A few days after the launch Svedenborg, the alternate, visited Oscar Strindberg and Anna Charlier in Stockholm. He told them that Strindberg’s last words had been, “Long live Sweden,” and he gave Charlier a sandbag that Strindberg had cut loose so the balloon could leave.
Both Eckholm and Svedenborg said that Andrée had sufficient rope to repair the guidelines. If he hadn’t been able to fix them, however, he was traveling in a balloon whose altitude he wouldn’t have been able easily to control, which meant that he wouldn’t have been able to manage so efficiently the amount of hydrogen that was lost. The benefit, though, was that as he rose higher the winds would have blown harder.
Four days after Andrée left, a pigeon landed in the rigging of the sealer Alkin, near Spitsbergen, folded its head under its wing, and fell asleep. The captain thought it was a ptarmigan, a bird he could eat, and crept close to it and shot it, but it fell in the water. A few hours later he met another sealer, whose captain said the bird might be related to the Andrée expedition and that there might be a reward for it. The captain of the Alken went back and found it. In a tube attached to one of its tailfeathers was a message, dated July 13, 12:30 p.m.: “Latitude 82°2′: longitude 15°5′ E. good speed to E., 10° south. All well on board. This is the third pigeon-post. Andrée.”
According to the coordinates, Andrée had not yet passed the pole, as Machuron had predicted; he had traveled only 145 miles north and 45 miles east, and was heading east instead of north. The two other birds that Andrée mentioned were never found. In the summer the Arctic is full of falcons.
Trying to account for the route that the balloon had taken, Eckholm said that it had likely ascended into a species of cyclone, that is, a whirling storm whose center would have been calm. Using accounts from sealing captains of the weather around Spitsbergen when Andrée had left, Eckholm had concluded that the center of the storm would have been northwest of the island, meaning that the balloon, having been carried north, then northwest, would have stayed at the center of the storm until it picked up a current heading east. That movement agreed with the one that Andrée had described in his message, and it would explain his remark that the balloon was making “good progress eastward.” Cyclones, however, require strong winds to form, and those blowing across Spitsbergen might not have been vigorous enough. Andrée might simply have caught winds blowing north and then east.
Regardless of how the route was plotted, they had covered only 120 miles in two days. To reach Siberia or Alaska at that speed would take thirty-three days. Most likely they had landed. Against that possibility, an illustrated notice had been distributed among the captains of the revenue cutters and whalers visiting ports near where Andrée might descend.
In the summer of 1897 a balloon (an object like that shown on the drawing) may be seen floating in the air. This balloon will convey a party of three Swedish scientists, who have been making explorations toward the north pole by these means. The Government of Sweden and Norway has requested that the explorers may receive all possible assistance. Natives should therefore be told that the balloon is not a dangerous thing, but merely a mode of conveyance in the air just as a ship is on the water.
Natives should be told to approach the people on it without fear and to give them all the help in their power.
If the balloon is seen only, the natives should be told to communicate the day and hour, the direction and time it was visible, and the direction of the wind.
If the people arrive, having lost the balloon, the natives to be told to give them all possible assistance.
It is requested that the traveler may be supplied with passport and all the official documents, the names being Solomon August Andrée, aged 43; Nils Strindberg, 45 [a mistake]; Knut Hjalmar Ferdinand Fraenkel, aged 27; or one of those replaced by Wilhelm Emanuel Svedenborg, aged 28.
Fourteen days after the launch, on July 25, the New York Times reported that two pigeons with messages had turned up in Norway. One message said, “North Pole passed, fifteenth,” and the other said, “North Pole 142 W., 47 minutes, 62 degrees,” points suggesting that Andrée had reached Alaska. Eckholm said the birds didn’t appear to be Andrée’s but the paper wrote that the messages implied that “they are probably safe, and will make their way home by way of the Mackenzie River.”
July 25 was Anna Charlier’s birthday, which she spent with the Strindbergs. In the morning they sailed to an island in the harbor and picked strawberries and, according to Oscar in a letter, “sat down, dreaming, with thoughts on the Pole.” In the afternoon they went to the offices of Aftonbladet, where Machuron gave Charlier photographs of the balloon’s leaving. They also talked with reporters who had watched the ascent. “There was not much news due to all the newspapers had printed,” Oscar wrote. They told him, though, that “the loss of a number of drag cables was generally seen as an advantage as this allowed for a start with speed,” he said. Finally the reporters gave Charlier Strindberg’s violin, some books, and some of his clothes. “You can imagine the impression it made to see all these things arranged,” Oscar wrote.