ARCTIC AIRMEN

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 47, 23 August 1930, Page 9

ARCTIC AIRMEN

ANDREE EXPEDITION

BODIES FOUND IN ICE

THIRTY-THREE YEARS AFTER

United Press Association—By Electrlo Tel«-

OSLO, 22nd August. Hunters in Franz Josef Land found the bodies of the Arctic explorer, S. A. Andree, and his companions, who set out in a balloon in 1897 for the Pole. The finders stated that the bodies were well preserved %in the ice. A diary showed that Andree was last to die. Salomon August Andree perished in. July, 1897, in the attempt to carrythrough a double adventure, reaeli the North Pole and make the journey in a balloon. The magnitude of the task may be gathered from the fact that at the time Andreo and his companions, Strendberg and Frankel, ascended from Spitzbergen in the attempt to reach the 600 miles distant Pole, only two voyages of over 1000 miles had ever beea accomplished in a balloon. As early as 1895, a scheme had been put forward for anticipating Bear-Admiral Byrd and reaching the Pole by air, and in 1897, Andree, a Swedish engineer, who had studied aeronautics, attempted to carry it out. He had elaborated a plan to use a balloon, which in some sense should be dirigible by sails and trailing ropes. He took a balloon to; Danes Island, north of Spitzbergen, ia 1896, but because of the bad weather the attempt had to be postponed. On. 11th July, 1897, in a new and larger balloon, he tried again. Eising in the afternoon, the balloon was but of sight of Danes Island in an hour. At 10 p.m., Andreo threw out a message which stated that the party had then reached 82 degrees north, 25 degrees east, and was moving in a north-easterly direction (roughly towards Franz Josef Land) at an altitude of 800 feet above a rugged icefield. The party was never seea again. Of several expeditions sent ia search of it, the first started in November, 1897, determined to investigate stories of cries of distress heard by sailors at Spitzbergen, and during the following years other expeditions scoured the north Asiatic coast and the new Siberian Islands, while Dr. Nathorst headed an expedition to eastern Greenland. Only scanty information was obtained or inferred from the finding of a few buoys west of Spitzbergen ais* northern Norway, which the balloonists had arranged to drop, and a message taken from a carrier pigeon two days after the ascent. There were messages in two of-the buoys, but they were dated the day of the ascent. The rest were empty.