“‘Strindberg ... Franaenkel ... Let us go!’
“His two companions at once take their places beside him. Each is armed with a knife for cutting the ropes supporting the groups of ballast bags.... Andrée is always calm, cold, and impassable; not a trace of emotion is visible, nothing but an expression of firm resolution and an indomitable will. He is just the man for such an enterprise, and he is well seconded by his two companions. At length the decisive moment arrives: ‘One! Two! Cut!’ cries Andrée in Swedish. The three sailors obey the order simultaneously, and in one second the aërial ship, free and unfettered, rises majestically into space, saluted by our heartiest cheers.... Scattered along the shore, we stand motionless, with full hearts and anxious eyes, gazing at the silent horizon. For some moments, then, between two hills we perceive a gray speck over the sea, very, very, far away, and then it finally disappears.
“The way to the Pole is clear, no more obstacles to encounter—the sea, the ice-fields, and the Unknown!”
Out of the Great White North came a lone survivor, a carrier-pigeon, bringing the tidings written “July 13th, 12:30 P.M., 82° 2´ north latitude, 15° 5´ east longitude. Good journey eastward, 10° south. All goes well on board. This is the fourth message sent by pigeon.
“Andrée.”
Ah! but all did not go well. In June, 1899, a buoy containing a note from Andrée was found in Norway; it had been thrown out eight hours after departure.
The “North Pole buoy” to be dropped when the Pole was passed, was found empty in September, 1899, on the north side of King Charles Island. A third buoy, also empty, was picked up on the west coast of Iceland, July 17, 1900, and another reported from Norway, August 31, 1900, contained a note stating that the buoy was thrown out at 10 P.M., July 11, 1897, at an altitude of eight hundred and twenty feet, moving north 45 E. Thus the carrier-pigeon was the last messenger—the harbinger of Andrée’s last word to friends on earth; the fate of the three brave spirits lies buried in the Arctic silence.
Theodor Lerner was one of the first to hurry to Spitzbergen in 1898 leading the German scientific expedition, to obtain news from Andrée, if possible, and the same year the Swedish Anthropological and Geographical Society sent J. Stadling, with companions, to the Lena delta, the mouth of the Yenisei and the islands of New Siberia, where they searched in vain for traces of their missing compatriots. Again, in 1899, Dr. A. G. Nathorst turned his attention to eastern Greenland in an unsuccessful search for tidings of Andrée, making valuable maps and observations of the fiord system of King Oscar Fiord. Nor did Captain Bade in his explorations in East Spitzbergen, King Charles Land, and Franz Josef Land in 1900 find any traces of the missing aëronaut.
In the year 1894 Walter Wellman, an American, made Spitzbergen the base of his activities in an attempt to penetrate the Polar pack and reach the North Pole. Sailing in the Ragnvald Jarl, he had the misfortune to lose his ship off Walden Island; undaunted by this grave disaster, he pushed north with sledges as far as 81°, but had to retrace his steps, owing to the impenetrable condition of the ice. He had, however, reached a point east of Platen Island. Wellman again endeavoured to conquer the ice in 1898, this time choosing for his base Franz Josef Land. He was liberally fitted out, and accompanied, among others, by Evelyn B. Baldwin of the United States Weather Bureau. Mr. Wellman made his headquarters at “Harmsworth House,” at Cape Tegetthoff, for three years the Arctic home of Frederick A. Jackson and his companions.
WELLMAN’S PLAN TO REACH NORTH POLE