ANDREE ARCTIC TRAGEDY

Taranaki Daily News, 16 January 1931, Page 9

ANDREE ARCTIC TRAGEDY

WHAT THE DIARIES REVEAL IGNORANCE OF THE ICE FLOWS. HOPELESS STRU GGLE HOMEWARDS By Telegraph—Press Assn. —Copyright. London, Jan. 14. The disaster to Andree’s Arctic exploration party was duo to the explorers’ ignorance of the Arctic ice flow. This is mbst clearly revealed in the diaries which have been published in the Bozley Press. The diaries show that in no way were the explorers despairing when they set out on their tramp homewards well equipped with sledges. They easily shot bears and seals. What beat them was the drift ice which sometimes drifted farther northward than they ploughed wearily southward with snow to the knees. Lack of knowledge of the ice flow sealed their fate as they tried to reach Cape Flora. Thus the explorers wasted most valuable time before they realised that the ocean drift would prohibit them from reaching Franz Josef Land. A pathetic entry on July 25 says: “We gave four hurrahs for Strindbergs sweetheart to whom he has already written two letters in shorthand narrating our dreadful experiences." The letters are quoted fully. The last entry was:: “Sunday, October 17, 1897, hour 7.5 o’clock a.m.” After that was the silence of death. Apparently the men died in their sleep. A message from Oslo on August 23 stated that a 33-year-old mystery of the Arctic was revealed to the world by the discovery in the Arctic wastes of the remarkably preserved bodies of the explorer Solomon Andree and his two companions, Strindberg and Franke], who set out in a balloon in 1897 from Danes Island, Spitsbergen, in an atempt to drift with the wind across the Pole.

The discovery was made by a Norwegian scientific expedition, under the leadership of Dr. Horn, which lauded at White Island, 100 miles south-east of Franz Joseph Land. Andree’s expedition apparently had come to grief after covering 400 miles from Spitsbergen. Andree’s body, fully dressed in Polar equipment, lay near a sledge. A diary and a trinket, on which was engraved “S. A. Andree,” were found in a pocket. A ghostly camp, established by the explorers after they had been driven down was discovered by the expedition. The bodies were taken aboard the ship which sailed for Norway. No trace of the balloon was found. It is believed that when they were forced down the explorers set out on foot to reach the shore in the hope of rescue. The position of the bodies led to the conclusion that they were caught in a snowstorm.