Obviously a 'driven' man.
These deaths in unutterably lonely places, on more or less heroic endeavours, always seem to me so poignant.
Somewhere here I have Jules Verne's Five Weeks in a Balloon, given to my mother as a school prize in about 1924: I must hunt it out and re-read.
It is interesting to see how many expeditions that used, or intended to use aircraft, whether they be balloons,, airships, or fixed wing heavier than air machines during the golden age of polar exploration, and thereafter right up to the present day, including helicopters in the latter part of the last century.
The dream of air travel to the Pole has a lengthy prehistory. As early as the 1870s, John Powles Cheyne, a veteran of three British Arctic expeditions, was proposing a voyage to the pole via balloon. Nevertheless, in terms of actual flight, S. A. Andrée's Arctic balloon expedition of 1897 is commonly considered to mark the beginning of polar aviation. Later, Zeppelins <<airships e.g. The Norge>> were used for exploitation of the Arctic, and eventually airplanes. In 1914, a Russian plane (Farman MF.11, pilot Jan Nagórski, mechanic Yevgeni Kuznetsov) flew beyond the Arctic Circle in the area of Novaya Zemlya in search of the North Pole expedition of Georgiy Sedov. The beginning of the century witnessed the aviation quest for the North Pole. By the mid-1920s polar aviation had become feasible.
Fokker Super Universal Virginia piloted by Richard Evelyn Byrd was the first aircraft to land on the mainland of Antarctica during Byrd's first Antarctic expedition, 1928-1930, when he was first to fly over the South Pole on November 29, 1929.
I remember as a young boy thoroughly enjoying The Red Tent a film portraying the attempted rescue of the crew and scientists aboard the Italian airship The Italia. In retrospect I don't believe it was a very good film, but perhaps the inclusion of Claudia Cardinale as a paramour in the film swung it for my callow mind. I see the critics thought well of it, perhaps they too enjoyed Ms. Cardinale....
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I remember as a young boy thoroughly enjoying The Red Tent a film portraying the attempted rescue of the crew and scientists aboard the Italian airship The Italia. In retrospect I don't believe it was a very good film, but perhaps the inclusion of Claudia Cardinale as a paramour in the film swung it for my callow mind. I see the critics thought well of it, perhaps they too enjoyed Ms. Cardinale....
The Red Tent has a superb cast and seems to have been rather well done, certainly has good reviews on IMDB.
I had not realised Roald Amundsen had lost his life in connection with the rescue attempt for the crew of the Italia. Sad end for him.
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I remember as a young boy thoroughly enjoying The Red Tent a film portraying the attempted rescue of the crew and scientists aboard the Italian airship The Italia. In retrospect I don't believe it was a very good film, but perhaps the inclusion of Claudia Cardinale as a paramour in the film swung it for my callow mind. I see the critics thought well of it, perhaps they too enjoyed Ms. Cardinale....
The Red Tent has a superb cast and seems to have been rather well done, certainly has good reviews on IMDB.
I had not realised Roald Amundsen had lost his life in connection with the rescue attempt for the crew of the Italia. Sad end for him.
Yes, maybe I underestimate my then youthful ability to enjoy a good film...
I see that the film is available on YouTube but in Russian with subtitles available. Spoken Russian brings me out in hives and sucks the life out of anything and everything, so I shan't post it.
