Salomon August Andrée – The Daredevil in the Balloon
On foot, by sled, or by ship, many methods had already been tried to reach the North Pole. The 19th century was slowly coming to an end, and still no expedition had ever succeeded. So why not try using a balloon? That, at least, was the idea of the Swede Salomon August Andrée, born in 1854, chief engineer of the Swedish Patent Office and a passionate balloonist.
Andrée had developed his own system to make a balloon steerable: he let long, heavy drag ropes hang from the basket, which would trail along the ground and slow the balloon at low altitude. Once the craft was slower than the wind, it could be steered with sails.
This was how Andrée planned to fly from Danskøya (Danes Island) in Spitsbergen over the North Pole and land somewhere on the other side of the Arctic, in Russia or Canada. It sounded plausible, but unfortunately, it did not work at all.
After a failed attempt the previous year due to unfavorable winds, the daring Swede set off on July 11, 1897, in his specially built balloon Örnen (“The Eagle”). The balloon had a diameter of 20.5 meters and was made of three layers of Chinese silk, covered with a mesh of Italian hemp that had been soaked in petroleum jelly for waterproofing.
On board: 27-year-old engineer Knut Frænkel, chemistry student Nils Strindberg, and several carrier pigeons. Also included were message buoys, 767 kilograms of food and drink, sleds, and kayaks for a possible return journey on foot.
Just minutes after takeoff, disaster struck. The drag ropes trailing in the sea pulled the basket into the water, became tangled, and tore loose from their mountings, ropes gone. But the crew had already thrown overboard 210 kilograms of ballast sand to gain altitude, and now the balloon became so light that it rose to over 700 meters, far higher than planned. The balloon was no longer steerable and drifted away never to be seen again…
International media interest grew rapidly. Some newspapers speculated that the pioneers had been eaten by wild natives; others suspected an alien attack. Balloon experts, however, knew that serious flaws in Andrée’s design had led to the catastrophe.
A full 33 years later, on August 5, 1930, crew members of the seal-hunting vessel Bratvaag discovered the bodies of Andrée, Frænkel, and Strindberg on Kvitøya in Svalbard. Alongside the skeletons were diaries, meteorological records, and 200 photographs, so well preserved that they could be developed in Sweden. At last, the world learned what had happened, in remarkable detail.
The balloon had been airborne for 10 hours and 29 minutes, then drifted over the ice for another 41 hours while the basket dragged along the surface. At 82°56′ north latitude, the journey ended, after covering only about one-third of the planned distance to the North Pole. For a week, the three men debated which route to take home, eventually setting off roughly toward the Seven Islands.
They did not lack food, there were plenty of polar bears and seals, but their sleds were far too heavy and impractical. Their wool clothing was inadequate compared to fur, and traveling over uneven ice was exhausting. The four carrier pigeons Andrée released never reached home. The men progressed so slowly that they decided to overwinter. In early October 1897, about three months after departure, Andrée wrote the final entries in his diary.
The exact cause of death of Andrée, Frænkel, and Strindberg can no longer be determined. Their bodies were brought to Stockholm, cremated without examination, and buried as national heroes in a shared grave. The most likely explanation is that they simply collapsed from exhaustion.
Even today, authors continue to explore this mystery. In 1982, the ill-fated expedition was dramatized in the film The Flight of the Eagle. In Andrée’s hometown of Gränna, a museum bears his name, and in northern Spitsbergen, a region called Andrée Land commemorates him.
Author: Greta Paulsdottir
