Antarctica's Lost Aviator: The Epic Adventure to Explore the Last Frontier on Earth

by Jeff Maynard

Overview

The astonishing voyage of the first solo crossing of Antarctica by the unlikeliest of arctic explorers.

By the 1930s, no one had yet crossed Antarctica, and its vast interior remained a mystery frozen in time. Hoping to write his name in the history books, wealthy American Lincoln Ellsworth announced he would fly across the unexplored continent. And to honor his hero, Wyatt Earp, he would carry his gun belt on the flight. The main obstacles to Ellsworth’s ambition were numerous: he didn’t like the cold, he avoided physical work, and he couldn’t navigate. Consequently, he hired the experienced Australian explorer, Sir Hubert Wilkins, to organize the expedition on his behalf.

While Ellsworth battled depression and struggled to conceal his homosexuality, Wilkins purchased a ship, hired a crew, and ordered a revolutionary new airplane constructed. The Ellsworth Trans-Antarctic Expeditions became epics of misadventure, as competitors plotted to beat Ellsworth, pilots refused to fly, crews mutinied, and the ship was repeatedly trapped in the ice.

Finally, in 1935, Ellsworth took off to fly from the Weddell Sea to the Ross Sea. A few hours after leaving, radio contact with him was lost and the world gave him up for dead.

Antarctica’s Lost Aviator brings alive one of the strangest episodes in polar history, using previously unpublished diaries, correspondence, photographs, and film to reveal the amazing true story of the first crossing of Antarctica and how, against all odds, it was achieved by the unlikeliest of heroes.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781643130125
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	02/05/2019
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Jeff Maynard’s books include The Unseen Anzac, Wings of Ice, Niagara’s Gold, and Divers in Time. He has written for television and is a book reviewer for the Melbourne Herald Sun. He is a member of the Explorers Club and a former President of the Historical Diving Society. This is his first book to be published in America. Jeff lives in Melbourne, Australia.

Table of Contents

Author's Note ix

Prologue xi

Part I Almost Heroic 1

1 The Elf Child 3

2 The Kingdom of Death 11

3 No Longer the Only American 21

4 Just a Passenger 31

5 No Other Worlds to Conquer 39

6 The Sacrifice I Must Make 50

7 The Threshold of Greatness 58

Part II Wyatt Earp Limited 65

8 The Lone Eagle 67

9 The Mayor of Antarctica 78

10 Cloud Kingdoms of the Sunset 86

11 The Universe Began to Vibrate 94

12 Alone 102

13 The Stars Forecast Strange Things 110

14 The Third Man 118

15 A Higher Type of Courage 130

Part III The Heart of the Antarctic 141

16 The Great Unknown 143

17 Chasing the Sun 149

18 Lost 159

19 Thank God You're Down There 167

20 Maybe It's All to Try Us 172

21 A Friendly Gesture 179

22 A Silence That Could Be Felt 187

23 Chugging On 196

Afterword 205

Appendix A Problems in Polar Navigation 213

Appendix B Navigation Instructions Prepared by Sir Hubert Wilkins 219

Appendix C Wysztt Earp Crew Lists 223

Bibliography 227

Endnotes 231

Acknowledgments 243

Index 245

Editorial Reviews

01/31/2019

In this middling history, author and documentarist Maynard (The Unseen Anzac) tells the story of Lincoln Ellsworth, a “wealthy and eccentric” American who, despite disliking cold weather and physical labor, aspired to fly across Antarctica in 1935. Maynard teases out the skeletons in Ellsworth’s closet—his insecurities, his unhappy childhood, his obsession with Wyatt Earp, his homosexuality—while layering obstacle upon obstacle, including the fact that Ellsworth did not know how to navigate or ski when he set out on his first polar adventure in 1925 with seasoned explorer Roald Amundsen. Readers seeking heart-racing snowbound adventure will twiddle their thumbs as Ellsworth writes check after check to finance his caprice. Maynard details the international scandals and ego clashes in the making of this most unlikely quest. More interesting are Ellsworth’s attempts to outmaneuver Admiral Richard Byrd, who was threading the icebergs and pressing further south than Captain James Cook had in 1774. Accounts of the activities of Russian icebreakers and the O-12, the first Arctic submarine and a counterpart to Jules Verne’s Nautilus, make for good reading. The heart of this story, however, is not Ellsworth but the then-uncharted Antarctic continent, depicted lyrically as unnamed mountain peaks, jumbled compass readings, and “undulating white silence stretched to the horizon in every direction.” Only readers particularly interested in that region will stick it out for the duration of this journey. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

"Maynard presents the various controversies, along with in-depth documentation. A must read."

Clive Cussler [Praise for Jeff Maynard]

"A simply fascinating and inherently riveting read from beginning to end. Exceptionally well researched, written, organized, and presented by Maynard (who is a member of the Explorers Club and a former President of the Historical Diving Society)."

Midwest Book Review

"If you were to put all the characters, drama, and seemingly outlandish adventures contained in Antarctica’s Lost Aviator into a movie script, it would be rejected as too unbelievable. But Lincoln Ellsworth was read and did live the life contained in this biography."

Flight Journal

This polar adventure classic is begging to be read. A ripping yarn.

Sydney Morning Herald [Praise for Jeff Maynard]

A wonderfully researched book. Almost every page leaves you astonished.

The Age [Praise for Jeff Maynard]

2018-10-28

The biography of a man who "competed for the last great prize in polar exploration."

Readers who grew up devouring the Tom Swift adventure novels, with their flying boats and subocean geotrons, will find much to like in Maynard's (The Unseen Anzac: How an Enigmatic Explorer Created Australia's World War I Photographs, 2015, etc.) engrossing biography of Lincoln Ellsworth (1880-1951). He was something of a "mystery" to the author until he came upon a cache of Ellsworth's papers, which "opened an intimate window into one of the strangest episodes in polar history." The son of a domineering, ultrawealthy coal baron, Ellsworth was an insecure man in search of a purpose. A college dropout, he had the money to do whatever he wanted, so he became a professional adventurer. He prospected for gold and participated in a buffalo hunt (which he wrote a book about) and a geological survey in Peru. His life changed in 1924 when he met Roald Amundsen, the "world's greatest polar explorer." Ellsworth's father provided the financing for the two of them to explore the Arctic by air, but the expedition failed. After Ellsworth's father died, he inherited millions. He financed Amundsen's semirigid airship expedition to be the first to reach the North Pole by air. But Richard Byrd did it first, although, as Maynard notes, he actually came up short. Ellsworth then financed explorer Hubert Wilkins' expedition to travel in a submarine to the North Pole. It failed. After a series of harrowing, unsuccessful Arctic expeditions by air, finally, in 1935, using a reconditioned herring boat which Ellsworth named after one of his heroes, Wyatt Earp, and a specially modified airplane he named Polar Star, Ellsworth and his pilot were the first to cross Antarctica. "By guess or by God," Maynard writes, it "remains an incredible achievement."

Filled with a sumptuous cast of real-life adventurers, this is an engrossing and stirring tale.

Kirkus Reviews