by Stephen Bown
The commitments that Hammer had made in Amundsen’s name were numerous and outrageous. No amount of profit from the expedition could ever hope to pay for them. There remained in the expedition’s funds nothing to pay for the three Dornier-Wal flying boats. Amundsen was forced to issue a public statement that must have galled him: “As it has been impossible to secure sufficient financial backing the expedition will have to be postponed until further notice.” Without the airplanes, he had no expedition; without an expedition, he had no way of earning money; and with no money, he couldn’t hope to repay his debts.
The discovery of even greater debts from other sources, about which Amundsen had no idea but for which he was legally responsible because of Hammer’s power of attorney, were so high that Leon became fearful that he would never be able to claim his own repayment from his brother—of a debt that ran to a considerasble sum. Leon had been paying the wages of the Maud’s crew when Roald’s finances no longer permitted it, with an unwritten assurance that the money would eventually come once the expedition was a success or the ship was sold. In the past a solution had always presented itself, yet now it all seemed doomed. Amundsen was still responsible for financing the continuation of the Maud expedition, which was stuck in the ice somewhere, yet he knew there would be little profit to be made from publicity on that front—there was nothing dramatic about that endeavour, and he wasn’t even on board the ship.
An unseemly and bitter feud erupted between the brothers over their collapsing financial affairs. Amundsen aired his one-sided version of events publicly in his autobiography in 1927. But as usual with feuds, whether within families, between former business partners or during a divorce, reality becomes distorted as each side retreats to an unreasonable defence of its actions and its version of the truth. Such was the case with Roald and Leon. Although some records of their correspondence exist, they reveal only part of the story. Anyone who has ever written a diary knows that its entries are unreliable as proof of one’s attitude or opinion, since they reflect a brief moment in time, a conversation with oneself. Letters to others, on the other hand, reflect how one wants to be perceived by the recipient or how one feels at the moment of writing, even if that opinion later mellows. Harsh words were evidently spoken between the brothers, but the precise nature of their quarrel remains a secret. But it was no doubt related to the fact that Roald wanted to sell his properties to free up money, and Leon blocked the sale, fearing the loss of his own unsecured debts. And Roald blamed Leon for some accounting deficiencies. When times are good, these types of minor disputes between siblings or business partners are easily overlooked, but when both the present and future look bleak, years of grievances and feelings of inadequate support come to the surface.
Amundsen still had considerable assets in the Maud and in his house, and he could have pulled through financially if he had sold them—although it was impossible to sell the Maud while the ship was stuck in the ice. He was also too proud to beg for more assistance from the government and so, once he had settled upon the idea of bankruptcy, in September 1924, he seems to have refused to give it up. It seemed the easiest thing to do, especially since Amundsen was estranged from both of his business managers and didn’t have a good understanding of either his debt obligations or the surrounding legal issues. Nor did he want to begin learning about these things now that he was in his fifties; he was still dreaming of airplanes and undiscovered Arctic lands. He claimed that he was declaring bankruptcy in order to gain access to the books and do a full accounting of all his financial obligations. Out of pride or spite, he did not want his property to be owned by his brother. As a result, the legal wrangling with Leon continued for months, even after Amundsen had left Norway.4
Following his announcement of insolvency, the press turned against Amundsen. “Now that I was helpless and embarrassed,” he wrote in his memoirs, “the same lips that described my career as a glory of the nation did not scruple to repeat lies of the most transparent fabrication, in a cruel effort to besmirch my private character and tarnish my name.” He saw his whole life and legacy implode before his eyes, a slow-motion train wreck over which he had no control, even if he had precipitated it. There were spurious claims that the bankruptcy and public quarrel with Leon were part of a conspiracy to defraud creditors. There were suggestions that his two foster daughters were his own biological children—an impossibility, easily countered by comparing the dates of their birth with Amundsen’s whereabouts around the time. And there were other hurtful and false accusations about his morality and his skills as an explorer. At least in the United States, Amundsen received some understanding: a lengthy article in the New York Times in the fall of 1924 offered sympathy “for the gallant Amundsen in this perhaps cruellest stroke of destiny.”
The besieged explorer remained holed up at Uranienborg for the summer and fall of 1924, brooding and hiding from the press. He became a lonely and bitter man, wounded by the attacks of his countrymen and not on speaking terms with his brother, sister-in-law and nieces and nephews, who lived nearby. It was a miserable time. His companion Sverdrup later claimed that “he had to pay a high price for his success. His faith in human nature.”
Amundsen’s behaviour, particularly his fight with Leon over the expedition’s finances and his readiness to declare bankruptcy, seemed so erratic that some of his few remaining friends questioned his sanity. He later devoted many pages of his short autobiography to a detailed litany of abuses he suffered. “Undoubtedly, I was guilty of a grave mistake in trusting my business concerns so implicitly to others,” he wrote, referring specifically to Hammer, “though I do not see how I could have done otherwise than to trust somebody. For that mistake I deserved the punishment of bankruptcy, but certainly I did not deserve the contumely and ingratitude of my countrymen.” All of this is true, but he appears not to have been willing to take responsibility for choosing Hammer to represent him or for so willingly shuffling all the responsibility of the business over to him.
Ever the indomitable spirit, however, Amundsen refused to entirely give in to despair. In the fall of 1924 he set off for the United States, where he knew he would get a positive reception. He would undertake a lengthy lecture tour to raise funds for a new project and to help pay the wages of the men still stuck on the Maud. He was down but not out.
The Arctic Phoenix
I haven’t done so much. All else has been training for this, the big thing. . . . If we leave the planes we shall build a snow house every night. . . . Yes, we might be gone a year or two. Who knows? Time is nothing.
AMUNDSEN WAS dreaming of Alaska. When he left Norway in 1924, he thought he might never return to Europe but in stead head north to the little cabin he and Oscar Omdal had built in Wainwright, Alaska, so he brought many crates of his belongings with him in his planned exile. He intended to write Kristine Bennett to let her know that he would await her in Wainwright, though surely he must have known the unlikelihood of that ever happening. He was unanchored from his previous life, having broken with Leon and several of his companions from previous adventures; what could he offer Bennett now that his finances were in disarray and his reputation at an all-time low? Nor was his American lecture tour going particularly well. He had only old stories to tell and his syndicated newspaper articles were not bringing him funds sufficient to undertake another expedition. It was “not encouraging,” he recalled. “I worked out that if nothing unforeseen occurred, I could be ready to start when I was 110 years old.”
In early October that year, Amundsen was brooding in his hotel room in New York. The Waldorf-Astoria was not a cheap establishment so he could not have been entirely destitute, but his peace was frequently disturbed by the rustling of summonses being slipped under the door and the ringing of creditors calling to discuss the debts Hammer had racked up. “It seemed to me,” Amundsen recalled, “as if the future had closed solidly against me, and that my career as an explorer had come to an inglorious end.” Now fifty-three years old, he found hims
elf in the same financial situation he had been in thirty years earlier, when he had stolen into the night on his first adventure, sailing the Northwest Passage. “I was nearer to dark despair than ever before.” When the phone in his hotel room rang on October 8, he suspected another unpleasant talk with a creditor. A voice he didn’t recognize asked if the caller could come up and visit him in his hotel room. “I met you several years ago in France, during the war.” Amundsen was suspicious and remained brusque and noncommittal until the man said, “I am an amateur interested in exploration, and I might be able to supply some money for another expedition.” Amundsen was stunned, and immediately bade the caller to come up. The man was Lincoln Ellsworth, a forty-four-year-old engineer, pilot and leader of two small expeditions in South America. More importantly, he was the only son of a millionaire.
Ellsworth had long regarded Amundsen as one of his heroes and had applied to join the Maud expedition in 1918, but had been turned down. To Ellsworth, Amundsen was a “virtuoso of exploration. . . . [W]hen I heard his voice, I was excited as a young hunter who has an elk in his sights for the first time.” The two men met several times throughout October and concluded the terms of their partnership. Ellsworth gave Amundsen not only access to funds for a new adventure, something to rejuvenate his flagging reputation, but also the adulation and respect of a younger man who had been an admirer for many years. He validated Amundsen’s sense that his career and life had indeed been, and now would again be, heroic and noteworthy. Amundsen gave Ellsworth the reflected glow of this fame, which the young American would use to further his own ambitions as an explorer, as a way to carve a niche for himself independent of his domineering father.
Amundsen and Ellsworth agreed to become partners, with Ellsworth putting up the money and Amundsen acting as the leader of an expedition that would fly under the Norwegian flag. They would obtain airplanes and fly toward the North Pole from Spitsbergen the following May. “The gloom of the past year rolled away,” Amundsen recalled, “and even the horrors of my business experience faded into forgetfulness in the activities of preparation.” Ellsworth wrote, “Thus I came to Amundsen as a godsend, bringing not only new blood and enthusiasm to bolster his spirits, but a chance as well to secure financing for some magnificent adventure.”
Amundsen threw himself entirely into the preparations for the expedition. They would now be able to use the Dornier-Wal flying boats he had been unable to pay for in June, taking possession of them the following year. The only complication was that Ellsworth, although not a spring chicken, had only a portion of the money in his possession; the rest would have to come from his father as part of his enormous inheritance. A flight over the North Pole was obviously extremely dangerous, and perhaps foolhardy, considering the primitive state of aircraft design and the deadly region they would be flying over. Ellsworth knew that his father, James W. Ellsworth—who owned coal mines in Pennsylvania and had estates and chateaux around the world—would never agree to finance such a trip without the cachet of international fame that a man as celebrated and competent as Amundsen brought to it. When the aging patriarch reluctantly agreed to meet the polar explorer, Amundsen took a train to the enormous Ellsworth estate in Ohio and sat down with the tycoon, a tall, distinguished-looking man with a large moustache and a stern expression. The younger Ellsworth described them eyeing each other suspiciously, taking measure: “the grim, old, white-faced financier facing the gray, bald but vigorous, weather-beaten old Viking!”
Amundsen made a good impression, detailing in clear but accented English his past expeditions and his reasoning for why this extraordinary feat of aerial daring should succeed. He knew how to spin a lurid tale and a self-deprecating yarn, but he also knew when not to—when, instead, to confidently outline a plan in concise, plain language, acknowledging danger yet explaining how it would be overcome. This he did, and soon the required $85,000 was promised, plus an additional $10,000 that Ellsworth told his father’s lawyer was for parachutes. A few days later the men met again in the library of the Ellsworth mansion in New York to sign the documents. The elder Ellsworth had added a stipulation. He had always disliked his son’s habit of smoking a pipe, and demanded that he quit smoking altogether if he wanted the money. Ellsworth the son grimaced but agreed and signed the contract, although he later reneged, claiming he had signed under duress.
The newspapers enthusiastically reported the new plan, interviewing Amundsen and Ellsworth and announcing that the duo had invited “seven prominent New York men to serve as an Advisory Committee.” Amundsen knew the value of bringing powerful people onside and making them feel like his success was their success. He was also astute when responding to questions, such as what would any new lands they might discover be the used for: “air stations and bases,” he replied, displaying an appreciation for the future. “The short route from England to Japan or California is over the top of the earth. The short route from many other parts of Europe to Asia is over the top of the earth. With the development of dirigibles and airplanes, the north route will be used, and if there is land there it will be of the greatest importance. In case of future wars air bases in the Arctic will undoubtedly be of the greatest value.”
He responded to every question about possible trouble with “I have prepared for that.” He was once again a darling of the press, with one writer from the New York Times stating in a feature piece on his life and achievements that Amundsen was a “giant in stature and strength, physically fit and as competent in endurance and vitality as any athlete. We walked for miles at a brisk pace through the streets of New York. He wore no overcoat, though others were bundled and scarfed and panting in the frosty air. He carried a stick in a gloveless hand, now and then transferring it to the other while he stuck a blue-cold fist into his coat pocket.” Always looking to the future, Amundsen even claimed that his past exploits were nothing compared with this latest adventure: “I haven’t done so much. All else has been training for this, the big thing.” And if they crashed? the reporter asked him: “If we leave the planes we shall build a snow house every night . . . Yes we might be gone a year or two. Who knows? Time is nothing.”
Throughout the winter, Amundsen and Ellsworth worked out the details of their plan. They would need two planes, each with three crew members—a pilot, a navigator and a mechanic—and to arrange for provisions, calculations of fuel, details on how to get the planes from Italy north to Spitsbergen, the construction of a base on Spitsbergen and many other details, not the least of which was arranging newspaper and magazine rights to the story. Amundsen sent Oscar Omdal and Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen—Norwegian airmen he had tapped for his previous, aborted polar flight—to the Dornier-Wal factory in Pisa to learn all they could about the new planes. He selected two other crew members, the Norwegian pilot Leif Dietrichson and Karl Feucht, a German mechanic.
In America, Ellsworth was having a feud with his father, whose health was rapidly deteriorating. The senior Ellsworth had changed his mind about allowing his son to go on the adventure and threatened to cut off his inheritance. He even tried to call in a favour at the White House in order to have his son’s passport cancelled, after becoming convinced that his only son would surely die on the expedition. “Father was no more yielding than a granite crag,” Lincoln wrote in his autobiography. But he claimed that he would rather risk his soul than bow out, and it was only the intervention of his sister and a promise to his father—to alter the trip plans slightly—that ensured that the funds were finally forthcoming. Ellsworth had to promise his father that he would not attempt to fly over the pole to Alaska but only from Spitsbergen to the North Pole and back, which James believed to be safer. The younger Ellsworth, despite what he had agreed to in any contracts, later admitted that he and Amundsen planned on doing whatever they wanted when the time came to make the decision—the unexplored land that lay between the pole and Alaska was the true prize. When Lincoln left for Europe in March 1925, his father stubbornly refused to see him off; he died without ever see
ing his son again.
In January 1925, Amundsen had gone on another cross-country lecture tour of the United States to promote his latest adventure and to raise funds. The three-week tour was a grand success, characterized by filled halls. But it was tempered with an unsettling lack of letters from Kristine Bennett in London, to whom he regularly wrote and professed his love. In early February he boarded a ship for London, to see her before going on to Italy and Norway. As ever, he was only partly satisfied with the meeting. Bennett had indeed been growing distant; the lingering and tortured affair was now in its thirteenth year. She claimed illness for most of Amundsen’s visit and couldn’t see him often, keeping him always in a state of uncertainty that could only have been unsatisfying and demoralizing. From London, he took a boat and train to Pisa, where he met with Riiser-Larsen, the genial, six-foot-four, pipe-smoking pilot who was to be second-in-command but who in reality was doing most of the detailed work for the expedition, including the day-to-day organizing.
Amundsen as usual was the charismatic front of the expedition, generating the overarching idea and drumming up publicity through tours and interviews. A new company had been formed to deal with the expedition in order to keep Amundsen’s disastrous personal finances separate from it. This had been one of the conditions stipulated by the Norwegian government before financing the navy rescue required after Amundsen’s failed polar flight expedition of the previous year. The new corporation’s board of directors included Rolf Tommesen, the chairman of the Norwegian Aeronautical Association, and several other prominent individuals including Johann Sverre, the Norwegian delegate to the International Olympic Committee—a fitting choice, since Amundsen’s exploits were now international sporting and entertainment extravaganzas.