Lincoln Ellsworth—American Polar Explorer (Part II)

In Part I published previously on The History Reader, author Buddy Levy introduces readers to Lincoln Ellsworth and shares how he and famed explorer Roald Amundsen first met. Now, Buddy Levy concludes his focus on Ellsworth, sharing Ellsworth’s adventures via the Norge airship and his trans-Antarctic airplane flight. Read on for Part II.

Not long after Norwegian Roald Amundsen and American Lincoln Ellsworth’s heroic return from their 1925 near-death ordeal attempting to fly airplanes to the North Pole, the two men were holding a top-secret meeting at Amundsen’s home south of Oslo, Norway.

They had invited Italian aeronautical engineer Umberto Nobile—who had come under the aegis of Benito Mussolini’s fascist government’s Military Air Service—to discuss a plan that must not be leaked to the press, as Amundsen and Ellsworth wanted to create international headlines with their announcement and avoid alerting potential rivals of their plan: to fly an airship (aka dirigible) continent-to-continent, from Kings Bay, Svalbard, over the North Pole and across the Arctic Ocean to Alaska.

At 40-years-old, Umberto Nobile was dapper and refined, with a slight build and deep, penetrating black eyes. He was not an explorer but rather a scientist and university professor, an aeronautical engineer who happened to be designing and building some of the finest, most state-of-the-art airships in the world. And he also happened to have one for sale: the 350-foot-long N1.

The men haggled over details. Nobile, as Mussolini’s envoy, pushed for the airship to be flown under the Italian flag. If this expedition ended in success, tremendous national pride was in the offing. Amundsen flatly rejected this proposal, arguing that since he was expedition leader and from Norway, and because the Aero Club of Norway was sponsoring the expedition, the N1 must fly under the Norwegian flag—and it would also have to be renamed Norge—(meaning Norway).  Lincoln Ellsworth had inherited a fortune from his father, and he pledged $100,000 U.S. dollars toward purchasing the airship, and he, of course, sided with Amundsen.

Nobile finally conceded to these terms. Now were questions of crew and command. Nobile wanted numerous Italians represented as crew. Amundsen and Ellsworth agreed to six, including Nobile. It made sense since Nobile’s engineers and mechanics were trained to operate the aircraft, and Nobile knew how to fly it. On the issue of command, Amundsen and Ellsworth were unwavering. Amundsen and Ellsworth would share overall command as “expedition leaders;” Nobile would be pilot and “airship commander.”  The orders for the handling, operation, and steering of the airship would come from Nobile. But the direction and destination of the airship must be up to Amundsen and Ellsworth.

The three men shook hands, and the Amundsen-Ellsworth-Nobile Transpolar Flight was born.                               

***

In the spring of 1926, Kings Bay, Svalbard, was the remote hub of what one journalist called “the most sensational sporting event in human history.”  Not only were Amundsen, Ellsworth, and Nobile trying to make history by flying an airship to the North Pole and across the Arctic Ocean, but American aviator Richard E. Byrd had shown up in an impressive Fokker Trimotor airplane named the Josephine Ford, intending to beat Amundsen and Ellsworth to the North Pole. The press made a lot of noise about what they were calling the “Race to the Top of the World.”

Amundsen was unfazed by Byrd’s arrival and downplayed any competitive aspect of the so-called “race.” He knew from experience—as did Ellsworth—that what they were attempting was a serious, life-threatening mission and certainly no game of sport. But Ellsworth was irritated by Byrd’s arrival. “We had reason to be disgruntled,” he admitted. “Byrd’s flight divided the publicity from Spitsbergen … the Norge flight was costing a fortune. We needed to cash in every penny we could get as its result. We wanted complete media attention of the public … so that afterwards it would buy our book, see our pictures, attend our lectures.”  Although Ellsworth was by now a dedicated explorer, he was also a savvy entrepreneur, and he estimated that the total cost of the expedition he was primarily financing would run close to five hundred thousand dollars. He needed every column inch he could get.

As it turned out, Lincoln Ellsworth would get his accolades. At 1:30 AM on May 12, 1926, the Norge crossed slowly over the North Pole. Ellsworth went to the gondola window with an American flag given to him in a ceremony by U.S. President Calvin Coolidge. The flag had been affixed to a heavy metal vane to ensure it stuck in the ice. Amundsen dropped his Norwegian flag, then Ellsworth tossed his American flag. Nobile threw his Italian flag, and all three metal stakes were impaled in the ice next to one another, their multi-colored banners waving in the Arctic wind.

So, it was the lesser-known Lincoln Ellsworth, not Robert Peary or Frederick Cook, who was the first American to the North Pole, as claims by both Peary and Cook have been widely disputed and discredited. Two days later, on May 14, 1926, the Norge made a forced landing in Teller, Alaska. As Amundsen and Ellsworth climbed down from the gondola and staggered weak-legged onto shore ice, they realized the scope of their achievement: they’d flown 2,700 miles in seventy-one hours, marking the first transpolar flight in history.

After the historic flight, Roald Amundsen announced his retirement from polar exploration, but Lincoln Ellsworth was just getting started. Ellsworth soon turned his attention to the Antarctic, and between 1933 and 1939, he made four expeditions there, discovering and naming the Ellsworth Mountains (which include the 16,050 ft. Mount Vinson) when he made a trans-Antarctic airplane flight from Dundee Island to the Ross Ice Shelf.

Lincoln Ellsworth (1880-1951) was awarded a Congressional Gold Medal that honored both his 1925 and 1926 polar flights, and he received the prestigious Hubbard Gold Medal from the National Geographic Society in 1935 for his Antarctic expedition and aerial survey. In 1937, he received the Patron’s Medal of the Royal Geographic Society for his improvements and innovations in developing the technique of aerial navigation in polar regions.

Bold, brave, visionary, and wildly adventurous, he was the first person to fly across both polar continents. He stands among the world’s great polar explorers and should be remembered as such. In his book Beyond Horizons, Ellsworth stated that the three men he most admired, and the ones he most tried to emulate, were Theodore Roosevelt, Wyatt Earp, and Roald Amundsen.  

Aspiring adventurers and explorers today could do worse than to try to emulate Lincoln Ellsworth.

Excerpt from an article originally published on Buddy Levy’s Substack.