For Amundsen, the appearance of Ellsworth must have been a godsend. Here on his doorstep was an insecure middle-aged man, with a generous allowance from a wealthy father and a dream of performing a great feat of exploration. Amundsen flattered Ellsworth, who later recalled proudly “that first long talk I had with Amundsen in his room at the Waldorf developed many things, the most important being that henceforth we were to be partners in polar exploration.”1
Ellsworth immediately felt an affinity with Amundsen, writing he “was like a child whose confidence has been betrayed so often that he finally trusts nobody. So he encased himself in a shell of ice.”2
The wily Amundsen, the world’s greatest polar explorer, and the eager but inexperienced Ellsworth, who had never strapped on skis, conceived a plan. Or more correctly, Amundsen revealed his ambition to fly across the Arctic Ocean via the North Pole, and skillfully ensured Ellsworth felt part ownership of the idea. Ellsworth enthused, “Our first ambition must be to fly clear across the Arctic. It interested neither of us to merely attain the North Pole.”3
From the point of view of polar exploration, the idea had merit. The Atlantic side of the Arctic Ocean was reasonably well known, at least as far north as the Svalbard Archipelago, while Cook and Peary had both trekked north from Greenland. But the Arctic Ocean north of Alaska and Canada was still largely a mystery. Cook and Peary had each reported seeing land in the distance in that direction, and various scientists at the time were theorizing, based on the known drift patterns of the ice, that a continent, or at least large islands, existed in the Arctic. Amundsen wanted to fly from Spitsbergen, in the Svalbard Archipelago, to the Pole, and then over the top of the world into the large unknown area where he hoped he would discover “Amundsen Land.” It would be the crowning achievement of his lifetime and not tainted with the accusations of cheating and unsportsmanlike behavior that had dogged him since the South Pole.
Ellsworth’s role was to raise the funds. He asked his father for an advance on his income by “pleading for myself as I never had before.”4 Lincoln’s timing was fortunate. Ellsworth’s Sr.’s second wife, Julia, had died three years earlier and since then he had withdrawn from the world. He was also suffering from declining health. Lincoln recalled:
He was nervous and irritable, and the pressure I was putting upon him bothered him terribly. Wouldn’t he at least see Captain Amundsen, I begged? Was that asking too much—to give himself the opportunity of meeting familiarly one of the world’s historic men?
“Bring him, then,” my father finally cried. “Bring him.”
It was the first break in his defenses, the first time his iron opposition had even sagged.5
The meeting between James W. Ellsworth and Roald Amundsen took place on November 9, 1924, at the industrialist’s house on New York’s Park Avenue. Ellsworth Sr. was suitably impressed. In Amundsen he undoubtedly recognized the indomitable spirit and single-minded focus that had driven his own ambitions, and which were lacking in his son. When James Ellsworth agreed to back the venture, Amundsen reached into his bag, took out the binoculars he had carried to the South Pole, and presented them to the former businessman.1 Having been promised the money he needed, Amundsen canceled his lecture tour and hurried back to Europe to oversee the organization of the expedition.
Lincoln Ellsworth began the more complex task of getting his father’s permission to accompany Amundsen. It was a process that consumed three months as the two obstinate men tried to outmaneuver one another. Lincoln wrote, “[Father] paid over the money but began a desperate campaign, one that verged on the unprincipled, to keep me from accompanying the expedition.”6
At first Ellsworth Sr. said he would permit Ellsworth Jr. to participate in the risky flight if he stopped smoking. Lincoln agreed, but wrote in his autobiography that he never intended to honor the promise. Ellsworth Sr. would sign a bank draft, give it to his son, then a day later instruct the bank not to make the funds available. The two men would confront each other, and Ellsworth Sr. would contact the bank again and change the instruction. Family friends were dragged into the bickering and implored Lincoln to be considerate of his father’s age and failing health and not accompany the expedition, while other friends urged Ellsworth Sr. to let Lincoln have his way. Lincoln pleaded with his father to be allowed to go, writing in one letter, “I do not want worldly goods, castles or villas or money with which to purchase luxury. I do want the opportunity to make good and satisfy my inward self in the line of endeavor I have chosen.”7
Ellsworth Sr. thought his son foolish to make such a choice, and threatened to stop his allowance. And so it went on until eventually Lincoln’s sister, Clare, intervened:
Clare loved me, yet secretly she was one of those sceptics who thought I was going to my death. But she knew that I would rather die than not go. She knew that if I did not go I would be crushed in spirit for the rest of my days. So she interceded with Father on my behalf. Father was furious with her, threatening her with all sorts of dire things in the future because she had dared interfere. Yet she fought on for me, risking her own future as I was. In his frame of mind then, Father might well of cut off his children with a pittance and left all his money to the Western Reserve Academy. I think it was Clare’s influence that made him give up in the end.8
The tired old man relented and released the funds. Lincoln Ellsworth hightailed it to Norway to catch up with Amundsen and ship their two flying boats to Spitsbergen. He wrote that his last meeting with his father was “a most dismal experience.”9 Father and son had disappointed each other all Lincoln’s life. To his father, Lincoln was the sissy who never had the head or the heart to bludgeon some industrial empire into shape. To Lincoln, his father had neither the insight to understand his son, nor the compassion to see his desperate need for acceptance. “I could only express the nature God and circumstance had given me,”10 Ellsworth recalled, perhaps hinting at his sexuality.
When Lincoln sailed from New York, his sister came to wave him off. “I had hoped that [Father] might come to the boat, but he didn’t.” Lincoln wrote:
For a long time I stood at the rail with a heavy heart. The ship turned slowly in the stream, then moved toward the Battery, the procession of Manhattan skyscrapers marching majestically by. I watched until we were far down the bay and the New York spires had huddled together and shrunk.
Then my depression dropped from me like a cloak.11
Ellsworth described his first expedition more than a decade after the event, but one can still hear the enthusiasm in his words, mirroring those of an excited schoolboy on his first camping trip away from his home and parents.
Ellsworth also felt a new sense of importance. At Oslo, Amundsen had organized a dinner to bid the expedition farewell. Ellsworth, because of an oversight, had forgotten to bring a detachable collar, in fashion at the time, for his shirt. Amundsen borrowed one from a waiter at the hotel where Ellsworth was staying and, after the dinner, returned it. When Amundsen and the waiter spoke in Norwegian, Ellsworth was intrigued and asked Amundsen what the waiter had said. Amundsen explained that the waiter intended to keep the collar as a souvenir. Ellsworth was thrilled:
Can you imagine a New York bell-hop or hotel waiter preserving the collar worn by even a successful explorer, to say nothing of a prospective one? The Norsemen have been sea-rovers and discoverers for a thousand years. Exploration represents their national genius, as business organization does that of the United States or invention that of Italy. Venturers for discovery’s sake take the rank in Norway that other countries accord only to their idols in sport or entertainment.12
Mocked and ridiculed since childhood, Ellsworth was suddenly finding himself respected.
At Tromsø, the northern port from which the expedition would depart, Ellsworth met the pilots and crew, who had been hired by Amundsen, and watched, not speaking Norwegian, while they prepared for the five-hundred-mile voyage to Kings Bay, Spitsbergen.2 Two Dornier Wal flying boats were loaded, still unassembled in their crates, aboard the Hobby, a small steamer that plied the treacherous waters between Norway and Spitsbergen. A week later, at Kings Bay, Ellsworth again watched fascinated, as Amundsen oversaw the unloading and assembly of the flying boats. “It was all new to me,” Ellsworth wrote. “We had the feeling of being the cynosure of the world’s eyes, and it was to me, at least, tremendously exhilarating.”13
The Dornier Wal flying boats had been built in Pisa, Italy to a German design. The boat-shaped Duralumin hulls were wide enough to negate the need for wing floats. The Dornier Wals could, hopefully, land and take off in narrow leads (open areas in the ice) of water. Each flying boat had two powerful 350 hp Rolls-Royce engines and were capable, should one engine fail, of flying using only the other. Neither flying boat was named. They were referred to by the manufacturer’s designation: N 24 and N 25.
Amundsen, with pilot Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen and mechanic Karl Feucht, would fly in one Dornier Wal (N 25). Ellsworth, with pilot Leif Dietrichson and mechanic Oscar Omdal would be in the other. Riiser-Larsen and Dietrichson were aviation officers in the Royal Norwegian Navy. Omdal was a Norwegian pilot/mechanic, while Feucht was German, sent from the Dornier Wal factory to maintain the motors.
The six-man expedition planned to fly 750 miles from Kings Bay to the North Pole and, if the engines were running smoothly, continue over the Arctic to the north coast of Alaska. If the flying boats were not behaving, they would turn around at the Pole and return to Kings Bay. They might, if Amundsen thought it advisable, land somewhere near the Pole to discuss their options. It was a vague plan, not helped by the fact they had no radios, so once they were airborne the two crews could only communicate by means of semaphore or making gestures with their hands.
By May 21, everything was ready and the weather promised to remain clear. The Kings Bay coal mines were closed for the day and the Norwegian miners were allowed to witness a national hero, Roald Amundsen, again going where no man had gone before.
At 4:30 P.M. the massive engines were started, the Duralumin hulls inched forward, increasing speed as they slid over the smooth ice and, in a deafening roar, both Dornier Wals lifted into the air.
“It was unreal, mystic, fraught with prophecy,” Ellsworth wrote. “Something ahead was hidden, and we were going to find it.”14 Something hidden ahead there may have been, but for Ellsworth, equally, there was something he was leaving behind. As he sat in the nose cowling of the N 24, a new unknown world of ice and cold ahead of him, he was leaving behind a world of derision, exclusion, and shame. He later described the flight into the unknown north, saying, “I had accomplished the ambition of my life. I felt like a god.”15
The two flying boats remained within visual range of each other and flew steadily north for seven hours, crossing the edge of the Arctic ice pack. Believing they must be nearing the Pole, Ellsworth began looking for open leads of water in the jumbled pack ice below, where they could land the flying boats. “I have never looked down upon a more terrifying place in which to land an airplane,”16 he later wrote.
But then, surprisingly, Amundsen’s flying boat dipped and began to descend. Without radios, there was no opportunity to question the reason. Dietrichson had no choice but to follow in the N 24. Dietrichson skillfully dropped the flying boat into a narrow lead of water squeezed between jagged ice humps. Without room to taxi to a halt, the hull of the N 24 smashed into an ice cake and immediately began sinking. Ellsworth, Dietrichson, and Omdal scrambled out of the doomed flying boat onto the ice. Ellsworth stared at his surroundings. Moments earlier he had felt like a god. Now he confronted a new reality. “In the utter silence this seemed to me to be the kingdom of death.”17
On the ice, Ellsworth, whose job it was to navigate, handed his sextant to Dietrichson, who determined they were at latitude 87°44'N and longitude 10°20'W. They were 136 nautical miles (156 statute miles) from the Pole. Also, in navigating the expedition north, Ellsworth had not allowed for wind drift. They were twenty degrees off course. Commenting on Dietrichson’s reaction to his navigational error, Ellsworth noted, “Great was the pilot’s disgust.”18
But why had Amundsen brought his flying boat down early? He was an expert navigator and surely he had been taking his own sightings and not blindly following the inexperienced Ellsworth. And where were the others from the N 25? Ellsworth climbed to the top of an ice hummock and scanned the horizon with his field glasses. There was no sign of the others.
For the next few hours, Ellsworth, Dietrichson, and Omdal attempted to drag the N 24 onto solid ice, to no avail. After they had salvaged some supplies, Ellsworth climbed to the top of a taller ice hummock and spied the N 25 about three miles away. He could see the figures of Amundsen, Riiser-Larsen, and Feucht working near the plane. It took Ellsworth and his companions five days to transverse three miles of open leads and jagged ice. When they finally reached the other flying boat:
Five days had wrought a shocking change in Amundsen. Sleepless toil and anxiety had graven in his face lines that seemed to age him ten years. In all his many adventures in the polar regions, I doubt if he had ever been in such peril as this or under such a strain.19
Ellsworth learned that Amundsen had not landed by choice. The engine of the N 25 had cut out due to a leak in the air intake. Since landing, Feucht had repaired it, and the engine was functioning perfectly. Also, Riiser-Larsen had managed to land the N 25 without damage. It was ready to fly.
The experienced Amundsen knew a danger facing the small group was the lack of discipline and focus, which would lower morale. He ordered a strict schedule of work, rest, and meals. The first task was to haul the flying boat out of the water and onto the ice, to prevent it being crushed should the lead close. Using wooden snow shovels, sheath knives, and an ice axe, the men hacked out a ramp and taxied the N 25 onto a flat slab of ice. They had enough fuel to fly the N 25 back to Kings Bay, but their issue was finding a long flat area of ice from which to get airborne.
On May 31, ten days after their forced landings on the ice, Amundsen held a conference and everyone agreed if by June 15 they had not been able to get airborne, then they would abandon the N 25 and take their chances walking over the ice to Greenland. Although they did not voice their doubts, Ellsworth recalled that each man understood a journey on foot to Greenland gave them almost no chance of survival.
“But men fight for their lives to the last inch,” Ellsworth wrote. “And we had to begin at once to prepare either for that journey or for a much longer stay on the ice than any of us had contemplated.”20
With a renewed sense of urgency, the men fanned out from the N 25 to look for an open lead of water or a suitable flat ice runway. The search continued for a week. Ellsworth wrote:
We had been on the ice for fifteen days, and our position was as hopeless as ever. No lead had yet exposed water broad enough for a seaplane’s run. The ice of the frozen leads would not bear the weight of the ship. The plane could not reach flying speed on the snow.
Nine days to June 15, when we must make the supreme decision.21
On June 6, Riiser-Larsen and Dietrichson strapped their skis on and went searching for a runway again. They returned a few hours later and announced they had discovered a flat area of ice half a mile away. The daunting job now facing the exhausted men was to carve a road, sixty feet wide, through the ice hummocks, so they could haul the flying boat to the proposed runway. For the next nine days, with the strength of men whose only other option was death, they hacked their way through the hummocks, or filled crevices with blocks of ice and snow. Ellsworth worked as hard, or harder, than any of the others in that desperate effort, and Amundsen later credited him with saving the expedition.
Finally, on June 15, the six men climbed aboard the N 25 and, with Riiser-Larsen at the controls, got airborne. “I experienced no particular elation,” Ellsworth wrote. “But only a dull happiness when I felt the plane lift. We were all beyond sharp emotions.”22
Dietrichson sat forward of the pilot and steered the course to salvation. Six hours later they sighted a small island in the Svalbard Archipelago. Their incredible good luck continued when, shortly after landing, they were spotted by a fishing boat and taken back to Kings Bay, where they learned the world have given them up for dead.
Ellsworth also learned that on June 2, while they had struggled on the ice, his father had died. Ellsworth worried that his disappearance had broken his ailing father’s will to live, and he felt personally responsible for the old man’s death. For the first time in his life Ellsworth had taken a bold risk and survived, but his father had died thinking his son had perished in the Arctic. It affected Ellsworth deeply. He would write in his autobiography, “If I did not have for him the warm affection a son feels toward a less austere and preoccupied father, I at least had an immense respect for him, and a great admiration.”23
A week after they had reached Kings Bay, a larger ship was sent to fetch the N 25 before the expedition returned to Oslo for an official welcome. Ellsworth recalled, “I wish I could describe that welcome and what it meant to me. I was entirely unprepared for its fervor.” The six men taxied the N 25 up the fjord, past a row of warships from many nations:
The quays and wharves were black with humanity. Whistles of all sorts or river craft howled and shrieked; airplanes circled overhead. The guns of the fort began booming a salute, and a great throng was waiting at the landing.24
Ellsworth found it overwhelming, writing, “It was an intoxicating draught for one who has never known celebrity or the feeling of being treated as an important personage. It created an appetite that could never be once and for all appeased.”25
Ellsworth swore to himself that he would continue his exploration and accomplish something that would make his late father proud. He may not be able to build a great business empire, but he would somehow immortalize the Ellsworth name.