With Vaniman as his engineer, Wellman modified and enlarged America for a transatlantic flight.Īirship America, showing Equilibrator in the water When Wellman learned of Robert Peary’s claim to have reached the North Pole in 1909 he abandoned his polar dreams but he did not abandon his airship: Wellman shipped America back to the United States on the White Star liner Oceanic and organized an attempt to cross the Atlantic by air for the first time in history. The America of 1910: Rebuilt for the Atlantic Wellman and America returned to Norway again in 1909 and attempted a flight to the Pole, but the airship was forced down after only 40 miles. Once again the airship was crated and returned to France for repairs. America left its hangar for a polar flight in September, 1907, but was forced down by a squall after only 20 miles. Wellman returned to Norway with the rebuilt airship in 1907, along with experienced aeronaut Melvin Vaniman as his mechanic and Felix Reisenberg as his navigator. Wellman crated the deflated blimp and returned it to France where the airship was enlarged to 56.4 meters in length, with a gas volume of 7,600 cubic meters, and equipped with a 75 hp Lorraine-Dietrich engine.Ĭigarette card and photograph of Wellman’s polar airship Wellman named the airship America. It arrived at his camp on July 8, 1906, but the engines failed before Wellman could attempt a flight to the Pole. The America of 1906: Built for the North Pole Within a year Wellman had raised the funds to commission a 50.3 meter non-rigid airship from the Godard family of France - famous for their balloons - and he built an airship hangar and base camp on Dane’s Island (DanskÃ¸ya) off the coast of Spitsbergen in the Svalbard archipelago of Norway. In 1905 Wellman formed the “Wellman Chicago Record-Herald Polar Expedition Company” with a $75,000 investment from his newspaper and the support of adventure-loving President Theodore Roosevelt. Wellman made three polar expeditions by land - in 1894, 1898, and 1899 - but failed to reach his goal and decided it would be better to try by air.

In 1884 he became the Washington correspondent for the Chicago Herald but his real obsession was finding the North Pole. Wellman had started a weekly newspaper in Sutton, Nebraska when he was just 14 years old and a few years later, in 1879, he founded the the Cincinnati Evening Post. America was originally built to fly to the North Pole and was commissioned by American journalist Walter Wellman (1858-1934).

City island 5 airship