The late 19th and early 20th centuries are sometimes referred to as the “Heroic Age” of polar exploration, with famed explorers like Robert Peary, Fridtjof Nansen, Roald Amundsen, Robert Falcon Scott, and Ernest Shackleton mounting daring efforts to reach the farthest points of the Arctic and Antarctic regions.
Though often overlooked, one of the most fascinating expeditions of the time period was surely the doomed Swedish effort to reach the North Pole in a hydrogen balloon. Though in hindsight the expedition may seem foolhardy, it was greeted with overwhelming enthusiasm in 1890s Sweden.
The driving force behind the expedition was engineer and keen balloonist Salomon August Andrée. His plan was to pass over the North Pole in a hydrogen balloon, letting the wind carry him and two companions for 30 days from Svalbard across the Arctic, eventually landing in Canada, Alaska, or Russia. Andrée was convinced that he could steer the balloon using drag ropes - a technique that has since been debunked by modern balloonists.
With undaunted optimism, Andrée was able to convince numerous backers, including the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Sweden’s King Oscar II, and businessman Alfred Nobel, to support his expedition, and he gained widespread attention in both the Swedish and international press. At the time, Sweden was in competition with neighboring Norway and, to varying degrees, other nations with Arctic and Antarctic exploration aspirations. The prospect of Andrée mounting a successful crossing of the North Pole elicited great excitement for its potential to put Sweden ahead in the race to explore the polar regions.
The balloon was constructed in Henri Lachambre’s workshop in Paris, consisting of three layers of silk with a diameter of 67 feet (20.5 m). It would eventually be known as Örnen or Eagle.
Along with the young photographer and scientist Nils Strindberg and engineer Knut Frænkel, Andrée launched from Danes Island on Svalbard on July 11, 1897, sending a final telegram to the king and to the Stockholm newspaper Aftonbladet. Almost immediately, things began to go wrong, with the ropes dragging and twisting, causing the balloon’s basket to dip into the water. The explorers had to remove most of the ropes (and thus their ostensible steering method) and dump hundreds of pounds of sand, causing the balloon to rise to the great height of 2,300 feet (700 m) and quickly lose hydrogen, descending almost to the ground. Ultimately, the balloon stayed in the air for just over two days, though for most of that time (41 hours) it was barely aloft and bumped along the ice before finally grounding on July 14, leaving the underprepared explorers to face the prospect of trekking south across drifting ice floes.
After a week at the crash site, the explorers decided on their next steps. Equipped with sleds, hunting supplies, and canned provisions, they set off for Cape Flora in Franz Josef Land, where a stockpile of food and ammunition had been left for them—though this turned out to be much further away than another stockpile at Sjuøyane in Svalbard. Their trek soon became hellish, as they had to struggle across the ice while being pushed back by the ice drift. In early August, they changed course for Sjuøyane in the hopes of letting the current help them on their way. Eventually, the wind turned against them, pushing them farther away from their destination until it became clear by September that they would need to camp on the ice for the winter. Their ice floe drifted south to the island of Kvitøya, where they landed on October 5. However, a few days later, their diary entries ended, and all three men presumably died shortly after October 8, 1897.
The doomed flight of the Eagle:
- The fate of Andrée, Strindberg, Frænkel, and their balloon would remain a mystery for 33 years. Search parties had long since given up on ever finding them, until their final camp was discovered by the Norwegian ship Bratvaag in August 1930.
- The three men were idolized in Sweden upon the return of their remains, especially when the details of their months-long struggle for survival came to light. Since then, however, the motives and logic of the expedition have been scrutinized more closely, with Andrée coming under fire for a lack of realistic planning.
- The bodies of the explorers were cremated promptly upon being returned to Sweden, leaving scholars to wonder what caused their deaths. Theories include trichinosis from undercooked polar bear meat or vitamin A poisoning from eating seal liver. Polar bear attacks, carbon monoxide poisoning, lead poisoning, scurvy, botulism, hypothermia, dehydration, exhaustion, and suicide have also been posited.
