In those last few days of waiting a good deal of foreboding advice was given the daring aëronauts by the group of admirers who had made the voyage to Danes Island with them. It is even said that one of the leading scientists with the expedition took Andrée aside, spent a night with him, and tried to convince the man that his theories and calculations were mistaken; that the air currents were inconstant, and could not be depended on to sweep the balloon across the pole and down on the other side of the earthly ball; that very low temperatures at the pole might readily cause the hydrogen to shrink and thus bring the balloon to earth; and that the whole region was full of such doubts and surprises as to forbid the adventure.
To all this Andrée is said to have answered simply that he had made his decision and must stand by it.
Indeed, the balloonist’s plan seems to have been most thoroughly matured in his own mind. In twenty years of aëronautics he had worked out his ideas and theories in the greatest detail. He had not been blind to the problem of steering his machine, once it was in the air, but the plan of air rudders, or a type of construction that might lend itself to guidance through the air, had evidently not struck him as feasible, and was not brought to any kind of success until several years later under Santos Dumont. Yet Andrée was prepared to steer his balloon after a fashion. His gondola was, as already said, oblong, with a front and back. The front was provided with two portholes fitted with heavy glass, through which the explorer hoped to make observations in the course of his flight. As a practical balloonist, he knew that, once his car was in the air, the great bag was almost certain to begin spinning and to travel through the air at various speeds, increasing the rate of its giddy rotations as its rate of travel grew greater. That being so, the idea of front portholes and a prow for the gondola seemed something of a vanity, but Andrée had his own ideas as to this.
The balloonist explorer did not intend to ascend to any great heights, or to subject himself to the rotating action which is one of the unpleasantnesses and perils of ballooning. He had fixed to the stern of his gondola three heavy ropes, each about one hundred yards long, which descended from his craft, like elongated flaxen pigtails. In the center of each hundred-yard length of rope was a thinner spot or safety escapement, by means of which the lower half of any one of the ropes could be let go. And near the gondola was a second catch for releasing all of the rope or ropes.
These singular contrivances constituted Andrée’s steering gear and antiwhirling apparatus. His intention was to fly at an elevation of somewhat less than one hundred yards, thus leaving the ends of his three ropes trailing out behind him on the ice, or in the water of any open sea he might cross. The tail of his craft was expected to keep his gondola pointed forward by means of its dragging effect. Realizing that one or all of the ropes might become entangled in some manner with objects on the ice surface, and that such a mishap might wreck the gondola, Andrée had provided the escapements to let go the lower half or all the ropes.
Just what the man expected to do, may be read from his own articles in the New York and European papers. He hoped to fly low over a great part of the arctic regions, make photographs and maps, study the land and water conformations, pick up whatever meteorological, geological, geographical, and other information that came his way, cross the pole, if he could, and find his way back on the other side of the earth to some point within reach of inhabited places. Andrée said that he might be carried the seven hundred-odd miles from Danes Island to the pole in anywhere from two days to two weeks, depending on the force and direction of the surface wind. He did not expect to consume more than three weeks to a month for the entire trip, but his ship carried condensed emergency provisions for three years.
While a widely known French balloonist, who had planned a rival expedition and then abandoned it, had intended to take along a team of dogs, Andrée’s balloon had not sufficient lifting power or accommodations for anything of this kind, and he was content to carry two light collapsible sleds on which he expected to carry the provisions for his homeward trek after the landing.
~~ DOCTOR ANDRÉE ~~
When a correspondent asked Andrée, just before he set out, what provisions he had made for a mishap, and just what he would do if his balloon were to come down in open water, the explorer showed his spirit in the tersest of responses: “Drown.”