Lincoln Ellsworth
Encyclopedia
Lincoln Ellsworth was an arctic explorer from the United States.

Birth

He was born on May 12, 1880 to James Ellsworth
James Ellsworth
James Ellsworth was an American coal mine owner and banker.-Early life:...

 and Eva Frances Butler in Chicago, Illinois. He also lived in Hudson, Ohio
Hudson, Ohio
Hudson is a city in Summit County, Ohio, United States. The population was 22,262 at the 2010 census. It is an affluent exurban community and is part of the Akron, Ohio Metropolitan Statistical Area...

 as a child.

Lincoln Ellsworth's father, James
James Ellsworth
James Ellsworth was an American coal mine owner and banker.-Early life:...

, a wealthy coal man from the United States, spent US$100,000 to fund Roald Amundsen
Roald Amundsen
Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen was a Norwegian explorer of polar regions. He led the first Antarctic expedition to reach the South Pole between 1910 and 1912 and he was the first person to reach both the North and South Poles. He is also known as the first to traverse the Northwest Passage....

's 1925 attempt to fly from 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 the North Pole. The craft were forced down onto the ice short of their goal, and the explorers spent 30 days trapped on the surface.

In 1926, Ellsworth accompanied Amundsen on his second effort to fly over the Pole in the airship Norge, designed and piloted by the Italian engineer Umberto Nobile
Umberto Nobile
Umberto Nobile was an Italian aeronautical engineer and Arctic explorer. Nobile was a developer and promoter of semi-rigid airships during the Golden Age of Aviation between the two World Wars...

, in a flight from 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 Alaska
Alaska
Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...

. On May 12, the Geographic North Pole was sighted. This was the first undisputed sighting of the area.

Ellsworth made four expeditions to Antarctica between 1933 and 1939, using as his aircraft transporter and base a former Norwegian herring boat that he named Wyatt Earp
HMAS Wyatt Earp
HMAS Wyatt Earp was a motor vessel commissioned into the Royal Australian Navy from 1939 to 1945 and again from 1947 to 1948.-Early years:...

after his hero.

On November 23, 1935, Ellsworth discovered the Ellsworth Mountains
Ellsworth Mountains
The Ellsworth Mountains are the highest mountain ranges in Antarctica, forming a long and wide chain of mountains in a north to south configuration on the western margin of the Ronne Ice Shelf. They are bisected by Minnesota Glacier to form the northern Sentinel Range and the southern Heritage...

 of Antarctica when he made a trans-Antarctic flight from Dundee Island
Dundee Island
Dundee Island is an ice-covered island lying east of the northeastern tip of Antarctic Peninsula and south of Joinville Island.On January 8, 1893, during the Dundee Whaling Expedition, the island was named by Captain Thomas Robertson of the Active and named for the home port, Dundee, Scotland,...

 to the Ross Ice Shelf
Ross Ice Shelf
The Ross Ice Shelf is the largest ice shelf of Antarctica . It is several hundred metres thick. The nearly vertical ice front to the open sea is more than 600 km long, and between 15 and 50 metres high above the water surface...

. He gave the descriptive name Sentinel Range
Sentinel Range
The Sentinel Range is a major mountain range situated northward of Minnesota Glacier and forming the northern half of the Ellsworth Mountains in Antarctica. The range trends NNW-SSE for about and is 24 to 48 km wide...

, which was later named for the northern half of the Ellsworth Mountains. During the flight, his aircraft ran out of fuel, forcing a landing near the Little America camp established by Richard Byrd
Richard Evelyn Byrd
Rear Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd, Jr., USN was a naval officer who specialized in feats of exploration. He was a pioneering American aviator, polar explorer, and organizer of polar logistics...

. Because of a faulty radio, he and his pilot, Herbert Hollick-Kenyon
Herbert Hollick-Kenyon
Herbert Hollick-Kenyon was an aircraft pilot who made significant contributions towards aviation in Antarctica.-Early life:...

, were unable to notify authorities about the landing. The two men were declared missing, and the British research ship Discovery sailed from New Zealand on a search mission. The two men were discovered Jan. 16, 1936, after almost two months alone at Little America. They returned to New York City on April 6, and their support ship, the MS Wyatt Earp, arrived separately two weeks later.

Mount Ellsworth
Mount Ellsworth (Antarctica)
Mount Ellsworth is the highest peak in the Queen Maud Mountains, on the elongated massif between the Steagall and Amundsen Glaciers.Discovered by Rear Admiral Byrd on the South Pole flight of November 28–29, 1929, and named by him for Lincoln Ellsworth, American Antarctic explorer....

 and Lake Ellsworth, both in Antarctica, are also named after him.

Honors

In 1927, the Boy Scouts of America
Boy Scouts of America
The Boy Scouts of America is one of the largest youth organizations in the United States, with over 4.5 million youth members in its age-related divisions...

 made Ellsworth an Honorary Scout, a new category of Scout created that same year. This distinction was given to "American citizens whose achievements in outdoor activity, exploration and worthwhile adventure are of such an exceptional character as to capture the imagination of boys...". The other eighteen men who were awarded this distinction were: Roy Chapman Andrews
Roy Chapman Andrews
Roy Chapman Andrews was an American explorer, adventurer and naturalist who became the director of the American Museum of Natural History. He is primarily known for leading a series of expeditions through the fragmented China of the early 20th century into the Gobi Desert and Mongolia...

; Robert Bartlett; Frederick Russell Burnham
Frederick Russell Burnham
Frederick Russell Burnham, DSO was an American scout and world traveling adventurer known for his service to the British Army in colonial Africa and for teaching woodcraft to Robert Baden-Powell, thus becoming one of the inspirations for the founding of the international Scouting Movement.Burnham...

; Richard E. Byrd; George Kruck Cherrie
George Kruck Cherrie
George Kruck Cherrie was an American naturalist and explorer.Cherrie was born in Iowa. He took part in about forty expeditions, mostly to Central and South America, including Theodore Roosevelt's South American Expedition of 1913–1914, when Cherrie was collecting specimens for the American Museum...

; James L. Clark; Merian C. Cooper
Merian C. Cooper
Merian Caldwell Cooper was an American aviator, United States Air Force and Polish Air Force officer, adventurer, screenwriter, and film director and producer. His most famous film was the 1933 movie King Kong.-Early life:...

; Louis Agassiz Fuertes
Louis Agassiz Fuertes
Louis Agassiz Fuertes was an American ornithologist, illustrator and artist.-Biography:Fuertes was the son of Estevan and Mary Stone Perry Fuertes....

; George Bird Grinnell
George Bird Grinnell
George Bird Grinnell was an American anthropologist, historian, naturalist, and writer. Grinnell was born in Brooklyn, New York, and graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in 1870 and a Ph.D. in 1880. Originally specializing in zoology, he became a prominent early conservationist and student...

; Charles A. Lindbergh; Donald Baxter MacMillan; Clifford H. Pope; George Palmer Putnam
George Palmer Putnam
George Palmer Putnam was an important American book publisher.-Biography:Putnam was born in Brunswick, Maine. On moving to New York City, Putnam was given his first job by Jonathan Leavitt, who subsequently published Putnam's first book...

; Kermit Roosevelt
Kermit Roosevelt
Kermit Roosevelt I MC was a son of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt. He was an explorer on two continents with his father, a graduate of Harvard University, a soldier serving in two world wars, with both the British and U.S. Armies, a businessman, and a writer...

; Carl Rungius; Stewart Edward White
Stewart Edward White
Stewart Edward White was an American author.-Biography:Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan he attended Grand Rapids High School, and earned degrees from University of Michigan ....

; Orville Wright. The Boy Scout's Book of True Adventure, Fourteen Honorary Scouts, published by G. P. Putnam's Sons in New York in 1931 includes an essay "The First Crossing of the Polar Sea" by Lincoln Ellsworth. The United States Postal Service
United States Postal Service
The United States Postal Service is an independent agency of the United States government responsible for providing postal service in the United States...

 once produced a stamp with his picture. To this day, Hudson Ohio's high school teams are named "The Explorers" after Ellsworth.

The Antarctic base Ellsworth Station
Ellsworth Station
The Ellsworth Station was an Antarctic base established by the United States during the 1957 International Geophysical Year. The base was soon handed over to Argentina and subsequently abandoned and covered with ice in 1962.-History:...

 was named after him.

See also

  • Airship Norge
  • 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...

  • List of people on stamps of the United States – Scott catalogue
    Scott catalogue
    The Scott catalogue of postage stamps, published by Scott Publishing Co, a subsidiary of Amos Press, is updated annually and lists all the stamps of the entire world which its editors recognize as issued for postal purposes. It is published in six large volumes and is also produced in...

    2389, 25c stamp

External links

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