and pressure-ridges, was all that greeted our
eyes. It was like trying to land in the Grand Canyon.
We came down in a little lagoon among the ice-floes, taxied over to
a huge ice-cake, and, anchoring our plane to it, jumped out with our
sextant and artificial horizon to find out where we were. Not knowing
what to expect, I carried my rifle, but after our long flight I was a
bit unsteady on my legs, tumbled down into the deep snow, and choked up
the barrel. Our eyes were bloodshot and we were almost stone-deaf after
listening to the unceasing roar of our motors for eight hours, and the
stillness seemed intensified.
Looking around on landing, I had the feeling that nothing but death
could be at home in this part of the world and that there could not
possibly be any life in such an environment, when I was surprised
to see a seal pop up his head beside the plane. I am sure he was as
surprised as we were, for he raised himself half out of the water to
inspect us and seemed not at all afraid to approach, as he came almost
up to us. We had no thought of taking his life, for we expected to be
off and on our way again towards the Pole after our observation. His
curiosity satisfied, he disappeared, and we never saw another sign of
life in those waters during our entire stay in the ice.
Our observations showed that we had come down in Lat. 87° 44′ N., Long.
10° 20′ West. As our flight meridian was 12° East, where we landed
was, therefore, 22° 20′ off our course. This westerly drift had cost
us nearly a degree in latitude and enough extra fuel to have carried
us to the Pole. As it was, we were just 136 nautical miles from it. At
the altitude at which we had been flying just before descending, our
visible horizon was forty-six miles; which means that we had been able
to see ahead as far as Lat. 88° 30′ N., or to within just ninety miles
of the North Pole. We had left civilization, and eight hours later we
were able to view the earth within ninety miles of the goal that it
had taken Peary twenty-three years to reach. Truly “the efforts of one
generation may become the commonplace of the next.”
When we had finished taking our observation, we began to wonder where
N 25 was. We crawled up on all the high hummocks near by and with our
field-glasses searched the horizon. Dietrichson remarked that perhaps
Amundsen had gone on to the Pole. “It would be just like him,” he said.
It was not until noon, however, of the 22nd that we spotted them from
an especially high hill of ice. The N 25 lay with her nose pointing
into the air at an angle of forty-five degrees, among a lot of rough
hummocks and against a huge cake of old blue Arctic ice about forty
feet thick, three miles away. It was a rough-looking country, and the
position of the N 25 was terrible to behold. To us it looked as though
she had crashed into this ice.
We of the N 24 were not in too good shape where we were. We had torn
the nails loose on the bottom of our plane, when we took off from
King’s Bay, so that she was leaking badly; in fact, the water was now
above the bottom of the petrol tanks. Also, our forward motor was
disabled. In short, we were badly wrecked. Things looked so hopeless to
us at that moment that it seemed as though the impossible would have to
happen ever to get us out. No words so well express our mental attitude
at that time as the following lines of Swinburne’s:
“From hopes cut down across a world of fears,
We gaze with eyes too passionate for tears,
Where Faith abides, though Hope be put to flight.”
That first day, while Dietrichson and I had tried to reach the N 25,
Omdal had been trying to repair the motor. We dragged our canvas
canoe up over hummocks and tumbled into icy crevasses until we were
thoroughly exhausted. The snow was over two to three feet deep all over
the ice, and we floundered through it, never knowing what we were going
to step on next. Twice Dietrichson went down between the floes and only
by hanging onto the canoe was he able to save himself from sinking.
After half a mile of this we were forced to give up and return.
We pitched our tent on top of the ice floe, moved all our equipment
out of the plane into it, and tried to make ourselves as comfortable
as possible. But there was no sleep for us and very little rest during
the next five days. Omdal was continually working on the motor, while
Dietrichson and I took turns at the pump. Only by the most incessant
pumping were we able to keep the water down below the gasoline tanks.
Although we had located the N 25, they did not see us till the
afternoon of the second day, which was May 23rd. We had taken the small
inflated balloons, which the meteorologist had given us with which to
obtain data regarding the upper air strata, and after tying pieces of
flannel to them set them loose. We hoped that the wind would drift them
over to N 25 and so indicate to them in which direction to look for us.
But the wind blew them in the wrong direction, or else they drifted too
low and got tangled up in the rough ice.
Through all that first day the wind was blowing from the north and we
could see quite a few patches of open water. On the second day the
wind shifted to the south and the ice began to close in on us. It was
as though we were in the grasp of a gigantic claw that was slowly but
surely contracting. We had a feeling that soon we would be crushed.
On the third day, May 24th, the temperature was -11.5 c., and we had
trouble with our pump freezing. The two planes were now slowly drifting
together, and we established a line of communication, so that we knew
each other’s positions pretty well. It is tedious work, semaphoring,
for it requires two men: one with the flag, and the other with a pair
of field-glasses to read the signals. It took us a whole hour merely to
signal our positions, after which we must wait for their return signals
and then reply to them.
On this day, after an exchange of signals, we decided to try to reach
Amundsen. We packed our canvas canoe, put it on our sledge, and started
across what looked to us like mountainous hummocks. After only going a
few hundred yards we had to give up. The labor was too exhausting. With
no sleep for three days, and only liquid food, our strength was not
what it should have been. Leaving our canvas canoe, we now made up our
packs of fifty pounds each, and pushed on. We may or we may not return
to our plane again.
According to my diary we traveled the first two miles in two hours and
fifteen minutes, when we came upon a large lead that separated us from
the N 25 and which we could see no way to cross. We talked to them by
signal and they advised our returning. So, after a seven-hour trip,
we returned to our sinking plane, having covered perhaps five and one
half miles in about the same length of time it had taken us to fly from
Spitzbergen to Lat. 87.44. Arriving at our plane, we pitched camp again
and cooked a heavy pemmican soup over our Primus stove. Dietrichson
gave us a surprise by producing a small tin of George Washington
coffee. We took some of the pure alcohol carried for the Primus stove
and put it into the coffee, and with pipes lighted felt more or less
happy.
As we smoked in silence, each with his own thoughts, Dietrichson
suddenly clasped his hands to his eyes, exclaiming: “Something is the
matter with my eyes!” He was snow-blind, but never having experienced
this before, did not know what had happened to him. We had been careful
to wear our snow-glasses during most of the journey, but perhaps not
quite careful enough. After bandaging Dietrichson’s eyes, Omdal and I
put him to bed and then continued with our smoking and thoughts. It
seems strange, when I think back now, that during those days nothing
that happened greatly surprised us. Everything that happened was
accepted as part of the day’s work. This is an interesting sidelight
on man’s adaptability to his environment.
All our energies were now being bent in getting the N 24 up onto the
ice floe, for we knew she would be crushed if we left her in the lead.
The whole cake we were on was only about 200 meters in diameter,
and there was only one level stretch on it of eighty meters. It was
laborious work for Dietrichson and myself to try to clear the soggy
wet snow, for all we had to work with was one clumsy home-made wooden
shovel and our ice-anchor. As I would loosen the snow by picking at it
with the anchor, Dietrichson would shovel it away.
Looking through our glasses at N 25, we could see the propellers going,
and Amundsen pulling up and down on the wings, trying to loosen the
plane from the ice, but she did not budge. On the morning of May 26th,
Amundsen signaled to us that if we couldn’t save our plane to come
over and help them. We had so far succeeded in getting the nose of our
plane up onto the ice-cake, but with only one engine working it was
impossible to do more. Anyway, she was safe now from sinking, but not
from being crushed, should the ice press in on her. During the five
days of our separation the ice had so shifted that the two planes were
now plainly in sight of each other and only half a mile apart. During
all that time the ice had been in continual movement, so that now all
the heavy ice had moved out from between the two camps. We signaled
to the N 25 that we were coming, and making up loads of eighty pounds
per man, we started across the freshly frozen lead that separated us
from our companions. We were well aware of the chances we were taking,
crossing this new ice, but we saw no other alternative. We _must_ get
over to N 25 with all possible speed if we were ever to get back again
to civilization.
With our feet shoved loosely into our skis, for we never fastened them
on here for fear of getting tangled up, should we fall into the sea,
we shuffled along, slowly feeling our way over the thin ice. Omdal
was in the lead, myself and Dietrichson--who had recovered from his
slight attack of snowblindness the next day--following in that order.
Suddenly I heard Dietrichson yelling behind me, and before I knew what
it was all about Omdal ahead of me cried out also and disappeared as
though the ice beneath him had suddenly opened and swallowed him. The
ice under me started to sag, and I quickly jumped sideways to avoid
the same fate that had overtaken my companions. There just happened
to be some old ice beside me and that was what saved me. Lying down
on my stomach, partly on this ledge of old ice, and partly out on the
new ice, I reached the skis out and pulled Dietrichson over to where I
could grab his pack and partly pull him out onto the firmer ice, where
he lay panting and exhausted. Then I turned my attention to Omdal. Only
his pallid face showed above the water. It is strange, when I think
that both these Norwegians had been conversing almost wholly in their
native tongue, that Omdal was now crying in English, “I’m gone! I’m
gone!”--and he was almost gone too. The only thing that kept him from
going way under was the fact that he kept digging his fingers into
the ice. I reached him just in time to pull him over to the firmer
ice. I reached him just before he sank and held him by his pack until
Dietrichson could crawl over to me and hold him up, while I cut off the
pack. It took all the remaining strength of the two of us to drag Omdal
up onto the old ice.
Our companions could not reach us, neither could they see us, as a few
old ice hummocks of great size stood directly in front of N 25. They
could do nothing but listen to the agonizing cries of their fellow-men
in distress. We finally succeeded in getting over to our companions,
who gave us dry clothes and hot chocolate, and we were soon all right
again, except for Omdal’s swollen and lacerated hands. Both men had
lost their skis. In view of the probability of being forced to tramp
to Greenland, four hundred miles away, the loss of these skis seemed a
calamity.
I was surprised at the change only five days had wrought in Captain
Amundsen. He seemed to me to have aged ten years. We now joined with
our companions in the work of freeing the N 25 from her precarious
position. As stated before, when Captain Amundsen’s plane had started
to come down into the lead, his rear motor back-fired, and he was
forced to land with only one motor working, which accounted for the
position which we now found N 25 in. She lay half on and half off an
ice floe; her nose was up on the cake and her tail down in the sea.
Coming down thus had reduced her speed and saved her from crashing into
the cake of old blue ice, which was directly ahead. It seemed amazing
that whereas five days ago the N 25 had found enough open water to land
in, now there was not enough to be seen anywhere sufficient to launch a
rowboat in. She was tightly locked in the grip of the shifting ice.
[Illustration: N 25 ABOVE THE POLAR PACK JUST BEFORE LANDING AT 87° 44′]
A most orderly routine was being enforced at Amundsen’s camp. Regular
hours for everything--to work, sleep, eat, smoke and talk; no need to
warn these men, as so many explorers had been compelled to do, not to
give one another the story of their lives, lest boredom come. These
Norwegians have their long periods of silence in which the glance of an
eye or the movement of a hand takes the place of conversation. This,
no doubt, accounts for the wonderful harmony that existed during the
whole twenty-five days of our imprisonment in the ice. One might expect
confusion and disorganization under the conditions confronting us.
But it was just the reverse. We did everything as if we had oceans of
time in which to do it. It was this calm, cool, and unhurried way of
doing things which kept our spirits up and eventually got us out of a
desperate situation. No one ever got depressed or blue.
[Illustration: N 24 AND OUR ARCTIC HOME]
We elected Omdal our cook. Although we felt better nourished and
stronger after our noon cup of pemmican broth, it was always our
morning and evening cup of chocolate that we looked forward to most.
How warming and cheering that hot draught was! Captain Amundsen
remarked that the only time we were happy up there was when either the
hot chocolate was going down our throats, or else when we were rolled
up in our reindeer sleeping bags. The rest of the time we were more
or less miserable, but never do I remember a time when we ever lost
faith! The after-compartment of our plane--a gaunt hole--served as
kitchen, dining-room and sleeping-quarters, but it was draughty and
uncomfortable, and it seemed always a relief to get out into the open
again after our meals. The cold duralumin metal overhead was coated
with hoarfrost which turned into a steady drip as the heat from our
little Primus stove, together with that from our steaming chocolate,
started to warm up the cabin. Feucht always sat opposite me--I say
sat, but he squatted--we all squatted on the bottom of the plane with
our chocolate on our knees. I remember how I used to covertly watch
him eating his three oatmeal wafers and drinking his chocolate. I
always tried to hold mine back so as not to finish before him. I had
the strange illusion that if I finished first it was because he was
getting more to eat than I. I particularly recall one occasion, two
weeks later, after we had cut our rations in half, when I purposely hid
my last biscuit in the folds of my parka, and the satisfaction it gave
me to draw it out and eat it after Feucht had laid his cup aside. It
was the stirring of those primitive instincts which, hidden beneath the
veneer of our civilization, lie ever ready to assert themselves upon
reversion to primitive conditions. We smoked a pipe apiece of tobacco
after each meal, but unfortunately we had taken only a few days’ supply
of smoking stuff. When that went, we had to resort to Riiser-Larsen’s
private stock of rank, black chewing twist. It took a real hero to
smoke that tobacco after moistening it so as to make it burn slower and
thus hold out longer. It always gave us violent hiccoughs.
We were compelled to give up our civilized habits of washing or
changing our clothes. It was too cold to undress, and we could not
spare the fuel to heat any water after our necessary cooking was done.
During all our stay in the ice I never saw Captain Amundsen take a
drink of water. I was always thirsty after the pemmican, and when I
called for water, he said he could not understand how I could drink so
much water.
Captain Amundsen and I slept together in the pilot’s cockpit, which we
covered over with canvas to darken it at night. I was never able to get
used to the monotony of continuous daylight and found it very wearing.
With the exception of Riiser-Larsen the rest of the men slept on their
skis stretched across the rear-compartment to keep them off the metal
bottom. Riiser-Larsen had the tail all to himself, into which he was
compelled to crawl on hands and knees.
It took us a whole day to construct a slip and work our plane up
onto the ice-cake. The work was exhausting on our slim rations, and,
besides, we had only the crudest of implements with which to work:
three wooden shovels, a two-pound pocket safety-ax, and an ice anchor.
Through hopeless necessity we lashed our sheath-knives to the end of
our ski-sticks, with which we slashed at the ice. It is remarkable,
when one considers the scant diet and the work we accomplished with
these implements! Captain Amundsen conservatively estimates that we
moved three hundred tons of ice during the twenty-five days of our
imprisonment up there in order to free our plane.
The floe we were on measured 300 meters in diameter, but we needed a
400-meter course from which to take off. Our best chance, of course,
would be to take off in open water, but the wind continued to blow
from the south, and the south wind did not make for open water.
Riiser-Larsen was tireless in his search for an ice floe of the right
dimensions. While the rest of us were relaxing, he was generally to be
seen on the skyline searching with that tireless energy that was so
characteristic of him. Silent and resourceful, he was the rock on which
we were building our hopes.
The incessant toil went on. On May 28th the N 25 was safe from the
screwing of the pack-ice. On this day we took two soundings, which gave
us a depth of 3,750 meters (12,375 feet) of the Polar Sea. This depth
corresponds almost exactly to the altitude of Mont Blanc above the
village of Chamonix. Up to this time our only thought had been to free
the plane and continue on to the Pole, but now, facing the facts as
they confronted us, it seemed inadvisable to consider anything else but
a return to Spitzbergen. The thermometer during these days registered
between -9° c. and -11° c.
On May 29th Dietrichson, Omdal and I, by a circuitous route, were
able to reach the N 24 with our canvas canoe and sledge. We must get
the remaining gasoline and provisions. Our only hope of reaching
Spitzbergen lay in salvaging this fuel from the N 24. We cut out one of
the empty tanks, filled it from one of the fresh ones, loaded it in our
canoe, put the canoe on the sledge and started back. And now we found
that a large lead had opened up behind us, over which we were barely
able to get across ourselves, so we had to leave the tank and supplies
on the further side over night. The next day the lead had closed again
and Dietrichson and Omdal succeeded in getting the gasoline over. The
light sledge got slightly broken among the rough hummocks, which was an
additional catastrophe, in view of the probability of having to walk to
Greenland.
We now had 245 liters additional fuel,--1,500 liters altogether,--or a
margin of 300 liters on which to make Spitzbergen, provided we could
get off immediately.
On May 31st an inventory of our provisions showed that we had on hand:
285 half-pound cakes of pemmican,
300 cakes of chocolate,
3 ordinary cracker-tins of oatmeal biscuits,
3 20-lb. sacks of powdered milk,
3 sausages, 12 lbs. each,
42 condensed milk tins of Horlick’s Malted Milk Tablets,
25 liters of kerosene for our Primus stove (we later used
motor fuel for cooking).
Our observations for Latitude and Longitude this day showed our
position to be 87.32 N. and 7.30 W. It meant that the whole pack had
been steadily drifting southeast since our arrival. It was at least
some consolation to know that we were slowly but surely drifting south,
where we knew there was game. How we should have liked to have had
that seal we saw the first day! We had seen no life of any description
since, neither in the water nor in the air, not even a track on the
snow to show that there was another living thing in these latitudes but
ourselves. It is a land of misery and death.
With a view to working the longest possible time in an attempt to
get the N 25 clear, and at the same time have sufficient provisions
left with which to reach Greenland, Captain Amundsen felt that it was
necessary to cut down our daily rations to 300 grams per man, or just
one half pound per man per day. This amounted to one-half the ration
that Peary fed his dogs a day on his journey to the Pole. By thus
reducing our rations, he figured that our provisions would last for two
months longer.
Captain Amundsen now set June 15th as the date upon which a definite
decision must be arrived at. On that date something must be done; so a
vote was taken, each man having the option of either starting on foot
for Greenland on that date, or else sticking by the plane with the hope
of open water coming while watching the food dwindle. There was much
divided opinion. It seemed absurd to consider starting out on a long
tramp when right by our side was 640 horsepower lying idle, which
could take us back to civilization within eight hours. Captain Amundsen
was for staying by the plane. He said that with the coming of summer
the leads would open. Riiser-Larsen said he would start walking on June
15th. Feucht said he would not walk a foot and that he would stick by
the motors. Omdal said he would do what the majority did, and I said I
would prefer to wait until June 14th before making a decision.
My own mind was pretty well made up that if I ever succeeded in
traveling 100 miles towards Greenland on foot, I would be doing well.
Yet sitting down by the plane and watching the last of the food go was
a thing that ran counter to my every impulse. I agreed with Captain
Amundsen that I should much prefer to “finish it” on my feet. I think
that all really believed that in our worn-out condition, carrying
thirty pounds on our backs and dragging a canvas canoe along with which
to cross open leads, none of us would be able to reach the Greenland
coast.
Most of our doubt regarding the tramp to Greenland, of course, came
from our not knowing just how far the bad country that we were in
extended. Climb up as high as we could, we were never able to see the
end of it. Whether it extended to Greenland or not was the question,
and that was what made it so hard for us to decide what course to take.
After our evening cup of chocolate Captain Amundsen and I generally
would put on our skis and take a few turns around the ice floe we were
on before turning into our sleeping-bags. I usually asked him on these
occasions what he thought of the situation. His reply was that things
looked pretty bad, but he was quick to add that it had always been his
experience in life that when things were blackest, there was generally
light ahead.
On May 31st there was eight inches of ice in the lead on the far side
of the floe we were on. We decided to try a take-off on this new ice.
From our ice-cake down into the lead there was a six-foot drop, so
that it was necessary to construct a slip upon which to get our plane
down into the lead. We built this slip in accordance with standard
road-making principles--first heavy blocks of ice, then filling in on
top with smaller pieces, and then tiny lumps and loose snow, on top
of which we spread a layer of loose snow which froze into a smooth
surface. It took us two days to build this slip and to level off the
ice ahead for 500 meters.
At this time we had established regular nightly patrols, each man
taking his turn at patrolling all night around and around the ice floe,
on his skis, looking for open water. The mental strain during this
period was terrific, for we never knew when the cake we were on might
break beneath us.
On June 2nd, at 5 P.M., we decided that our slip was worthy a trial.
We started up the motors and taxied across the floe and down the slip,
but we had built our slip too steep, and, therefore, not having enough
speed, the plane simply sagged through the ice and for 1,000 meters we
merely plowed through it. We shut off the motors and prepared to spend
the night in the lead.
At midnight I was awakened by Captain Amundsen yelling that the plane
was being crushed. I could plainly hear the pressure against the metal
sides. We lost no time in getting everything out onto some solid ice
near by, and by working the plane up and down permitted the incoming
ice to close in beneath her from both sides. It was a narrow escape. We
had expected the plane to be crushed like an eggshell. Riiser-Larsen’s
only comment after the screwing stopped was, “Another chapter to be
added to our book!” Before morning our first heavy fog set in. The
Arctic summer was upon us. From then on the fog hung like a pall over
us and for the remainder of our stay in the Arctic we were never
free from it, although we were always able to see the rim of the sun
through it and knew that above it the sky was clear and the sun shining
brightly, but we could not rise into it. With the coming of the fogs
the temperature rose to freezing.
We were gradually working our way over towards where the N 24 was
lying. During the day we would level off a new course, but there was
not sufficient wind in which to rise, and as usual our heavily loaded
plane broke through the thin ice,--
“Trailing like a wounded duck, working out her soul.
Felt her lift and felt her sag, betted when she’d break;
Wondered every time she raced if she’d stand the shock.”
The N 25 started leaking so badly from the pressure she received the
other night that Captain Amundsen and I were obliged to pitch our tent
on the floe upon which the N 24 was resting. We were wondering how much
more she could stand. N 24 still lay with her nose on the ice floe, as
we left her, but she had now listed sideways, so that the tip of one
wing was firmly imbedded in the freshly frozen ice around her. During
the past few days the ice had been freezing in from both sides, forming
a long, narrow lane in front of N 24, but parts of this lane have bent
into a curve. It was a narrow, crooked passage, but Riiser-Larsen felt
that it offered one more opportunity for a take-off. He taxied N 25
forward, narrowly escaping an accident. As he slowed up to negotiate
the curve, the nose broke through the ice with the reduced speed. The
plane suddenly stopped and lifted its tail into the air. We jumped out
and hacked away the ice until the plane settled on an even keel. We
dared not remain where we were because the main body of the pack was
fast closing in upon us from both sides.
At two o’clock the next morning we commenced work on an extension of
our previous course and continued on throughout the day and on into
the following night. It was a tremendous task, as the ice was covered
with tightly frozen lumps, old pressure-ridges of uptilted ice cakes.
Hacking away with our short-handled pocket-ax and ice anchor was
such back-breaking work that we were compelled to work on our knees
most of the time. The sweat was rolling down my face and blurred my
snow-glasses, so that I was compelled to take them off for a couple
of hours. I paid the penalty by becoming snow-blind in one eye.
Dietrichson was not so fortunate. He was badly attacked in both eyes,
and had to lie in the tent in his sleeping-bag for two days with his
eyes bandaged and suffering acutely from the intense inflammation.
We awoke on the morning of June 5th, tired and stiff, to look upon the
level track we had so frantically labored to prepare, but saw in its
place a jumbled mass of upturned ice blocks. With the destruction of
our fourth course our position was now desperate. But we would hang
on till the 15th, when the vital decision would have to be made as
to whether or not we should abandon N 25 and make for the Greenland
coast while there were yet sufficient provisions left. But we had come
here on wings, and I know we all felt only wings could take us back
to civilization. If we could only find a floe of sufficient area from
which to take off. That was our difficulty.
In the early morning of June 6th Riiser-Larsen and Omdal started
out into the heavy fog with the grim determination of men who find
themselves in desperate straits, to search for what seemed to us all
the unattainable. We saw no more of them till evening. Out of the fog
they came, and we knew by their faces, before they uttered a word, that
they had good news. Yes, they had found a floe! They had been searching
through the fog, stumbling through the rough country. Suddenly the sun
broke through and lit up one end of a floe, as Riiser-Larsen puts it,
which became our salvation. It was a half mile off, and it would be
necessary to build a slip to get out of the lead and bridge two ice
cakes before reaching the desired floe.
The main body of the pack was now only ten yards away. Immediately
behind the N 25 a huge ice wall was advancing slowly, inch by inch, and
fifteen minutes after we started the motors the solid ice closed in
over the spot where our plane had lain. We were saved.
We worked our way slowly up to where we meant to build the slip, using
a saw to cut out the ice ahead where it was too heavy for the plane to
break through. After six hours of steady toil we had constructed our
slip and had the plane safe up on floe No. 1. That night of June 6th
we slept well, after the extra cup of chocolate that was allowed us to
celebrate our narrow escape.
The next morning began the most stupendous task we had yet undertaken:
cutting a passage through a huge pressure-ridge,--an ice wall fifteen
feet thick which separated floe No. 1 from floe No. 2,--and then
bridging between floe No. 1 and floe No. 2 two chasms fifteen feet wide
and ten feet deep, separating the two floes from one another. In our
weakened condition this was a hard task, but we finished it by the end
of the second day. Crossing the bridges between the floes was exciting
work. The sustaining capacity of such ice blocks as we could manage to
transport and lay in the water could not be great. The heavier blocks
which we used for a foundation were floated into place in the sea and
left to freeze--as we hoped they would--into a solid mass during the
night. When the time came, we must cross at full speed, if we were
not to sink into the sea, and then instantly stop on the other side,
because we had taken no time to level ahead, so great was our fear that
the ice floes might drift apart during the operation of bridging. We
made the passages safely and were at last upon the big floe. In order
to take advantage of the south wind, which had continued to blow ever
since the day of our landing, we leveled a course across the shortest
diameter of this cake, which offered only 300 meters for a take-off.
But before we completed our work the wind died down. Nevertheless we
made a try, but merely bumped over it and stopped just short of the
open lead ahead. Our prospects did not look good. The southerly winds
had made the deep snow soft and soggy. But it was a relief to know that
we were out of the leads, with our plane safe from the screwing of the
pack-ice.
It was June 9th, and now began the long grind of constructing a course
upon which our final hopes must rest. If we failed there was nothing
left. My diary shows the following entry for June 10th:--“The days go
by. For the first time I am beginning to wonder if we must make the
great sacrifice for our great adventure. The future looks so hopeless.
Summer is on. The snows are getting too soft to travel over and the
leads won’t open in this continually shifting ice.”
Riiser-Larsen looked the ground over and decided that we must remove
the two and a half feet of snow right down to the solid ice and level
a track twelve meters wide and four hundred meters long. It was a
heartbreaking task to remove this wet summer snow with only our clumsy
wooden shovels. It must be thrown clear an additional six meters to
either side, so as not to interfere with the wing stretch. After but
a few shovelfuls we stood weak and panting gazing disheartened at the
labor ahead.
One problem was how to taxi our plane through the wet snow and get it
headed in the right direction. We dug down to the blue ice, and now we
were confronted with a new difficulty. The moist fog, which came over
us immediately, melted the ice as soon as it was exposed. We found that
by working our skis underneath the plane we were able finally to get
her to turn, but after splitting a pair of skis we decided to take no
more chances that way. In desperation we now tried stamping down the
snow with our feet and found that it served the purpose admirably. By
the end of our first day of shoveling down to the blue ice, we had
succeeded in clearing a distance of only forty meters, while with the
new method we were able to make one hundred meters per day. We adopted
a regular system in stamping down this snow. Each man marked out a
square of his own, and it was up to him to stamp down every inch in
this area. We figured that at this rate we would have completed our
course in five days.
During the first day’s work we saw our first sign of animal life since
the seal popped his head up out of the lead where we first landed.
Somebody looked up from his work of shoveling snow to see a little auk
flying through the fog overhead. It came out of the north and was
headed northwest. Next day two weary geese flopped down beside the
plane. They must have thought that dark object looming up through the
fog in all that expanse of desolate white looked friendly. They seemed
an easy mark for Dietrichson, but the rich prize was too much for his
nerves and he missed. The two geese ran over the snow a long distance
as if they did not seem anxious to take wing again. They too came from
the north and disappeared into the northwest. We wondered if there
could be land in that direction. It was an interesting speculation.
On the 14th our course was finished. Then Riiser-Larsen paced it again
and was surprised to find that instead of four hundred meters it was
five hundred. When he informed Amundsen of this fact, the Captain
was quick to remark that one million dollars couldn’t buy that extra
hundred meters from him, and we all agreed that it was priceless. And
so it proved to be.
[Illustration: ELLSWORTH, AMUNDSEN, LARSEN AND FEUCHT WITH THE
IMPLEMENTS WITH WHICH THEY MOVED 300 TONS OF ICE]
On the evening of the 14th, after our chocolate, and with a southerly
wind still blowing--this was a tail-wind on this course and of no help
to us--we decided to make a try. But we only bumped along and the plane
made no effort to rise. What we needed to get off with was a speed of
100 kilometers per hour. During all our previous attempts to take off,
forty kilometers had been the best we could do. On this trial we got
up to sixty, and Riiser-Larsen was hopeful. It was characteristic of
the man to turn in his seat as we jumped out and remark to me: “I hope
you are not disappointed, Ellsworth. We’ll do better next time.” That
calm, dispassionate man was ever the embodiment of hope.
[Illustration: LINCOLN ELLSWORTH AFTER THE TRIP]
That night it was my watch all night. Around and around the ice-cake I
shuffled, with my feet thrust loosely into the ski straps and a rifle
slung over my shoulder, on the alert for open water. Then, too, we
were always afraid that the ice-cake might break beneath us. It was
badly crevassed in places. Many times during that night, on my patrol,
I watched Riiser-Larsen draw himself up out of the manhole in the top
of the plane to see how the wind was blowing. During the night the
wind had shifted from the south and in the morning a light breeze was
blowing from the north. This was the second time during our twenty-five
days in the ice that the wind had blown from the north. We had landed
with a north wind--but were we to get away with a north wind? That was
the question. The temperature during the night was -1.5° c. and the
snow surface was crisp and hard in the morning. We now were forced to
dump everything that we could spare. We left one of our canvas canoes,
rifles, cameras, field-glasses; we even discarded sealskin parkas and
heavy ski-boots, replacing them with moccasins. All we dare retain was
half of our provisions, one canvas canoe, a shotgun and one hundred
rounds of ammunition.
Then we all climbed into the plane and Riiser-Larsen started up.
Dietrichson was to navigate. The plane began to move! After bumping
for four hundred meters the plane actually lifted in the last hundred
meters. When I could feel the plane lifting beneath me I was happy, but
we had had so many cruel disappointments during the past twenty-five
days that our minds were in a state where we could feel neither great
elation nor great suffering. Captain Amundsen had taken his seat beside
Riiser-Larsen, and I got into the tail.
For two hours we had to fly through the thick fog, being unable either
to get above or below it. During all this time we flew slowly, with a
magnetic compass, a thing heretofore considered to be an impossibility
in the Arctic. Dietrichson dropped down for drift observations as
frequently as possible. The fogs hung so low that we were compelled to
fly close to the ice, at one time skimming over it at a height of but
one hundred feet. Finally we were able to rise above the fog and were
again able to use our “Sun Compass.”
Southward we flew! Homeward we flew! One hour--two hours--four, six
hours. Then Feucht yelled back to me in the tail, “Land!” I replied,
“Spitzbergen?”--“No Spitzbergen, no Spitzbergen!” yells back
Feucht in his broken English. So I made up my mind that it must be
Franz-Josefs-Land. Anyway, it was land, and that meant everything!
Our rationing regulations were now off, and we all started to munch
chocolate and biscuits.
For an hour Riiser-Larsen had noticed that the stabilization rudders
were becoming more and more difficult to operate. Finally they failed
to work completely and we were forced down on the open sea, just after
having safely passed the edge of the Polar pack. We landed in the sea,
after flying just eight hours, with barely ninety liters of gasoline in
our tanks, one half hour’s fuel supply. The sea was rough, and we were
forced to go below and cover up the man-holes, for the waves broke over
the plane.
I had eaten seven cakes of chocolate when Feucht yelled, “Land ahead!”
But I was now desperately ill and cared little what land it was so long
as it was just land. After thirty-five minutes of taxi-ing through the
rough sea, we reached the coast.
In we came--“in the wash of the wind-whipped tide.”
“Overloaded, undermanned, meant to founder, we
Euchred God Almighty’s storm, bluffed the Eternal Sea!”
How good the solid land looked! We threw ourselves down on a large
rock, face upward to the sun, till we remembered that we had better
take an observation and know for sure where we were.
It seems remarkable, when I think about it now, how many narrow escapes
we really had. Again and again it looked like either life or death,
but something always just turned up to help us out. Captain Amundsen’s
answer was, “You can call it luck if you want, but I don’t believe it.”
We got out our sextant and found that one of our position lines cut
through the latitude of Spitzbergen. While we were waiting to take our
second observation for an intersection, three hours later, some one
yelled, “A sail!”--and there, heading out to sea, was a little sealer.
We shouted after them and put up our flag, but they did not see us,
and so we jumped into our plane and with what fuel we had left taxied
out to them. They were after a wounded walrus that they had shot seven
times in the head, otherwise they would have been gone long before.
They were overjoyed to see us. We tried to tow the plane, but there
was too much headwind, so we beached her in Brandy Bay, North Cape,
North-East-Land, Spitzbergen, one hundred miles east of our starting
point at King’s Bay.
We slept continuously during the three days in the sealer, only waking
to devour the delicious seal meat steaks smothered in onions and the
eider-duck egg omelets prepared for us.
The homage that was accorded us upon our return to civilization will
ever remain the most cherished memory of our trip. We took steamer from
King’s Bay for Norway on June 25th, after putting our plane on board,
and nine days later arrived at Horten, the Norwegian Naval Base, not
far from Oslo.
On July 5th, with the stage all set, we flew N 25 into Oslo. It was
difficult to realize that we were in the same plane that had so
recently been battling in the midst of the Arctic ice. Good old N 25!
We dropped down into the Fjord amid a pandemonium of frantically
shrieking river craft and taxied on through the wildly waving and
cheering throngs, past thirteen fully manned British battleships, and
as I listened to the booming of the salute from the Fort and looked
ahead at the great silent expectant mass of humanity that waited to
greet us, I was overcome with emotion and the tears rolled down my
face. At that moment I felt paid in full for all that I had gone
through.