The Ice Balloon: S. A. Andree and the Heroic Age of Arctic Exploration (19 page)

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In the third week of June, they began filling the balloon with hydrogen. “I sit alone in the balloon house with the somewhat more than half-filled balloon beside me,” Strindberg wrote. “Hard winds from the NE whistle through the upper parts of the balloon house and in the mountain above. I hold watch beside the hydrogen apparatus, but now I am free from duties as the filling is going well. It is strange to sit here now, once more this year, and to think that this year I am engaged to the best girl in the world, my sincerely beloved Anna. Yes, I may shed a tear when I think of the happiness that has passed and that may never again be returned to me. But what would this matter to me if I merely knew that
she
would be happy. But I know that she loves me, which makes me proud, and that she would be deeply affected by my departure. Therefore I cannot neglect in my sadness to think of her and the happy times we spent together this winter, and in particular this spring. But allow me to hope. The balloon is now varnished and should be much tighter than last year; we have the summer before us with its favorable winds and sunlight. Why wouldn’t our mission succeed. This I fully believe.”

One of the balloon engineers invented a method for detecting leaks that involved saturating strips of linen with acetate of lead and laying the strips over the seams. Any hydrogen escaping turned the muslin black. “The smallest leakage can be discovered,” Strindberg wrote. To carry out part of the task, they had to walk on the crown of the balloon, which, Strindberg said, “only yields imperceptibly.” They were unable to finish, however, because they ran out of varnish. Only half of what they had ordered arrived.

Noting the rate at which gas was lost and its effect on the balloon’s carrying capacity, Strindberg estimated that, by throwing out ballast, “We will easily float for more than a month. With a fairly strong wind we will reach the pole, or a point near it, in from thirty to sixty hours. Once having reached the northernmost point, we don’t care where the wind carries us. Of course we would rather land in Alaska, near the Mackenzie River, where we would very likely meet American whalers, who are favorably disposed toward the expedition. It would really be a glorious thing to succeed so well. But even if we were obliged to leave the balloon and proceed over the ice, we shouldn’t consider ourselves lost. We have sledges and provisions for four months, guns and ammunition; hence are just as well equipped as other expeditions as far as that is concerned. I would not object to such a trip. The worst thing is that folks at home will feel uneasy if we don’t appear in the fall, but are obliged to spend the winter in the Arctic regions. My body is now in such good condition, and I have got so accustomed to the Arctic life, that a winter up here don’t seem terrible at all. One gets used to everything. But the best thing would be to come home in the fall.”

On July 6, during a storm, the wind blew heavily from the southwest, and even though held by five tons of ballast, the balloon knocked against the walls of the house. At one point twenty sacks of ballast fell from it, and as it surged upward, Andrée was caught in the net and rose with the balloon until he hung upside down. When the storm was over, hydrogen had to be added. Andrée said also that he had noticed shortcomings that needed attention, although he didn’t say what they were. “Had they been allowed to remain until the balloon really was to leave,” he wrote, “it could easily have happened that it would have been impossible to save the balloon from a shipwreck in the harbour at departure.”

Fraenkel and Strindberg thought that the blustery winds were good for leaving, and they began getting the ropes and the basket ready, but Andrée didn’t think the winds were dependable. The next day they blew strongly from the northeast, the wrong direction. A few days later Andrée told a journalist that he would not go back to Sweden without having tried to start. At stake were his honor, and Sweden’s, he said. Nothing guaranteed that he would reach the high latitudes—indeed, getting the balloon out of the balloon house at all was dangerous—but at least he would have been the first to try using a balloon. He was not, he said, a dreamer or a fanatic, but someone soberly aware of all the dangers and obstacles.

On the eighth of July, the wind blew from the right quarter but too vigorously—it was nearly a gale—then later in the day it came from too far to the west. “If we don’t get a southerly wind before the 15th of July,” Andrée wrote, “we intend to try with a southeasterly, to be carried north of Greenland, and there possibly utilize the south winds which, according to Lieutenant Peary, are prevalent during the summer.”

Later that day he made his last entry before leaving. “Conditions have undergone a considerable change during the last few days,” he wrote. “After a month of dry weather we now have mild showers almost every day. The barometer, which previously was very sluggish, now makes quite violent movements and the wind, which hitherto has hardly blown from any direction south of east-west, now sets in from other directions. In the higher air layers, beginning with the height of the nimbus clouds, there appears to be a considerable movement from a more southerly direction. It is characteristic of these new winds that they are puffy, which doesn’t appear to be the case with winds from the north. It is evident, however, that we now have arrived at a period of change and that we can hope to get off.

“I have proposed to my comrades that until the 15th of July we are to place quite high demands on the wind which we choose as our traveling wind. But after that date we are going to be content with less satisfactory currents, if they are only of such a nature that they make possible the start itself. For it seems to me that after so much waiting we are entitled, not to say obliged, to make the start. Without the least difference of opinion all three of my comrades agree with me in this respect and we intend to act.”

Around three in the morning on July 11, the wind began blowing across the bay. By four it was steady from the southwest, and sometimes squalling. The clouds moved constantly north. Two Norwegian sealers arrived looking for safe harbor from a storm, which they expected to last a few days.

Around eight, having rowed ashore with Strindberg, Fraenkel, Svedenborg, the alternate, and Machuron, Andrée said that he would like to brood for an hour, but that Strindberg and Fraenkel should pack their things and finish their letters. Fraenkel wrote, “Dear Mother, time for only a few lines now as we may cast off today. The wind is not the best in direction or strength, but we have waited so long now that we must take this chance. If you hear no more this year we may be wintering in the Arctic. A winter camp on Franz Joseph Land presents no difficulties. I must finish here!”

The sky in the north grew clear while clouds in the south moved quickly, suggesting that the wind blew even more forcefully aloft. Andrée’s concern was that the wind was too squally to be trusted. Also, that it might be blowing too strongly for the balloon to get safely out of its house. Finally he asked, “Shall we try it or not?” Fraenkel was not sure; Strindberg said, “I think we ought to try it.” Andrée didn’t answer, and they went back to the ship. He preferred to wait until the next day, to see if the winds improved. “If we only could get going,” Strindberg wrote his father. “Andrée is too careful. The wind has been excellent since 6 a.m. and we have been up on the balloon house measuring the wind. It was 8 metres per second. Andrée thought this to be a bit too much, and became doubtful. But finally I got him to decide that if the wind did not increase within the next couple of hours we should leave. The officers on board were furious over this lack of firm resolution.” Strindberg went on, “And I agree with them. It is disgusting to see.”

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As soon as Andrée got aboard, though, he told the captain, “My companions insist on starting, and as I have no absolutely valid reasons against it I shall agree to it, although with some reluctance.” Then he asked the captain to send all hands ashore to begin dismantling the balloon house.

Andrée did not write his reservations down, so what they were isn’t known. A tone of caution seemed to have entered his thinking, though. Perhaps he had come to feel that he wouldn’t make it. Or it might also have had to do with his heart’s having gone out of the adventure once his mother had died. Or perhaps he was only being practical and wondering, with lives at stake, whether the winds might be more favorable if he were patient.

Strindberg took photographs of the balloon in its house. Then, leaving Andrée and Fraenkel, he rode back to the
Svenskund
for some things he had forgotten and to check his chronometer. Breakfast was on the table when he arrived, and the captain was opening a bottle of champagne. Andrée and Fraenkel had sandwiches later. Meanwhile, over a megaphone, Andrée gave instructions on how to dismantle the house.

To attach the basket to the bearing ring some ballast was removed from it, which caused the top of the balloon to rise slightly above the house, exposing it to the wind. It swung on its moorings, “at times with great violence,” an observer wrote. The guide ropes were laid out in coils on the beach. The pigeons were loaded aboard. The aeronauts dressed in their expedition clothes—Andrée and Strindberg in dark blue and Fraenkel in a gray coat with a wolfskin collar. Andrée wrote a telegram to the king, sending “warmest greetings to the fatherland.” Lachambre, the Frenchman who made the balloon, had called it
Pôle-Nord
, but Andrée christened it
Ornen
, which translates as “the eagle.” He stepped into the basket first. Strindberg asked Machuron if he would give his love to Anna Charlier. Then he set about assuring himself that the camera was working.

“Suppose you alight on the pack ice, far away in the desolate polar regions; what will you do?” a journalist asked.

“We shall do our best, and work our way back as far as possible,” Andrée said. “Having during these last years thought, worked and calculated in preparing for this expedition, we have, so to speak, mentally lived through all possibilities. Now, we only desire to start, and have the thing finished some way or other.”

The journalist asked when the world might hope to hear from them.

“At least not before three months; and one year, perhaps two years, may elapse before you hear from us, and you may one day be surprised by news of our arrival somewhere. And if not—if you never hear from us—others will follow in our wake until the unknown regions of the north have been surveyed.”

They left at two-thirty in the afternoon. First the hawsers anchoring the balloon were cut, so that only three ropes held it. The balloon rose slightly and rolled on its moorings—Machuron wrote that it seemed almost to come to life. “There is profound silence at this minute,” he went on. “We hear only the whistling of the wind through the woodwork of the shed, and the flapping of the canvas.” Andrée stood in the basket “calm, cold, impassive. Not a trace of emotion is visible on his countenance; nothing but a firm resolution and indomitable will.” Three sailors from the
Svenskund
held knives, and on Andrée’s count of three, they cut the ropes. “In one second, the aerial ship, free and unfettered, rises majestically into space,” Machuron wrote. Leaving the balloon house, the balloon struck something, and the last thing Andrée was heard to say was “What was that?”

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Everyone ran from the shed to follow the balloon. Machuron left “through a secret opening I have made in the woodwork, so as to be able to rush to my photographic apparatus and have time to take a few snapshots of this stupendous moment.”

The balloon rose slowly and almost erratically to about three hundred feet. It headed northeast, across the harbor, trailing the ballast ropes, which left a broad turning wake. Then very quickly it descended, and the basket struck the water. Andrée threw out eight bags of sand, about 450 pounds, which he would have preferred to keep. Some of the watchers thought that a gust coming over the mountains had forced the balloon to the water. More likely one of the guide ropes had caught on the shore or become stuck while uncoiling. In any case, by the time the balloon had recovered, they had suffered their first misfortune. The guide ropes twisted in such a way that the lower portion of them unscrewed and remained on the ground. Andrée shouted to the sailors onshore while it was happening, but not in time. Without the ropes, Andrée was sailing a free balloon, not one he might steer. Like all the balloonists before him, he had to go where the wind took him.