> The men were completely unprepared for a land expedition, and set up camp on the uninhabited White Island in the Svalbard archipelago. There, the Arctic winter eventually consumed them and they perished in the unforgiving environment of ice and howling winds.
Actually, the struggle to get off the ice onto land was the main challenge, and they died soon after, before the winter even began.
A log of their journey was recovered, which makes clear how, having put themselves in this predicament, they tackled its many hardships and setbacks with a level-headed determination and fortitude resembling that of Shackleton and his party a year or so later.
Edit: Shackleton's expedition departed 17 years later.
The drag ropes were causal, but in a complicated way. They did not - and could not - function as intended, which was as a means of flying in a direction significantly different from that in which the wind was taking them, allowing them to navigate towards a specific destination.
Without this assumption, it seems unlikely that they would have attempted to do what the flight actually was: a drift in a free balloon over the arctic. After several days, the balloon came down onto the ice (it did not "plummet") as a result of losing gas gradually, with ice accumulation probably being a factor.
I have seen a report of the press conference they gave before starting, and it seems painfully clear that they would have all abandoned the attempt if any one of them would have said, out loud, that it was a bad idea.
> I have seen a report of the press conference they gave before starting, and it seems painfully clear that they would have all abandoned the attempt if any one of them would have said, out loud, that it was a bad idea.
This sounds very interesting if anyone can dig it up!
Edit: I have had no success so far, but other things I have read suggest that my comment should only be applied to Andrée's two companions, while he was attempting to guilt/shame them into going.
Edit 2: This is not the source I had in mind, but it gives a sense of what was going on:
> He addressed his ground crew: “Well, now we have been considering whether the start should be made or not; my comrades insist on starting, and as I have no fully valid reasons against it, I shall agree to it, although with some reluctance. Will you, then, send all hands on shore to begin the work of dismantling the balloon-house?”
He lost two of the three during launch, and even if he had kept them, there's no evidence they had any steering effect, and no reason to believe they could have had any. That is, their contribution to the failure of the expedition was increased overconfidence.
How would they have survived? If you put Nansen in Andrées shoes on the ice next to the failed balloon, his fate would have been just the same. The only way to have survived would have been to avoid the situation all together. Which would have been wise, but does not take someone like Nansen to do.
He pretty much left his ship in the middle of the Arctic Ocean with a friend and a canoe, waiting for the ice to break. And wintered in a hut made of stones and walrus carcasses.
Much further away from any civilization than Andrée, who landed in the Svalbard archipelago.
I probably wouldn't survive either, but there are plenty of examples of explorers who can.
Actually, the struggle to get off the ice onto land was the main challenge, and they died soon after, before the winter even began.