My work is fulfilled. All the big problems are solved. The work that remains in Polar exploration is a matter of detail. Let others handle it.
LARGE CROWDS WERE awaiting the famous-again explorers in Seattle. But Amundsen noted with dismay that many in the crowd were either waving Italian flags or flying Italian flags on their boats. The Italian community in Seattle was better at organizing a public turnout than the Norwegian community, and it had spread the word that the expedition had been an Italian one. At the gangplank of the ship Nobile, resplendent in his glittering military uniform, stepped forward to give the Fascist salute to the cheers of the Italian American congregation. When a little girl approached the explorers to present them with a bouquet of flowers, she handed it to the stylish and impressive-looking man in a shining uniform who had the small dog at his feet rather than to Amundsen or Ellsworth, who seemed like weary prospectors. Newspaper reporters noted that Amundsen “looked tired and worn,” sporting a bushy grey moustache and garbed in a prospector’s outfit he had purchased in Nome, instead of the stylish suits he usually wore when meeting reporters.
After a short stay in Seattle, Amundsen, Riiser-Larsen, the other Norwegian crew and Ellsworth boarded an eastbound train in two reserved cars. When they pulled into New York’s Grand Central Station several days later, “the party was cheered” and Amundsen was “smothered under armfuls of roses until he looked like a moving flower bed.” Once again there were speeches and the singing of the American and Norwegian anthems. A police-escorted cavalcade led them through streets teeming with enthusiastic crowds. Amundsen was now described as looking “ten years younger”—clearly the adulation was counteracting the trials of the expedition. “He was clean-shaven. . . . He wore a smartly tailored double-breasted suit and looked very rosy and plump. He expressed some horror when he was told that he was putting on flesh.”
Amundsen announced that “I never felt better in my life. I’m a free man now. I’ll never explore again.” He had accomplished all the goals he had set out for himself as a youth, he said, and “felt the relief and happiness of an emancipated slave.” He also proclaimed, “I’ll never lecture again. Riiser-Larsen can do that—I’ve lectured for twenty years. I don’t know what I’ll do with the rest of my life, but it will be what I feel like doing.” In a speech at a public luncheon, he claimed that Ellsworth would also have to keep exploring: “He’s a fine young man of courage and spirit. There may still be work worth while for him to do.” Part of Amundsen’s sudden feeling of freedom no doubt had to do with the accomplishment of a goal he had contemplated since adolescence, but it also stemmed from the finalization of his bankruptcy proceedings; his brother Leon had not publicly revealed that Amundsen had at one time signed over his properties to Kristine Bennett in his will—the secret of their affair was safe. Uranienborg, which was included in his estate, was sold to Herman Gade and Peter Christophersen with the provision that Amundsen could live there for the duration of his life. The proceeds went to pay off some of the debts.
Among the crowd at the culminating luncheon, Amundsen noticed Richard E. Byrd, who had made the trip from Washington, D.C., to greet him. Amundsen heartily called out “Byrd!” and pushed through the crowd to shake his hand before introducing him to the throng, “his face all smiles.” He dragged Byrd onto the stage, happily sharing the spotlight with the other man who had purportedly flown over the North Pole. Then the nine Norwegians and Ellsworth boarded a steamer for Bergen, where they were received as heroes on July 12, pushed into gilded chairs and lofted off the gangplank and on to the celebrants’ shoulders. A few days later, in Oslo, they were escorted into the city by a flotilla of small boats and military airplanes flying in formation. The streets were crowded with thousands of well-wishers. A red-carpet reception awaited them, and the quiet and unassuming Ellsworth was proclaimed “a modern Viking.”
Umberto Nobile was supposed to travel on to Japan to help with an airship installation there, but he had received new orders from Mussolini: he was remain in the United States to undertake a tour of the “Italian colonies.” He would promote his own and Italy’s role—and, naturally, Mussolini’s role—in the successful and famous polar endeavour. Mussolini also promoted him to the rank of general. Nobile and his men toured thirteen major cities in the United States. This was a breach of the spirit of the contract Amundsen and Ellsworth had drawn up with Nobile, whom they viewed as their employee. But Nobile was engaged in state propaganda and was impervious to any attempts by Amundsen or Ellsworth to control him. Although Amundsen had always promoted his country of origin, he remained a private individual in all his expeditions, making his living by selling the spectacle of his thrilling accomplishments to the public. Nobile and his five Italian crew were agents of their government, and as such may not even have had the right to enter into civil contracts that might obligate them to act against the will of their commanding officers.
In November 1926, after some months in Norway spent working on the draft of First Flight Across the Polar Sea, Amundsen sailed back to New York to begin his lecture tour of the United States—only to find that Nobile was doing his own tour, presenting the whole affair in a light most favourable to Mussolini and Fascist Italy. During the next several months, the quarrel between the Norwegian and the Italian contingents intensified. Nobile made a series of outrageous claims: that he had conceived of using a dirigible to cross the Polar Sea himself in 1925, before being approached by Amundsen: “While this Italian project was ripening, Amundsen asked to meet me. . . . In fact, to Italy full credit must be given for the technical organization of the entire flight from Rome to Alaska. It was made entirely through our own initiative and under our responsibility.” Nobile graciously thanked Ellsworth for contributing financing to “his” expedition. In an interview with the New York Times on December 6, he declared that “I was the commander of the Norge and everybody on it, including Amundsen, was under my orders.”
Nobile also claimed that the Norwegian crew did little besides sleep, while the Italians did all the work. All of these statements were of course blatant falsehoods. How could Amundsen and Ellsworth not be infuriated by them? These nasty personal attacks were clearly inspired by far more than the explorers’ brief time together on the airship; they were in a competition for public attention and the storyline of the adventure. Amundsen and Ellsworth wanted this for themselves, both to recoup their costs and for personal reasons. Nobile wanted it to assuage his wounded pride and for the greater glory of the Fascist state; now that the expedition was a success, Mussolini promoted it as an example of Italy’s new and powerful position as a world leader in technical and scientific matters. If Nobile had been instructed by Mussolini to make his outrageous pronouncements, he certainly could not have refused. Eventually, the publicity-shy Ellsworth joined the public quarrel, pointing out that Riiser-Larsen did more flying than Nobile and that Nobile hadn’t done any of the navigation—so vital on a featureless expanse of frozen water. Nobile immediately attacked Ellsworth, claiming in the New York Times that the American, who had performed a fair amount of the navigation as well as the general conceptualization of the entire enterprise, “was merely a passenger whom I took on board at Spitsbergen and left at Teller.”
In Italy, the voyage of the Norge was elevated into a propagandistic story of two great peoples and their national temperaments—Norwegian discipline and willpower melded with Italian creativity and inventiveness—united in the conquest of the last geographical prize on the planet, a symbol of Norwegian co-operation with the “New Italy.” Yet neither Amundsen nor Ellsworth wanted the Italian state as their partner. Amundsen himself became increasingly nationalistic in the wake of his public fight with Nobile, wrapping himself in his nationality as never before, dedicating First Crossing of the Polar Sea to “The Norwegian Flag.” Resisting Mussolini, who would later reveal the vicious and aggressive nature of Italian nationalism, brought out Amundsen’s own tribalism. This intense nationalism was increasingly becoming the spirit of the age.
The quarrel with Nobile was in part related to Amundsen’s and Ellsworth’s quarrel with the Norwegian Aero Club, whom they charged with mismanagement, including failing to sell film rights to an American company and giving additional rights to Nobile. Amundsen’s quarrel with the club had begun the year before, when it had turned down a significant offer from First National Pictures for the film rights to his and Ellsworth’s polar flight. He later remarked that “anybody with the slightest knowledge of the motion picture business realizes that the great market is the United States, and that the value of news pictures diminishes in geometrical ratio with the passage of time between the events portrayed and the day they are exhibited in theatres.” This “stupid error” cost the expedition, by Amundsen’s estimate, about $42,000—a huge sum in those days.
Amundsen and Ellsworth publicly resigned their memberships when they discovered that the club was sponsoring and endorsing Nobile’s lecture tour of the United States. Rolf Thommessen, the Aero Club’s president, claimed he had to endorse Nobile’s lecture tour because Ellsworth and Amundsen refused to give the Italian equal credit for the expedition and would not allow Nobile to contribute to the official book of the expedition. Thommessen was in fact an admirer of Mussolini, which may explain his willingness to alter the terms of the contract between the Aero Club and Nobile. He ran sympathetic portraits of the Italian dictator in his newspapers, and contrasted positive portraits of Nobile’s competence with denigrating comments about Amundsen’s leadership. The fact remains that there is no way that Nobile or the Norge could have flown anywhere near the North Pole or Alaska, or even have left Italy, if not for the lofty dreams of Amundsen and Ellsworth.
The Aero Club held the world copyright to the newspaper and magazine articles produced by Ellsworth and Amundsen except in the United States, where these rights were held by the New York Times and the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. The Aero Club’s actions were obviously contrary to what Amundsen and Ellsworth had intended—why would they invest time and money in a venture to which a paid employee would then be given the rights to the fame and financial rewards? Amundsen vented his frustration with the club’s senior members when he wrote that they “caused us troubles so numerous as to outweigh any services they rendered us. Indeed, most of the misunderstandings that have arisen in the public mind about the facts of the flight of 1926 are traceable directly to the mismanagement and weakness and vacillation of the Aero Club of Norway.” Because the club was endorsing Nobile’s right to tour, Amundsen refused to turn over to it the proceeds either from book sales or from his and Ellsworth’s American lectures from the fall of 1926 and the spring of 1927, according to the financial arrangements of the enterprise. Eventually the matter went to court.
Amundsen considered Nobile’s lecture tour to be not only the theft of money that belonged to the expedition but also the grossest of betrayals. Amundsen had had plenty of personal and professional disagreements and quarrels over the years, but he had kept silent so long as others did the same. It was his conviction that personal acrimony was tolerated so long as the rules were obeyed—all expedition members, including Amundsen as the leader, had an obligation to the expedition first; dirty laundry was to be kept private. But when this rule was broken by Nobile, Amundsen responded in kind. This did not have the intended effect. One American reporter wrote in the New York Times: “When the polar explorers landed in Teller there was honour and glory enough to go around, but if this quarrel continues there will be neither honour nor glory for anyone.”
Amundsen was now fifty-four years old and tiring of the strenuous life he had chosen for himself many decades earlier. “My work is fulfilled,” he claimed in one interview. “All the big problems are solved. The work that remains in Polar exploration is a matter of detail. Let others handle it.” He pointed out that Riiser-Larsen and Ellsworth might lead their own expedition the following year. At a private dinner in Washington, D.C., he, Ellsworth and Byrd decided to form the Polar Legion, a club with a very select membership: it would be open only to leaders of expeditions that had reached either of the two poles. Because these requirements included only three living people—the three explorers sitting at the dinner table—they voted to posthumously induct Peary and Scott into the august ranks, and sent off the notification to their respective widows. “The Club is not likely ever to be crowded,” Amundsen wrote, “though possibly Magellan may have thought the same thing about the Circumnavigators’ Club, which now has a numerous membership.”
Despite the acrimony of his public dispute with Nobile and the bitterness they felt over lost revenue and time, Ellsworth wrote fondly of the time he spent with Amundsen on their lecture tour of the United States. He noted that on one occasion Amundsen had turned to him and proclaimed: “Do you know I have adopted many of your ways. I have learned to smoke my pipe in bed of evenings and have written Montreal for fifty pounds of that French-Canadian tobacco you smoke and I only eat two meals a day now. I never have the tight feeling around the belt any more.” Amundsen was still having fun in America, where, ensconced in his room at the Waldorf-Astoria, he felt he could relax and mingle socially, with periodic forays to deliver lectures and attend ceremonies. He again joked with a reporter that he might now be ready to contemplate marriage, although to whom he did not say, and he offered no further details.
In June 1927, he sailed across the Pacific for a tour of Japan, departing from Vancouver, British Columbia, on the steamship Empress of Asia. He was treated grandly during his ten well-attended lectures there over the course of three weeks. Then he moved on to a tour of Russia that eventually brought him back to Norway by September 6, “a very tired man,” just a month before the publication of his incendiary memoir, My Life as an Explorer. With the publication of this book, his façade was cracked. In place of a near-invincible risk-taker who seemingly could compel himself to victory through sheer force of will, was a vulnerable man who complained and pointed fingers. Here was a seeming joker who wrote in a tone that was alternately superficial, mocking and tediously earnest. He referred to himself as a pirate who deliberately fled his creditors. Here was a man whose dash to the South Pole was mere sport, accomplished by deceiving his investors, without any legitimate scientific motive, a man who publicly quarrelled with one of his partners, rehashing all their dirty laundry for the world to see. This was not The Last of the Vikings, the Norwegian national hero and famous polar pioneer who had pushed away the mists of obscurity from the map’s remaining major geographical mysteries for the good of humankind, but a weary, aging adventurer making light of his own accomplishments and motives. Was the public now to believe that it had been taken in by this charlatan, a character who was merely fabricating stories for his own amusement and to make a quick buck?
The book seemed to have been slapped together in a hurry; indeed, it was hastily scrawled out by Amundsen in the final months of 1926, in his room at the Waldorf-Astoria, without the benefit of a coauthor, ghostwriter or editor to fill in the technical details, an arrangement that had enhanced his previous books and articles. He wrote My Life as an Explorer from memory rather than making any effort to provide useful documentation of his life’s adventures. He omits all details of a personal nature, and the details of some of his earlier adventures are vague and imprecise. When detailing his Antarctic expedition in the Belgica, Amundsen does not even bother to mention his commander’s name, either because he forgot how to spell it and couldn’t be bothered to look it up after thirty years, or because he considered Adrien de Gerlache to be inconsequential in this brief overview of his life. The chronology is sparse and inaccurate, and the names of people not of personal interest to him are missing—but not necessarily deliberately so.
Amundsen’s motive in writing the memoir was to defend himself against the bad press and charges stemming from his expedition with Nobile, and to counter those charges with his own presentation of events. The usually indulgent New York Times commented in its review of the book that “the reader’s sympathy cannot fail to go out to Roald Amundsen in this controversy, but it may still be said that the space given to the feud, about a third of the book, is disproportionate.” Another large portion of the memoir defends his actions in racing Scott to the South Pole, and yet another significant portion is devoted to an attack on his brother’s handling of his financial affairs, blaming his bankruptcy on Leon. The fact that the book was published in this state, with so much vitriol, reveals little about Amundsen’s character in a general sense (at the time he did feel and believe all the things he wrote about his ill-treatment in Britain and the betrayal by Nobile and the Norwegian Aero Club), but it does reveal something about the extent to which he was let down by his publisher, who should have waited for the author’s temper to cool and offered him the chance to rewrite it the following year.
But the memoir isn’t entirely without merit. The part of his autobiography that isn’t concerned with his recent quarrels definitely falls into the category of the unvarnished. Amundsen was old enough to have the confidence to speak his mind, and free enough that he no longer needed to bow to tradition. In many ways, he was just saying “to hell with it,” this is how things were: Everyone wanted to bask in the glory of his success after the fact, but no one wanted to support him at first. His early expeditions would never have been possible if he hadn’t taken drastic, quasi-illegal, measures. Why should he go on pretending it was otherwise, decades after the fact? The memoir is that of an older man reflecting, a brooding rumination on all the injustices of his life, his chance to set the record straight before it was too late. Amundsen was magnanimous in victory, but at this time in his life he was not celebrating a victory; rather, he was struggling with a sense of defeat and an awareness of the diminishing possibility of his rising again. An American reporter who visited him at Uranienborg in September 1927 noted that Amundsen “said wistfully, as if regretting that he could not begin his career over again . . . ‘There is nothing left for me to do.’” There were no more poles to conquer. What was he to do with the years that lay ahead?
After only a month in Norway, in the early fall of 1927, Amundsen unexpectedly packed again and set off on a steamship across the Atlantic for another extensive trip to the United States, and perhaps other countries as well. He was as restless as ever, and may have been uncomfortable with the contents of his memoir, which if he had ever glanced over the published version must surely have struck him as amateurish compared with his other works. Having spent so much of his life on the road, he could never just settle down to quiet obscurity and a peaceful life of contemplation in Uranienborg. It would require too much thinking—thinking about his past and, perhaps more importantly, about his future. Besides, he had spent far more time living in the Waldorf-Astoria than he had in his house in Norway. In a sense, he was returning home when he crossed the Atlantic to New York.
After spending a month in New York, Amundsen again abruptly packed up from the hotel, cancelled his speaking engagements and boarded a steamship for Norway. Near the end of his memoir he had written, “My explorations have brought me welcome formal honours, but, better than these, they have brought me the joys of enduring friendships. Many of my best friends are Americans. Their homes are open to me and their hearts as well.” This time, however, one particular friend wasn’t in New York. Amundsen’s relationship with Bess Magids was becoming more serious, and the rumours were that she was the reason for his abrupt departure from New York. But as with all of Amundsen’s previous romantic relationships, he was thoroughly discreet, particularly since Magids was still married.
She arrived in Norway on December 22, 1927, in secret. The Magids Brothers trading company was involved in business around the world, and Bess easily could have been in Europe on business. In any event she stayed at Uranienborg for several months, returning to the United States at the end of February to finalize her divorce. She may have returned to Norway in March, but by May and June she was in Seattle, packing up her life for a permanent move to Norway. She was 30, Amundsen 55. Her unusual level of comfort with the Arctic frontier and also with large urban centres was surely one of the foundations of their relationship. But their story was to be altered by the inexorable unfolding events of the next few months.
The public quarrel with Nobile was stressful for Amundsen, and the public reaction to his memoir was less than enthusiastic, in some cases hostile. The book was routinely dismissed as petty and peculiar, a drastic departure from his usual subtle and self-deprecating style. One of Scott’s South Pole expedition members, Herbert Ponting, wrote a letter to the London Times deriding Amundsen’s claims of the British being “bad losers” and claiming that the Norwegian explorer’s entire South Pole expedition was nothing more than “a desire to deprive the British of the glory of crowning their long and valuable work in the South.” The claims were reprinted in the New York Times and other papers, reviving the now fifteen-year-old controversy to no one’s benefit, least of all Amundsen’s.
He had also burned many professional bridges—with the Royal Geographical Society in London and the National Geographic Society in Washington—by including undiplomatic accounts of events that placed those institutions in an unflattering light. My Life as an Explorer raised the spectres of these past quarrels, which would otherwise have remained dormant. Time has shown that Amundsen was right to question Robert Peary’s claim to have reached the North Pole, and he was right that Frederick Cook’s and Peary’s evidence was equally compelling—that is, equally fabricated. Amundsen’s quarrel with the National Geographic Society stemmed from its cancellation of one of his lectures; the society had endorsed and supported Peary, and didn’t want anyone challenging its version of the truth. But Amundsen had refused to be muzzled.
The publication of his memoir also led directly to “the Amundsen Affair,” a diplomatic issue between Britain and Norway that Amundsen probably had no idea could result from revealing the thoughts and ideas that he harboured deep within himself—resentments, bitter reminiscences and memories of perceived slights that were decades old and deeply personal to the aging explorer. Many of his friends and colleagues believed that he had not been in his right mind when he allowed his memoir to be published in its current state. Fridtjof Nansen wrote letters to the Royal Geographic Society informing it that he believed Amundsen was not of sound mind and that whatever Amundsen might say should not be trusted.
Whether Nansen believed Amundsen to be deranged or not, his comments were intended to stem the disintegration of co-operation and goodwill between prominent individuals in Norway and Britain; it was a political, rather than medical, claim. Such was Amundsen’s international stature that international relations could easily be damaged by nationalistic feelings. For many, Amundsen was a stand-in for Norway, and attitudes toward him transferred to the nation. If it was believed that Amundsen had lost his mind and was no longer to be trusted, the potential diplomatic damage resulting from his statements could be minimized.
Amundsen certainly harboured some bitterness over his current state of affairs. He had reached the age when intrepid adventuring in the remote wilds of the polar regions was beyond him, and yet he was barely financially solvent after a lifetime of dangerous work. He had never married and had no children. He felt that he deserved more, after all he had risked; that it was unjust that he should end up with so little. And he would have been correct in his assessment, but as Amundsen himself was aware, seldom does the world mete out justice and success based upon merit alone. Many people live and die in poverty and obscurity only to be revered later, and many have seen their tide rise through no great effort of their own.
It is also possible that Amundsen’s health was not good after his many years of hard living in frozen lands, compounded by years of cocktail parties, endless travel and public engagements, and his long-time smoking habit. On several occasions he had visited physicians concerning the heart troubles that resulted from the poisoning on the Maud expedition, including consulting a doctor in Los Angeles for an unspecified treatment involving radium. He had instructed his lawyer, “Make me a free man. See to it that my debts are paid.” But the stress of paying off his creditors, which was nearly complete after several years of applying all his surplus income to the task, as well as selling off many of his medals and decorations (which were purchased by a benefactor and donated to the Norwegian state), could easily have exacerbated any lingering or underlying health problems. Fortunately he still had his monthly stipend from the Norwegian government. Any discussion of Amundsen’s health is speculation, however, in the absence of any direct evidence. His older brother Jens had recently died, and that event was sure to provoke ruminations on his own mortality.
It was during this time that Amundsen was also intensifying his relationship with Bess Magids, whom he had visited in New York for several years. He hosted her at Uranienborg for several months, and she had plans to return to Norway to marry him in June 1928. It has often been claimed that at this time in his life Amundsen was a bitter, lonely and resentful man, but he couldn’t have been too lonely—Magids was visiting him during much of this period, and he was excited enough about her visit to cut short his American lecture tour. Furthermore, she was returning to the United States to organize her affairs before coming back to Norway to share her life with Amundsen—an act that involved getting divorced (her husband was probably ill at the time; he died the following year) and likely sacrificing a substantial amount of money. So, at the very least, Amundsen was able to muster enough energy and charm to move forward with this aspect of his life. It couldn’t have been all bad, despite the unresolved issues that preyed on his mind.
Many people who retire experience problems in adjusting to a quieter life, a life without responsibility. Could Amundsen be a romantic and charming gallant for an extended period? He had never been in a committed public relationship, had always followed his own schedule. Perhaps, like many an older bachelor, and particularly for one who spent far more time in hotels than he ever did at home, he feared that he was permanently unmoored from the rhythms of regular life, that he was incapable of a committed relationship or of settling down. Perhaps Magids herself operated under a set of false expectations, such as about the state of Amundsen’s finances?* Perhaps Amundsen feared he wouldn’t be able to succeed at commitment. It couldn’t be planned like an expedition, and at the age of fifty-five he had no precedent.
On May 26, 1928, while Magids was in Seattle settling her affairs, Amundsen was attending a public luncheon celebrating the successful airplane flight of Hubert Wilkins and Carl Eielson from Alaska to Spitsbergen. The host of the lunch, the editor of the newspaper Aftenposten, was called to take a phone call: Nobile’s new airship Italia had been lost near Spitsbergen. There was no radio communication with Nobile. His highly publicized second airship expedition to the North Pole had been undertaken chiefly to prove that he didn’t need Amundsen to lead an expedition in the Arctic. Questioned by a reporter, Amundsen made a public statement of support and offered his assistance. And so followed the series of events that led to Amundsen setting off in his French Latham biplane.
Having publicly announced his intention to help with the search and rescue, and having such a storied relationship with Nobile, Amundsen felt compelled to push for a role in the rescue operation. An emotional and temperamental man, he probably regretted his feud with Nobile. Their quarrel likely would have petered out much sooner if not for the constant reporting of each other’s statements in the press. By the spring of 1928, after four months in Norway, Amundsen had spent a greater block of time at Uranienborg than he had in years, and if his past behaviour is any indication he may have been anxious to leave and do something. Contributing to Nobile’s rescue would be a chance to gain some final fame, to feel he was doing something useful, to show that he still had something to contribute.
But he was no longer the leading man. He was a bit player dutifully performing his role—workmanlike, predictable and competent—but not in control. He was annoyed when the Norwegian government, at Mussolini’s request, denied him an official role in the rescue and selected Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen to lead the Norwegian rescue operation. Mussolini was trying to salvage Italian pride by downplaying the international rescue operation. (He had warned Nobile about tempting fate with a second expedition and had advised against it.) Amundsen quickly sought other means of joining the operation, to counter the taint of being overlooked by his own country. If he at least made the appropriate gestures, none could claim that he had been cowardly or had accepted the official slight without a fight. At the same time, he was a reluctant rescuer—his participation was all to save face and honour. Many countries were participating in the extravaganza for a similar reason—not in a genuine attempt to rescue a handful of injured and stranded men, but to bolster their national prestige. Twenty-one airplanes and numerous ships from the international community were involved in the search, so it was only a matter of time before Nobile was found.
Amundsen may have been surprised and perhaps annoyed when the French government, which certainly didn’t mind upstaging or humiliating Mussolini, had a plane and crew ready for him. Many possibilities can be advanced as sources of the guilt and misguided sense of duty that drove Amundsen at this time: he knew that Nobile had ventured to the Arctic again merely to prove that it could be done without Amundsen’s leadership; he didn’t want another life on his conscience, in addition to Wiik’s, Scott’s and Johanssen’s. Perhaps he lacked the courage to say no, he wasn’t going, it wasn’t his job. We will never know.
Amundsen’s life seemed to be narrowing. His old companion Sverre Hassel, one of the four men with whom he had reached the South Pole, came to visit him in Uranienborg and died suddenly of a heart attack while they were talking. In a telephone interview with a New York Times correspondent, Amundsen specifically asked the man to “give my greetings to my numerous friends in America and thank them for me for all the cables of encouragement they have sent to me.” With his companions Leif Dietrichson and Oscar Wisting, Amundsen boarded the train for Bergen with a certain reluctance, lingering on the walkway even after the train began to move, with a tear in his eye, staring at the ground while the crowd cheered.
After a lingering meeting in Tromsø, his friend Fritz Zapffe, who had known him for nearly two decades and had been part of the support crew for several expeditions, wrote “I even felt slightly embarrassed—as I would in the company of someone ill, to whom one does not quite know what to say.” When Zapffe saw Amundsen crawl into the fuselage of the biplane, he saw a man already defeated. “I shall not forget the expression on his face, sitting astern, something extraordinary and resigned was over him. It appeared that nothing concerned him and yet it was maybe all about him. He sat quietly just looking at me.” Amundsen had played the showman for so long now that he could not back down; he had to keep acting for the crowd as if he still needed their goodwill to finance his next expedition. Rueful and sheepish, propelled toward his fate, Amundsen was caught up in a media frenzy of his own making and was unable to stop himself.
The French Latham biplane, with its crew of young Norwegian and French men headed by Amundsen, set off into a bright sun on June 18. Underpowered and overloaded, the Latham also had the disadvantage of being unsuited to landing safely on either choppy water or ice. A fisherman reported the airplane flying into “a bank of fog that rose up over the horizon and then the machine began to climb presumably to fly over it but then it seemed to me she began to move unevenly but then . . . she ran into the fog and disappeared before our eyes.” It was the last anyone ever saw of the biplane, and soon radio contact was lost.
Amundsen had often telegrammed Bess in Seattle in June before she rode the train to New York. He sent her a final telegram from Bergen on his way north, just before she boarded the steamship Hellig Olav. When she arrived in Oslo on July 2, he was missing and presumed dead.
*Bess Magids returned to Alaska and eventually took over Magids Brothers Trading Co., becoming a noted figure in early-twentieth-century Alaskan history. In 1931, she married a younger man, Arthur Chamberlain, with whom she had a daughter, and in 1937 she married John Milton Cross. In 1945, she was elected to the Alaska Territorial Legislature, where she voted for Alaska statehood. She died in 1971.