Background
Walter E. Wellman was born in Mentor, Ohio. He was the son of Alonzo and Minerva (Graves) Wellman and a descendant of Thomas Wellman who was in Lynn, Massachussets, as early as 1640.
(""Described with many exciting incidents, suggestive of t...)
""Described with many exciting incidents, suggestive of the stories of Jules Verne." The Nation, 1911 Walter E. Wellman (1858 – 1934) was an American journalist, explorer, and aëronaut who in 1911 published the lengthy book "Aerial Age," which included some chapters on his adventurous expeditions and airship voyages to reach the North Pole. It is only his chapters on his North Pole travels that have been reprinted here for the convenience of the reader. (Over 30 other chapters on the future of airships, wireless radios etc. have been omitted in order to preserve a focus on North Pole exploration.) In 1911, The Publisher's Weekly noted of Wellson's book: "We have one of the first travel books to be written in which the airship is the means of locomotion." Even before his airship travels Wellman was known to many from his polar expedition in 1894, which was an attempt to make the North Pole by dog sled that was cut short when his ship was crushed by the ice. Wellman was lucky to escape with his life as is narrated in this book. After failing by dog sled, Wellman came up with the idea to float over the ice to the North Pole. On December 31, 1905, Wellman announced he would make an attempt to reach the North Pole, but this time with an airship. His newspaper provided funds of USD 250,000, and he had an airship built in Paris for the Wellman Chicago Record-Herald Polar Expedition. Wellman established expedition headquarters on Dane's Island, Svalbard, in the summer of 1906. The hangar was not completed until August 1906, and the airship’s engines self-destructed when tested. Wellman rebuilt the airship in Paris that winter and made the first of several attempted an aerial voyages to the North Pole in September, 1907. Would his attempt to reach the North Pole by airship prove easier and more successful than his previous failed attempt? Wellman invites the reader to find out: "Will you walk with me a while in the paths of adventure? For that is what this book is to deal with—adventures in Polar Ice, far out upon the broad sea, and high up in the air which covers them both. By adventure I mean strange and thrilling experiences which come to one who sets out, not for adventure, not for hardships, not for narrow escapes from death, but with a desire to achieve something in the way of exploration and scientific progress for the good of mankind and the advancement of knowledge; and who, in this spirit endeavoring, experiences more of adventure, danger and hardship, and ill fortune followed by the fair that leaves life intact after hope had almost gone, than he had ever dreamed of—so much, perhaps that if he could have foreseen it all he would never have had the courage to venture forth from the quiet of his home." Contents: I. EARTH EXPLORATION AND AIR NAVIGATION II. SHIPWRECKED IN SPITZBERGEN III. STRUGGLING AGAINST THE IMPOSSIBLE IV. PLANNING TO USE A BALLOON V. FRANZ JOSEF LAND VI. THROUGH THE ARCTIC WINTER VII. WONDERFUL CLIMATE OF THE AECTICS VIII. ROYAL SPORT WITH POLAR BEARS IX. THE DASH FOR THE POLE X. AN EXTRAORDINARY TRAGEDY XI. FIGHTING TO THE NORTHWARD XII. OUR GOOD FRIEND, THE DOG XIII. THE JOYS OF POLAR SLEDGING XIV. CAUGHT IN AN ICE-QUAKE XV. THE BITTER BETREAT XVI. BY AIRSHIP TO THE POLE XVII. PREPARING FOR THE AIRSHIP POLAR EXPEDITION XVIII. BUILDING THE POLAR AIRSHIP XIX. "a Scientific Village In The Arctics" XX. THE PLAN OF THE VOYAGE XXI. THE CAMPAIGN OF 1907 XXII. FIRST AIRSHIP VOYAGE OVER THE POLAR SEA XXIII. SECOND AIRSHIP VOYAGE IN THE ARCTICS XXIV. AN AIRSHIP STRUGGLE OVER THE ICE-PACK
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(Originally published in 1916. This volume from the Cornel...)
Originally published in 1916. This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies. All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume.
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(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ++++ The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to ensure edition identification: ++++ The Force Supreme Walter Wellman George H. Doran, 1918 International cooperation; World War, 1914-1918
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(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
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Walter E. Wellman was born in Mentor, Ohio. He was the son of Alonzo and Minerva (Graves) Wellman and a descendant of Thomas Wellman who was in Lynn, Massachussets, as early as 1640.
Most of Walter's formal schooling was received in a district school in Michigan.
At the age of fourteen he started a weekly newspaper at Sutton, Neb. ; at twenty-one he founded the evening Cincinnati Post, and from 1884 to 1911 he was the Washington correspondent of the Chicago Herald and its successor, the Record-Herald. The first enterprise to bring him wide recognition was a trip to the Bahamas in 1891, in the course of which he located, as he claimed, the exact landing spot of Christopher Columbus (Chicago Herald, July 4, 1891), and erected a monument to mark the place on Watling Island, or San Salvador. He was fascinated by the unknown lands of the North; in 1894, journeying by boat and sledge over the ice, he reached a latitude of 81° at a point northeast of Spitzbergen and in 1898-99 he led a similar expedition to Franz-Josef Land, reaching a latitude of 82° north. As a consequence of these expeditions he was commissioned in 1906 by Frank B. Noyes, publisher of the Chicago Record-Herald, to attempt a trip to the Arctic regions by air. The airship was built in Paris in the spring of that year (see Wellman's article, "The Polar Airship, " National Geographic Magazine, April 1906) and after some experimental flights was enlarged during the winter of 1906-07. Stormy weather at the base in Spitzbergen delayed trial trips, but on September 2, 1907, Wellman took off for the pole. Continuous and violent squalls nearly wrecked the craft, however, and at last Wellman deflated the ship and returned to Paris, to await a more favorable opportunity. On August 15, 1909, he set out again, with three companions, but after he had covered a distance of only twelve miles the equilibrator broke and he was forced to turn back. He abandoned further attempts to reach the pole by air after the announcement that Robert E. Peary had succeeded in doing so on foot. The most ambitious undertaking of Wellman's career was his attempt to cross the Atlantic by air. The airship America, which had been used on previous polar explorations, was rebuilt to a length of 228 feet. It had a lifting capacity of twelve tons and a speed of twenty-five miles an hour. Below the bag of silk and cotton, filled with hydrogen, hung a car of interlaced steel tubing; below the car was a gas tank 150 feet long and two feet in diameter; below the gas tank was a lifeboat with supplies for thirty days, and still lower, an equilibrator which was also a fuel supply, being a string of thirty steel drums filled with gasoline. Prepared for ten days in the air or thirty on the sea, Wellman and five companions took off from Atlantic City, N. J. , in a dense fog at eight o'clock in the morning, October 15, 1910. During the flight, for the first time in history wireless messages were sent from land to an airship over water and for several hours messages came back regularly. Trouble was in store, however: one of the motors stalled because of a bad bearing, and the other threatened to set the ship on fire with sparks from the exhaust; the cooling and contraction of the hydrogen at night caused the airship to come to a dangerously low altitude; a northeast wind drove the ship off its course, and it was eventually forced down. The crew was rescued by a steamer some 375 miles off Cape Hatteras, and the America drifted away in the wind and was never seen again. Wellman considered the trip a failure, but he had broken the existing world record for time and distance sailing by airship and found himself a hero upon his return to New York. The time in the air was seventy-two hours, and the distance 1, 008 miles. In his book The Aerial Age, published in 1911, he described the experience fully. It is significant that in all Wellman's dangerous undertakings not a man of his various crews was lost.
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
(""Described with many exciting incidents, suggestive of t...)
(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)
(Originally published in 1916. This volume from the Cornel...)
He was married twice: first, on December 24, 1878, to Laura McCann of Canton, Ohio, and second, to Belgljat Bergerson of Norway. Four children and his second wife survived him.