[.ca] By Airship to North Pole: An Archaeology of Human ... (ISBN 0813526337)

Splendid:
I carried this book with me on a long trip. Repeatedly -- on planes and in airport waiting rooms -- strangers who caught sight of the cover interrupted my reading to ask questions about the book. The brilliant blue photo on the cover, and the title, would seem to explain their eager curiousity. Note the lower left hand corner, where there appears to be a fillet of a 100 year old dirigible, lying on the beach from which airships to the north pole were launched long ago. Actually it is the ruins of a huge airship hangar, though the author discovered in the rubble the remains of two airship gondolas. The book is superb and special: good science, good writing, and a fascinating story about technology, courage, folly and grand showmanship. An eerie thing about this beach from which the airships were launched. In prior centuries, it was a used as a slaughterhouse by whalers. The author discovered the spine of one ancient whale nearby. In here somewhere there is a strange, unscientific, unstated metaphor about the souls of whales arising into the air. As blimps. An absolutely first rate adventure. The best book I have come across this year.

Dry and pretentious.......:
For years I have been a fan of books on the history of polar exploration and mountaineering. I was really looking forward to digging into the stories behind these attempts to use airships to attain the north pole, and what interesting facts we might learn from the sites themselves....However I was very disappointed in the final result. The historical summary was adequate, however the later portion of the book was pretentious, drawn out, and extremwly dry reading. One would expect that archeology would be employed to answer some "big questions" or resolve some major controversy. Wrong! Instead we learn about the quality of the iron filings used to generate the gas for the balloons, that the car body had more wood in it than expected, and that there was not much on the site to suggest that advertizing was the real reason behind the later expeditions. Yawn! Unless you have some personal stake in the topic (like you visited the site explored by the author) I'd pass this one by...

A grand review of pioneering air travel in the Arctic:
In 1992 I visited Dane Island, in part, because of my interest in the pioneering efforts of Andre and Nobile. I walked the beach pictured on the dust cover of this book and photograped many of the artifacts so well described in it. The weather was typical of late August in the high Arctic. Rain, fog, snow squalls and a stark background of black peaks embedded in snow amidst an almost overpowering sensation of gloom and glacial cold. The earlier artifacts related to the Dutch whaling station of Schmeerenburg (Blubbertown) and the graves of long dead whalers buried in the permafrost and covered with mounds of stones to protect their remains from polar bears are readily identidied. For those interested in a unique aspect of Arctic history/exploration this is an extremely interesting and well written book. Until relatively recently, many polar explorers have been pictured in heroic format. Although some may disagree, this is most likely not the case with regard to Byrd or Scott. This book paints an authentic picture of Wellman, warts and all. In addition it allows the informed reader to appreciate the accomplishments of Umberto Nobile who deserves far more credit than he usually gets for the successful transpolar flight of the Norge and who subsequently utilized the Italia for meaningful scientific studies and geographical investigation of the Arctic. With regard to the beautiful weather depicted on the dust cover of this book I would guess it was the only day like this the author experienced on Dane Island. I am envious of his opoportunity to have been there under such unusual conditions and thank him for sharing the beauty of this site with his readers.

A disappointing book:
I have always been interested in polar exploration. I enjoyed "Andree's Story" and looked forward to this book. But I found the author's pretentious and unscientific style (every third word is I, and he goes on ad nauseam about his archaeologocial expertise and the fact that he visited Danes Island) quite distracting. Still, if you are interested in the topic and if you want to learn more about Walter Wellman's expeditions, this book may be for you.