Our polar flight

by Roald Amundsen; Lincoln Ellsworth

Now the fourteen days have passed during which we should lie here in the fairway, according to Amundsen’s orders, and wait for the airmen. The “Fram” should now continue a course westwards from the northern coast of Norskeöene, as the boat is not constructed for ice navigation; “Hobby,” on the other hand, is built of wood and has a strong ice-bow of solid oak, and can safely follow a course eastwards along the ice border, probably being able to reach Northeastland. As soon as “Fram” has got her tanks filled (which should be by to-morrow evening), the patrolling shall begin. We shall remain here in the north till the 2nd of July—six weeks from the start (that is the limit Amundsen fixed for the airmen to return to Spitzbergen on foot or in the small canvas boats), after which the last members of the Amundsen-Ellsworth expedition were to set off southwards.

This afternoon we live through an occurrence which smacks of sensation. The fog had lifted and there was only a slight thickness remaining on the high points of Spitzbergen’s mainland, the rest had been blown to sea by a fresh breeze. Now visibility is good. We have just drunk our coffee and come on deck, and we suddenly notice a little boat rowing towards us. Instinctively we lift our binoculars. There are two men in the boat, which lies deep in the water. Apparently it is one of “Hobby’s” “seal-boats” which has probably been out and caught a number of seals. The boat approaches, rows past our ship, and lies by the side of a little hut on the beach at Danskeöen. This hut was built by a Scottish scientist, and is called Pike’s House, after him. The two men land and empty the boat of its load. We realize that they are two trappers whom “Hobby” has met in the course of her patrolling near Norskeöene, where they have remained since autumn trapping bears and foxes. In a short time they come on board to learn if they can possibly find a ship to carry them southwards.

With true Polar hospitality we invite them to have coffee with us and tell them the news from the outer world which they have not been in touch with since September. They listen with the same interest to our news as we do to their tales of the life of a trapper in the polar night. They have kept diaries and have made notes of wind and weather.

We borrow their diaries and read their accounts of the weather about the time of the start. They have made the following notes: May 18th. Calm, air very thick -3° c. 19th May. Fresh easterly wind, cloudy air, -4° c. 20th May. Slight northeast wind, atmosphere thick, a little snow, -3° c. Afternoon. Fresh easterly wind, snow. Evening. Easterly, snow, -5° c.

Thus we arrive at the starting day, which gave us the brilliant weather the airmen were waiting for, and which the meteorologists believe continued straight to the Pole.

In the diary the notes were: May 21st. Fresh, north east, atmosphere thick, and snow, -7° c. Evening, weather conditions the same -8° c. On the following day, May 22nd, when “Fram” and “Hobby” came northwards, they had noted clear weather in their diaries. These trappers’ diaries give us a new subject for conversation. If their observations are correct our airmen must have flown into thick fog opposite Danskeöen and Amsterdamöen. Supposing they followed a northward course after passing Amsterdamöen, it is not likely that the weather could have changed extensively between there and Norskeöene, especially with such a wind blowing as the diaries describe. We discuss it from every point of view and arrive at the only possible result. Around Spitzbergen’s northwest point and the islands immediately near it there has been a local storm on the day of the start. The airmen could not have missed seeing it, and the fact that they have continued northwards in spite of it, is because they have seen clear weather ahead in the polar basin, where they could make use of their sun compasses and deviation measures for navigating. The trappers are of the same opinion—one of them has spent many winters in Spitzbergen, and tells us that the weather conditions there are often quite different to what they are a little further south. The two trappers row away to their hut, where they intend to live until “Fram” goes southwards to coal, when they will accompany us in order to join a coal-boat from Ny-Aalesund to carry them to one or other Norwegian port. They will sell the two polar bear skins and thirty fox skins from their winter’s trapping and will live on the proceeds for a few months in Norway, then return to Spitzbergen again when they wish to gather a fresh harvest.

In the evening we hold a council of war in “Fram’s” mess regarding the patrolling, and we arrange exactly which parts of the fairway each boat shall cruise over. The first trip is to begin to-morrow, Friday, June 5th, continuing until June 9th, when at eight o’clock on that day “Hobby” and “Fram” shall be back in Virgo-havn again. There is a little difficulty about the fact that “Hobby” is not fitted with wireless, and for this reason we have made the first cruise of so short a duration, as word may come at any moment which would do away with the necessity for further patrolling.

Hardly any of us believe that there is a chance of our picking up the airmen. With such good flying machines there is hardly any doubt but that they must have reached the Pole before they had to land. Therefore we conclude that any accident can only have taken place where they have landed at the Pole point. It will, thus, be a shorter distance to Cape Columbia than to Northeastland, especially taking into consideration the fact that the going is easier over the flat ice towards the American coast than scrambling over the screw-ice north of Spitzbergen. From what the airmen said before they left it was their intention to return to Cape Columbia, and we had often noticed in King’s Bay during the conversation that Amundsen himself always counted on the possibility of coming home on foot. Every small item of the equipment which could be required on a march was gone through most carefully by Amundsen himself and tested and examined over and over again. He thought of everything, but when we remember what a small space the entire equipment for a march took up in the two machines it seems impossible that six men could have had enough material to keep life and soul together and get clear away. But Amundsen has experience from former years....

The first part of the waiting period is over. The thought of the last fourteen days arouses a chaos of memories and sensations. The last lunch in the mess on the starting day, three or four hours before they left, seems to be as far away as a childhood’s memory. We sat round the long table talking as usual, when suddenly the six men got up, saying: “It is time we put on our flying clothes,” and the whole occurrence appeared so natural to us all that many of us remained to drink an additional cup of the extra fine coffee which the steward had made for the occasion.

And thus they started, and we passed impatient days of anxious waiting to see them return. And now we can hardly understand our first great confidence. It seems to me quite impossible that for ten or fourteen days I could have believed in their home-coming with a certainty as firm as that of the six themselves. But should a miracle happen on the other hand, and we should suddenly see them flying towards us, and hear the thrumming of their engines, it would seem to be the most natural thing that could take place.