Walter Wellman was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 journalist, explorer, and aëronaut, born at Mentor, Ohio

Mentor, Ohio

As of the census of 2000, there were 50,278 people, 18,797 households, and 14,229 families residing in the city. The population density was 1,878.2 people per square mile . There were 19,301 housing units at an average density of 721.0 per square mile...

, and educated in the public schools.

Biographical background

Walter Wellman was born in Mentor, Ohio, in 1858. He was the sixth son of Alonzo Wellman and the fourth by his second wife Minerva Sibilla (Graves) Wellman. Walter was a great-great-great-great-great-grandson of Puritan

Puritan

The Puritans were a significant grouping of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England...

 Thomas Wellman

Thomas Wellman

Thomas Wellman was born in about 1615 in England and died at Lynn, Massachusetts on 10 October 1672. He was among the early settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and progenitor of the Wellman family of New England...

. Walter's father, Alonzo, served three years in the American Civil War

American Civil War

The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...

 while Walter was young. He was initially with Company D of the 105th Ohio Infantry

105th Ohio Infantry

The 105th Ohio Volunteer Infantry was an infantry regiment in the Union Army during the American Civil War.-Service:The 105th Ohio Infantry was organized at Cleveland, Ohio and mustered in for three years service on August 20, 1862 under the command of Colonel Albert S. Hall...

 before becoming a ship-carpenter with the Mississippi River Squadron

Mississippi River Squadron

The Mississippi River Squadron was the Union naval squadron that operated on the western rivers during the American Civil War. It was initially created as a part of the Union Army, although it was commanded by naval officers, and was then known as the Western Gunboat Flotilla and sometimes as the...

. When he returned from the war, he took his family west from Ohio to become pioneer settlers of York County, Nebraska

York County, Nebraska

-History:York County was formed in 1855. It was either named after the city York in England or for York County in Pennsylvania.-Demographics:As of the census of 2000, there were 14,598 people, 5,722 households, and 3,931 families residing in the county. The population density was 25 people per...

.

At age 14 Walter established a weekly newspaper in Sutton, Nebraska

Sutton, Nebraska

Sutton is a city in Clay County, Nebraska, United States. The population was 1,447 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Hastings, Nebraska Micropolitan Statistical Area.-Geography:Sutton is located at ....

. At age 21 Walter returned to Ohio to establish the Cincinnati Evening Post and married Laura McCann in Canton, Ohio

Canton, Ohio

Canton is the county seat of Stark County in northeastern Ohio, approximately south of Akron and south of Cleveland.The City of Caton is the largest incorporated area within the Canton-Massillon Metropolitan Statistical Area...

 on 24 December 1879. They had five daughters. In 1884 he became political and Washington DC correspondent for the Chicago Herald and Record-Herald.

Early exploration

In 1892 Walter marked with a monument the presumed landing place of Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus was an explorer, colonizer, and navigator, born in the Republic of Genoa, in northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to general European awareness of the American continents in the...

 on San Salvador Island

San Salvador Island

San Salvador Island, also known as Watlings Island, is an island and district of the Bahamas. Until 1986, when the National Geographic Society suggested Samana Cay, it was widely believed that during his first expedition to the New World, San Salvador Island was the first land sighted and visited...

 in the Bahamas. In 1894 he led a polar expedition east of Svalbard

Svalbard

Svalbard is an archipelago in the Arctic, constituting the northernmost part of Norway. It is located north of mainland Europe, midway between mainland Norway and the North Pole. The group of islands range from 74° to 81° north latitude , and from 10° to 35° east longitude. Spitsbergen is the...

 to latitude 81° N. He led another expedition to latitude 82° N through Franz Josef Land

Franz Josef Land

Franz Josef Land, Franz Joseph Land, or Francis Joseph's Land is an archipelago located in the far north of Russia. It is found in the Arctic Ocean north of Novaya Zemlya and east of Svalbard, and is administered by Arkhangelsk Oblast. Franz Josef Land consists of 191 ice-covered islands with a...

 in 1898 and 1899.

Airships

On December 31, 1905, Wellman announced he would make an attempt to reach the North Pole

North Pole

The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole or Terrestrial North Pole, is, subject to the caveats explained below, defined as the point in the northern hemisphere where the Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface...

, but this time with an airship. His newspaper provided funds of USD

United States dollar

The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....

 250,000, and he had an airship built in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 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 attempted an aerial voyage to the North Pole in September, 1907. He made a second attempt without financial assistance in 1909, but mechanical failures forced him to turn back 60 miles (100 km.) north of Svalbard.

In the northern autumn of 1910, Wellman expanded his airship America

America (airship)

The America was a non-rigid airship built by Mutin Godard in France in 1906 for Walter Wellman's attempt to reach the North Pole by air. Wellman had been inspired to fly to the pole during a failed overland attempt in 1893. When he saw a French dirigible at the Portsmouth Peace Conference in 1905,...

to 345,000 cubic feet (9,760 cubic metres) and launched from Atlantic City, New Jersey on 15 October 1910. After 38 hours the engine failed and the airship drifted until they were rescued by the Royal Mail steamship Trent not far from Bermuda

Bermuda

Bermuda is a British overseas territory in the North Atlantic Ocean. Located off the east coast of the United States, its nearest landmass is Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, about to the west-northwest. It is about south of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and northeast of Miami, Florida...

. A second airship, the Akron, was built the next year. It exploded during its first test flight. Killed were the crew of five, including its captain, aerial photographer Melvin Vaniman

Melvin Vaniman

thumb|200px|right|Drawing of the air ship Akron in which Vaniman lost his lifeChester Melvin Vaniman was an American photographer, adventurer and businessman who specialized in panoramic images taken from heights. Born to a farming family in Virden, Illinois, he was the eldest of four sons, and...

, a survivor of the America. Almost a century later its submerged remains were located. These fragments, along with the airship's lifeboat, which Goodyear Tire and Rubber had stored since 1912, were then donated to the Smithsonian Institution

Smithsonian Institution

The Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its retail operations, concessions, licensing activities, and magazines...

.

Legacy

In 1902, Wellman wrote A Tragedy of the Far North published in The White World. Wellman's book The Aerial Age; A Thousand Miles by Airship over the Atlantic Ocean was published in 1911. The German Republic, Imaginary Political History After the European War was published in 1916. He spent his final years in New York City, where he died of liver cancer in 1934. The Liberty ship

Liberty ship

Liberty ships were cargo ships built in the United States during World War II. Though British in conception, they were adapted by the U.S. as they were cheap and quick to build, and came to symbolize U.S. wartime industrial output. Based on vessels ordered by Britain to replace ships torpedoed by...

 Walter Wellman was launched 29 September 1944 from Todd Houston Shipbuilding Corporation of Houston, Texas

Houston, Texas

Houston is the fourth-largest city in the United States, and the largest city in the state of Texas. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the city had a population of 2.1 million people within an area of . Houston is the seat of Harris County and the economic center of , which is the ...

.

Publications

• P.J. Capelotti, Herman Van Dyk & Jean-Claude Cailliez. 2007. “Strange interlude at Virgohamna, Danskøya, Svalbard, 1906: the merkelig mann, the engineer and the spy,” Polar Research 26 (2007): 64-75.
• P.J. Capelotti. 2006. “E.B. Baldwin and the American-Norwegian discovery and exploration of Graham Bell Island, 1899,” Polar Research 25 (2): 155-171.
• P.J. Capelotti. By Airship to the North Pole: An Archaeology of Human Exploration (Rutgers University Press, 1999) ISBN 0813526337
• P.J. Capelotti. 1997. "The Wellman Polar Airship Expeditions at Virgohamna, Danskøya, Svalbard." Oslo, Norway: Norsk Polarinstitutt, Meddelelser No. 145.
• P.J. Capelotti. A Conceptual Model for Aerospace Archaeology: A Case Study from the Wellman Site, Virgohamna, Danskøya, Svalbard. (Ph.D. Dissertation, Rutgers University, 1996). University Microfilms #9633681.
• P.J. Capelotti. 1994. “A Preliminary Archæological Survey of Camp Wellman at Virgohamn, Danskøya, Svalbard,” Polar Record 30 (175).
• Michael Robinson, The Coldest Crucible: Arctic Exploration and American Culture (University of Chicago Press, 2006) ISBN 0226721841

External links

• Attempt to North Pole by airship (1906) (French)
• Bjørn Fossli Johansen: Virgohamna Norsk Polarinstitutt February 2007 (Norwegian)