ADVENTUROUS LIFE

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 56, Issue 75, 10 January 1936, Page 3

ADVENTUROUS LIFE

MR LINCOLN ELLSWORTH. INTIMATE PERSONAL SKETCH. An intimate sketch of the life of the explorer, Mr Lincoln Ellsworth is given in the latest issue of the “Literary D'igent.” The writer says: To few men did time mean less than to the old-fashioned polar conquerors. In this they differ from the restless, hard-pressing modern aerial explorers. Lincoln Ellsworth, whose whereabouts are unknown since he made his third effort to fly over Antarctica some weeks ago, combines the characteristics of both types. Like many explorers, too, he is aloof and shy. Always restless, his manner is quick] his eyes keen and blue. Physically lie is well knit, full of nervous energy. Back from polar regions, he keeps in training by strenuous wrestling at the New York Athletic Club. In Switzerland, where he passes much time he practises pulling men out of ice crevasses.

Born in Chicago, Ellsworth hates big citiesj born into millionaire luxury and showiness. “Cities oppress me,” lie says. “There is too much artificiality and smugness in them] too much ease and luxury. I am happy only under open skies, searching for the unknown.” -His course once set for a given unknown, he plods along indefatigably. Indeed, up to the time of his last flight Tie had waited three years to fly his ski-sliod ’plane a mere 20 hours—from the Weddell Sea to the lloss Sea, over the ice-studded South Pole. For this single day’s excursion above the purple-tinted icefields, where spring now reigns, lie guided an expedition through 60,000 miles of vast seas in his sturdy little supply ship, the Wyatt Earp, formerly a Norwegian herring craft. “By the time we reach the Bay of Whales,” lie predicted in New York just before setting out, “we hope to have settled two great questions: First what is Antarctica, a single land mass or two great islands? Secondly, do the highlands of Graham Land (where he took off for his flight) on the Weddell Sea side, undoubtedly a continuation of the Andes, link up with the mountain system of Victoria Land on- the Ross Sea side to form the background of the continent? “This is what is taking me back again after two disheartening failures. The region itself no longer lures me. Tlie tlu-ill is gone. I am going back because I set myself a job to do and that job is not yet done.” . By such a spirit does Ellsworth symbolise the perseverence o'f all discovers. In liis first attempt to span the Antarctic by air, in the winter of 1933, an ice crevasse almost wrecked his ’plane, in liis second, last year lie stood by vainly for four months and a half for fair flying weather. And now his third attempt has ended, it is feared by many, in disaster. “I believe that my friend Lincoln Ellsworth will get out of Antarctica all right, said Dr. Orson D. Munn, the editor of the “Scientific American.” “And when he does he will bring something with him that no one else has been able to go and get—a secret of that immense area on our maps of the Antarctic continent, lying between the pole and the sea, which is white because nobody on earth knows a single solitary thing about it.” Yet half indifferent as is Ellsworth to time, he charts his polar expeditions in a castle has 72 clocks. The great rooms of the castle, which rises on a butte in Lenzburg, Switzerland, are'full of them. “As for me,” he told a newspaper representative on the eve of his dash to the pole, “I am takingonly one timepiece with me, a chonometer.”

The clocks were collected by his father, the late James W- Ellsworth. At Schloss Nenzburg, a battlemented citadel used by the Emperor Barbarossa (1023-90), ho had lived for 17 years. In August, 1926, the elder Ellsworth died. He had been a Hudson, Ohio, coal baron. To his son he left 1,200,000 dollars, the Villa Palmieri, a rose-scented estate overlooking Florence, where Boccaccio wrote “Ihe Decameron,” and, of course Schloss Lenzburg. There, after each polar trip, Ellsworth retires for three months rest. Befoie a blazing Gothic fireplace he sketches his next polar safaris. “You must often think ot the old castle and this fire in the Antarctic?” he was once asked. “No,” the explorer replied, “not so much. I adapt myself wherever I am; I am not interested in the past—only the future.” Ellsworth speaks in the soft, quiet manner of an aristocrat, there is none of the sea dog about him. His hands are deft, but not -strong or large; las face is sallow. Because Amundsen gave up lunches, he gave them up, too, eating his dinner at 5 p.m. like a. liungiy schoolboy. In Switzerland he hikes over picturesque roads followed by his Bolls Royce. At the age of 54, last year, he was married. His interest in the future expressed itself at the age of 11. To an astonished mother, he one day announced lie would fly to the moon; no idle boast, as he wrote to a friend of his father’s in Congress for an appropriation. l<rom a preparatory school in Pottsdown, Pennsylvania, Ellsworth went to Columbia" University. He was not rugged. After two years he left. Inspired by the late Theodore Roosevelt’s example he trekked West. As an axeman (1902-0-7) on the first survey of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railways’ cross-Canada route, and later as resident engineer, he got a taste of outdoor life which he never lost. He prospected for gold; roughed it in the Rockies and in Alaska. "Homo from overseas, where he saw service as an aviator, Ellsworth in 19-4 led his first expedition. .Tt was an Andes geological -survey sponsored by John Hopkins University. His first polar venture, however, came in 1925. It was a joint affair with the late Amundsen. Both their ’planes came down 136 miles from the North Pole. Soon after, with both Amundsen and Umberto' Nobile, he

went oyer the polo in the dirigible Norge. Captured by the South Foie, in 1933 Ellsworth decided to be the first man to fly over Antarctica. On his three intrepid attempts he served as navigator, log-keeper and. photographer. ■ “On November 21,” observed “Aero Digest,” “Dr. Ellsworth was able, from his altitude of 12,000 feet, to see a mountain range along a north-west-south-east direction ranging apparently fro in 7000 feet to 11,000 feet. This discovery can be interpreted as a confirmation that Graham Land is a continuation of South American mountain ranges, which perhaps further appear as the mountain . ranges of New Zealand, Tasmania and the Australian plateau.” “Of what use is it all?” Ellsworth asked. “Hard to say. But the history of civilisation is found, to run parallel with the acquisition of new knowledge. “ ‘Man wants to know, and .when he does not want to know he ceases to be man,’ said Nansen. So long then, as man wants to know, then so long will the great unknown lure liim on until tlie whole of it is vanquished.”