Show Me a Hero by Jeremy Scott

Author:Jeremy Scott [Jeremy Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781849542838
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
Published: 2011-09-17T04:00:00+00:00

Nobile’s own account of the polar flight:

More than once my timely intervention served to prevent a catastrophe.

At 1.30 a.m next day the Norge reached the Pole. The Italians on board were highly exhilarated, but for Amundsen and Ellsworth to get here brought only a sense of anti-climax. To come second was no cause for celebration, and they marked the occasion drably with toasts of tea.

While the airship cruised slowly over the totemic spot they dropped the small Norwegian and American flags they’d brought with them. It was an empty gesture, for Byrd had already claimed the prize, but they could hardly take them home. Then, says Amundsen, ‘Imagine our astonishment to see Nobile dropping over-side not one, but armfuls, of flags.’ For a few moments the Norge looked like a circus wagon of the skies, with great banners of every shape and hue fluttering down around her. Nobile produced one really huge Italian flag. It was so large he had difficulty in getting it out of the cabin window. There the wind struck it and it stuck to the side of the gondola. ‘Fortunately, I have a sense of humour,’ Amundsen writes (it has to be said that nowhere in the entire canon of Amundsen’s writing is this borne out), ‘which I count one of my chief qualifications as an explorer … It struck me as so grotesque I laughed aloud.’

The Norge continued on her voyage, and seventy-two hours after leaving Spitsbergen landed at the tiny settlement of Teller in Alaska. There, some Eskimos thought the airship was the Devil, others a whale, but one man was so certain it was a gigantic flying seal he tried to shoot it down with his rifle. It would have made a fitting end to the preposterous undertaking, but fortunately the Amundsen–Ellsworth expedition was spared that last indignity. They had failed dismally to win the Pole, but they had completed an intercontinental crossing of 3,391 miles.

Not that anyone greatly cared – except in Italy, as will be seen.

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