THE WELLMAN EXPEDITION

Otago Witness, Issue 2913, 12 January 1910, Page 16

THE WELLMAN EXPEDITION

INTERVIEW WITH MR VANIMAN

AIRSHIPS AND POLES

(Fbom Oue Own Cobrespondent.)

LONDON, November 26. Mr Melvin Vaniman, the engineer of the recent Wellman expedition which attempted to reach the North Pole by airship from Spitsbergen in August last, is at present in London, and he gave to the representative of the Otago Daily Times the following interesting particulars relating to the expedition. Mr Vaniman will be remembered in New Zealand. He spent some time in the Dominion seven years ago, when he took a series of panoramic photographs for the Government Tourist Department. It was photography which drew Mr Vaniman into aeronautics. After photographing dirigible balloons in Sydney he proceeded to Europe, where ne first attempted to take a picture of Rome from his balloon. The difficulty of getting into the required position showed him that a dirigible was necessary He then went to Paris, and while there he caught the aeroplane microbe. .An introduction to Mr Wellman followed, and eventually he was placed in charge of the designing and construction of the mechanical part, but he had nothing to do with the aeronautics. THE FIRST ATTEMPT. Proceeding, Mr Vaniman said : '"Spitsbergen is an uninhabited island, nothing but mountains, snow, and ice, and you have to take all your food and ■sleeping and cooking arrangements. Before the airship was completed certain difficulties arose in the aeronautic department, and I, with the aeronautical constructor, finished the design which proved successful on our first attempt and which we used unchanged in our second trial. In our first attempt in 1907, on account of an exceptionally bad year, we were forced to wait until September 2 before the wind gave us a chance of taking the balloon out of the shed. We were compelled to start in a snowstorm, with the wind from the north-west. After travelling for an hour and a-half we ran into a snow squall which hid the land. The compass,, owing to a defective card, stuck,, and swung round with the ship, and the navigator was completely lost. The wind increased so that a landing had to be effected, and we did not know on what mountains we were, although it eventually transpired we -were only 15 miles from camp." ■ - i

"We returned to Paris, where Mr Wellman and I went thoroughly into'the subject of navigation. We found that, although perfectly satisfied with the airship, yet if we had gone on as we intended we should have been totally lost. We found the study of the navigation, as interesting and almost as complex as 4he entire problem of reaching the North Pole by airship. :''_We invented a gyroscopic compass, which we thought would enable us to .keep, our course regardless of the enormous variation of the magnetic compass in the Arctic regions. The instrument, however, was very heavy. It weighed about two tons and a-half, and was also too-expensive to be practicable. We were then forced to invent what we call the drift dial, which gives the course of the airship, thus overcoming both the direction of the wind and the possibility of fog envelopment. Further, we invented a log which gave us the speed over the ice, in order to enable us to keep our dead reckoning. This was not all. We found that owing to the possibility of our quick travelling—the probability of being at the Pole inside of "24 hours—the ordinary means of navigation by the summer lines and using the sextant were not sufficient. We therefore adopted a new system, by which we were enabled to locate our position at any time during the 24 hours if it were possible to see the sun. It must be understood, of course, that we had the sun 24 hours a day. The detail of this instrument has not been mada public, beciuse it will undoubtedly take a very important part in aerial warfare. It will enable the pilot of a ship to get his position at any time during the night or day when it "is impossible to see the ground. "It will be possible for airships carrying a net cargo from five to 10 tons to manoeuvre over°a city enveloped in fog; the city will be invisible to the pilot, and the ship will be invisible to the inhabitants, but the pilot will be enabled to locate his actual position.

'■' It was' probably the amount of work we were obliged to do in perfecting the navigation that caused me not to see the defect in the leather which we used to constract the guide rope attached to our provision store. This was the cause of our non-success. In both trials the airship proved to those on board that it was capable of doing what we expected, and yet this little piece of defective leather brought to an end an expedition that had cost in money £BO,OOO, to say nothing of time and trouble.

"People in general, and the newspaper world in particular, were continually crying out against the expedition as being foolhardy, but I cannot conceive any subject more interesting than such a venture as we proposed. Besides the possible honour of the achievement, very real benefits would have been derived. 'From the financial remuneration of Shackleton and Peary (who sold his book for 16s per word), the public can now see that if Wellman had besn successful ho would have profited handsomely, in addition to which his name would have gone down in history as a great explorer and as an aerona.it of exceptional ability. Wellman had thought out his project before Andree started on his trip. Wellman will not try again, - especially as the North Pole ha,s been rja^ahed. t by Peacy., but it is

statfejd that the Germans contemplate making a voyage with a Zeppelin airship. Both the Poles are now finished. Shackleton has practically done everything at the South Pole, 'and if Scott gets there he can only go 90 miles beyond Shackleton. Of course, if the North Pole had not been discovered, then the South Polo would still contain soma interest. " 'My friend Mr Donne told me recently that when he saw I had gone to Spitsbergen again he thought it was a case of good-bye, but I replied that I thought he knew his man better than. that° Wellmanis an old Arctic explorer, and he left nothing to chance He did everything he could to safeguard the lives of the members of the expedition, and I considered my work there quite as safe a.i trying to cross a street in Paris or London." . . -