Lincoln Ellsworth - Birth

Birth

He was born on May 12, 1880 to James Ellsworth and Eva Frances Butler in Chicago, Illinois. He also lived in Hudson, Ohio as a child.

Lincoln Ellsworth's father, James, a wealthy coal man from the United States, spent US$100,000 to fund Roald Amundsen's 1925 attempt to fly from Svalbard to the North Pole. Two Dornier-Wal flying boats, the N24 and N25, attempted to reach the North Pole on May 21st. When one airplane lost power both made forced landings and, as a result, became separated. It took 3 days for the crews to regroup and 7 take off attempts before they were able to return N25 to the air 28 days later.

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, in a flight from Svalbard to Alaska. 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 after his hero.

On November 23, 1935, Ellsworth discovered the Ellsworth Mountains of Antarctica when he made a trans-Antarctic flight from Dundee Island to the Ross Ice Shelf. He gave the descriptive name Sentinel Range, 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. Because of a faulty radio, he and his pilot, Herbert Hollick-Kenyon, 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 and Lake Ellsworth, both in Antarctica, are also named after him.