Can you sail a balloon?
At the end of the XIXth century, the conquest of the North Pole was a national challenge and pride for Sweden. Salomon August Andrée, a Swedish balloonist, proposed using a hydrogen balloon to travel from Svalbard to Russia or Canada over the North Pole. This project was welcomed with enthousiasm by Alfred Noble and King Oscar II, the king of Sweden and Norway at the time who decided to fund the project. The project raised huge attention.
A pen-and-ink drawing by Edvard Forsström: "The race for the North pole - who will come fisrt? Fridtjof Nansen or S A Andrée?"
Can you sail a balloon?
A hydrogen balloon gets its buoyancy from the amount of hydrogen in its envelop. The balloon floating in the air is then steered by the winds, without possibility for the balloonist to change the directions of the ballon.
Andrée, imagined a creative way to steer a balloon. Ballons were using drag ropes falling from the balloon to the ground in order to reduce their speed before landing. Andrée used this principle of reducing the speed of a ballon by dragging ropes to generate some relative winds that could be used to steer the balloon. With a dragging rope, the balloon behaves like a kite and its direction can be changed by using lateral sails. A sail on the right will make the balloon course move leftward. A sail on the left will make the balloon course move rightward. Andrée was confident that he could deviate by up to 27° the course of the balloon compared to the wind direction.
This was considered with skepticism by the community of balloonists at the time.
On the picture below, you can see the ropes hanging under the balloon and their traces in the sea. You can notice on both side of the balloon small the poles handling the sails that Andrée intended to use to steer the balloon. But this was not without problems. On the day of the launch in 1897, the ropes got entangled in rocks on the shore and brought the balloon to touch the water before breaking-up. Soon after, the remaining ropes that were screwed on the ballon fell off after the bolts got loose. The balloon went on with no possibility for steering any longer...
The weather conditions deteriorated and the balloon got increased weight from the water accumulating on its envelop. It did take not more than 63 hours before the balloon was not floating any more and crashed on some drifting ice north of the Svalbard.
Below is the sketch that Salomon August Andrée draw on a piece of paper representing the tent that they want to bring on board in case they need a shelter after landing on the ice on their way to the north pole.
Andrée and his crew had prepared for such situation. They took a week to assemble a boat from the silk fabrik of the ballon and load sledges with foods, ammunition and cooking equipment. Over the next couple of weeks, they progressed south wards, towards the sheltered areas that they had identified prior to the expedition. They finally reached the island of Kyitoya where they had dropped supply in such a situation. However, they died rapidly after reaching the safety island, of unknown causes.
The gondola of Andrée ballon, as presented in the Gränna museum.
The buoy that Salomon, Andrée was supposed to drop on the North pole to claim the victory of Sweden for the conquest of the North pole.
Salomon August Andrée took 8 buoys on board the balloon and 30 pigeons that he was planning to use to communicate about the progress of the expedition towards the North Pole. Five of the communication buoys were recovered over the years, plus the buoy supposed to celebrate reaching the North Pole.
Buoy 2 was found on 14 May 1899. The buoy was dropped from an altitude of 600 m and contained the message "All well", dated 11 July 1897, at 22:55.
Buoy 4 was found on 27 August 1900. It was dropped on 11 July, from an altitude of 250 m and included the message: "Weather delightful. Spirit high."
Their faith remained a mystery until a ship managed to land on the island of Kytoya in 1930, more than 30 years after the expedition, and found their remains. All the pictures above were recovered and processed in 1930, providing first hand clues on what may have happened. Today, two theories are still debated, wether they died of trichinosis induced by their consumption of poorly cooked polar bear meat infected with Trichinella spiralis parasites, or they died from exhaustion and cold after more than six months wandering around in the polar environment.
The museum in Gränna is a must sea!
Gränna
- Coordinates: 58.021936, 14.467288
- Gränna polar centre