The surviving black-and-white film shows two men preparing for a flight beside a sleek metal airplane. Behind the plane, flat compacted snow stretches, like a theater backdrop, to a distant horizon of gently sloping hills. Scattered about the snow in front of the plane are drums of fuel, bags of supplies, and a lightweight wooden sled.
Both actors in the unfolding drama are tall men. Lincoln Ellsworth is the slimmer of the two. His youthful face and thick head of hair make him appear younger than his fifty-five years. Ellsworth is pulling a thick fur parka over his upper body and adjusting the hood. He smiles and briefly spreads his arms wide to present the accomplishment to the camera, then looks around the snow for something to load aboard the plane.
The other man is Herbert Hollick-Kenyon. He is wearing trousers, boots, a check woollen shirt, and aviator sunglasses, which hide his eyes. His solid build and receding hairline make him look older than his thirty-eight years. He ignores the camera as he suits up, deftly clamping the stem of a lighted pipe in his teeth, then transferring it to his hand. The dexterity is impressive and performed without a hint of self-consciousness.
Near the plane, the flags of the institutions with which Ellsworth has an association are held on bamboo poles, a horizontal strut ensuring each is clearly visible in the still air. The camera pans across the flags of the National Geographic Society, Yale University, the New York Athletic Club, the Hill School, Pottstown, Pennsylvania, and, towering over them all, the flag of the United States of America with forty-eight stars. (In 1935, Alaska and Hawaii are not yet states.) Ellsworth smiles proudly at the camera again and, on the soundless film, goes through the carefully choreographed motion of pointing to each flag in turn.
The film jumps to the same scene a few minutes later. The flags have been packed away. Hollick-Kenyon is sitting casually on the snow, his pipe still in his mouth, strapping gaiters over his boots. He too is now wearing a fur parka.
Ellsworth is pacing anxiously in front of the plane. In his right hand he carries a leather cartridge belt, devoid of bullets. The wealthy Ellsworth who owns, among other things, mansions in New York and Chicago, a villa in Italy, a castle in Switzerland, and great works of art, considers this old cartridge belt his most precious possession. It is the good luck charm he will carry on the flight he hopes will write his name in the history books. The belt would have no value and no meaning were it not for the fact it was once owned by Ellsworth’s hero, the western lawman Wyatt Earp. The belt has made a long journey from one frontier to another.
The film jumps again and bit players have walk-on roles in the performance. A mechanic checks the engine, more for the camera than mechanical necessity. Everything has already been checked and rechecked. Another man steps on the low wing and wipes the cockpit windscreen with a cloth. And it goes on until Hollick-Kenyon and Ellsworth are ready to climb aboard.
Hollick-Kenyon climbs in first, sliding the canopy to the rear and maneuvering his bulky frame into the narrow cockpit. He reaches up and pulls the canopy forward, over his head, so Ellsworth can climb into the seat behind him. Settled, Ellsworth grins at the camera and, reacting to some unheard direction, leans awkwardly forward, thrusting his head partway out of the cockpit, so his face is not in shadow.
A man closes the side hatches on the fuselage before walking out of frame. The streamlined silver metal plane is beautiful, even by modern standards. The large block letters along the side are clearly visible: ELLSWORTH TRANS-ANTARCTIC FLIGHT.
Next, the shot is wider and the single propeller spins invisibly while snow is blasted rearward. The plane moves forward on wide flat wooden skis, gathering speed. It passes the camera, which is not panning, and the port wing appears to come dangerously close to the lens. The plane moves away as it taxis and gathers speed.
Finally, the plane accelerates across the snowfield, lifts off, circles once over the cheering men still on the ground, and flies out of the picture. The local time is 0800 Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). The date is November 23, 1935. The location is Dundee Island, near the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. The wealthy and eccentric American explorer, Lincoln Ellsworth, after years of setbacks, misfortunes, and ridicule, is finally on his way to attempt the first crossing of the last unexplored continent on Earth.
The camera stops filming, but the activity continues. The man who has been operating the camera, the Australian explorer Sir Hubert Wilkins, organizes the crew to return equipment to the expedition ship, moored at the edge of the ice a few miles away. Men haul crates, tools, and empty fuel drums down the slope from the makeshift runway to the ship, which Ellsworth has named Wyatt Earp.
Already aboard the Wyatt Earp, the radio operator, Walter Lanz, is listening intently for messages from Ellsworth and Hollick-Kenyon. Lanz writes each message on his pad with a pencil and crew members relay the information to others working around the ship. At first the messages from the fliers are received clearly. They report the plane is flying slower than expected, but everything else is going according to plan.
At 1046 GMT, Hollick-Kenyon radios the right rear fuel tank is empty and he has switched to the front left wing tank. Aboard the Wyatt Earp, Sir Hubert Wilkins quickly makes his calculations. In two hours and forty-six minutes the fliers have consumed sixty-seven gallons of fuel at twenty-four and a half gallons an hour. At that rate, because the total fuel capacity of the plane is 466 gallons, they can fly for nineteen hours.
At 1115 GMT, three hours and fifteen minutes into the 2,200-mile flight, Lanz receives the message: “We too far east. Going to make compass course 190.”1
A few minutes later he records: “IAS 110. Very slow.”2 The Indicated Air Speed (IAS) is only 110 miles per hour. The plane is capable of flying at 200 miles per hour and should be cruising at 150 miles per hour. There are mutterings aboard the Wyatt Earp. Why are they flying so slowly? Is there a headwind? Is something wrong with the engine? Wilkins makes more calculations. If they are only flying at 110 miles per hour the 2,200 miles flight will take twenty hours. They will not have enough fuel. The fliers should turn around and return to the ship.
Minutes later, Hollick-Kenyon radios that he and Ellsworth are still flying. The headwinds are increasing. Mountain ranges are in front of them. They will need to gain elevation, burning even more fuel. They have traveled 400 miles—too far to walk back to the Wyatt Earp if they are forced to land.
At 1241 GMT, Hollick-Kenyon radios they are flying at 13,000 feet and still climbing and still flying into a head wind. They have no intention of turning back to the safety of the ship. After eight hours, the radio messages are crackling and breaking up. Lanz writes on his pad:
I estimate that we are at sevent . . . one . . . erabouts . . . my guess is . . . at . . . pect still clear . . . to s . . . ight dull . . . little no wind.3
Lanz waits for the next message, but nothing is heard. Hours pass and there is still nothing to record on the pad. The ice pack surrounding Dundee Island presses at the side of the Wyatt Earp. If the ship is not moved to open sea soon it will be trapped, perhaps for the winter.
Wilkins waits twenty-four hours for a radio message from Ellsworth and Hollick-Kenyon, but nothing disturbs the airwaves. By now the plane’s fuel must be exhausted. But have the fliers landed safely? If they have, why have they not transmitted their position? Wilkins reluctantly radios a message to Buenos Aires, from where it is relayed to New York. The message explains that the American explorer, Lincoln Ellsworth, has disappeared. He departed, with pilot Herbert Hollick-Kenyon, on a trans-Antarctic flight expected to take fourteen hours. After eight hours radio contact was lost.
In New York, Ellsworth’s lawyers and business managers fear the worst. Ellsworth has previously hinted at suicide. Could he have possibly done it? Could their client, who has battled depression for much of his life, who has endured taunts and snickers at rumors that he is gay, and who has repeatedly failed to demonstrate competence in navigation, finally realized his secret ambition to reach a remote frontier—the last frontier on the planet—and remain there permanently?
Aboard the Wyatt Earp, Wilkins receives frantic messages from New York asking what can be done. The experienced Antarctic explorer understands the answer is virtually nothing. Except for the fliers, and the small crew aboard the Wyatt Earp, which is now trapped by the ice, there is no one else on the continent and no other ship in Antarctic waters. The crew of the Wyatt Earp can only wait and hope. Lanz, often relieved by other crew members, strains his hearing to listen for the faintest signal from the radio. The waiting and listening continues for days, and then weeks.
Antarctica offers only silence.
Eighty years after Lincoln Ellsworth and Herbert Hollick-Kenyon took off to attempt their trans-Antarctic flight, I landed at the Gerald R. Ford International Airport, Grand Rapids, Michigan, searching for information about the man who had sent them on their way, Sir Hubert Wilkins. I was greeted at the airport by Mike Ross, a giant bear of a man in his seventies, who led me across the parking lot to his pickup truck, then drove me an hour north to the small town of Fremont. Mike was the son of the late Winston Ross, who had been Wilkins’s personal secretary and, after the deaths of Sir Hubert and Lady Wilkins, had inherited their lifetime collection of correspondence, records, and artifacts. Initially, Winston Ross had been at a loss as to what to do with the enormous amount of material. Hoping to raise money to preserve it, he had sold certain correspondence to collectors of polar memorabilia. Then, in 1985, he had transferred much of the remainder to the Ohio State University’s polar archival program. But after Winston Ross’s death in 1998, his son Mike discovered still more boxes of material and, not knowing to whom he should give them, had stored them at his home in Michigan. I’d come to see what they contained.
When we arrived at Mike’s rural property on the outskirts of Fremont, he led me into the workshop behind his home and showed me the stack of boxes. For the next week, either in my motel room, or amid the tools in Mike’s workshop, I sifted through thousands of photographs, artifacts, letters, and documents, carefully copying them and taking notes. I found remarkable items, such as Wilkins’s mention in dispatches from the Western Front in World War I, specially marked bars of soap from the airship Hindenburg, a proclamation from George V of England authorizing Wilkins to claim land in Antarctica, and autographed pictures from people such as Walt Disney, Amelia Earhart, Roald Amundsen, and Joseph Stalin.
I also found the records of the Ellsworth Trans-Antarctic Expeditions.
In the years I had spent researching Sir Hubert Wilkins I had read everything available about his time, during the 1930s, helping Ellsworth realize his dream of being the first person to cross Antarctica. But a lot of research had previously revealed very little, except that Ellsworth appeared to be apathetic, incompetent, and, for the most part, uninterested in his ambition. What motivated him to cross Antarctica was a mystery. Nor could I understand why Wilkins had spent so much time helping someone else achieve what he wanted desperately to do himself.
The Michigan boxes held the answers. They contained intimate letters between Wilkins and his wife, explaining the happenings aboard the Wyatt Earp. They revealed radiograms and telegrams, the crew’s contracts, erratic instructions written by Ellsworth, receipts for purchases, press releases, the ship’s papers, and more. In short, they revealed the story. Combined with the records I had already studied, the Michigan boxes opened an intimate window into one of the strangest episodes in polar history. It is this untold story I now present to the reader.
It is a story of men who came after the Heroic Age and how they competed for the last great prize in polar exploration—the first crossing of Antarctica. And it is the story of how the ammunition belt of a western frontier lawman came to be carried across the frozen continent, and how a lonely, insecure, fifty-five-year-old gay man triumphed where so many others had failed.