What are the specific names of the three explorers who, despite wearing the oilskins, reported always seeming to be damp or wet from the half-frozen pools of water on the ice and the typically foggy, humid Arctic summer air?
From the moment the three were grounded on 14 July, Strindberg's highly specialized cartographic camera, which had been brought to map the region from the air, became instead a means of recording daily life in the icescape and the constant danger and drudgery of the trek. Strindberg took about 200 photos with his seven-kilogram (15 lb) camera over the course of the three months they spent on the pack ice, one of the most famous being his picture of Andrée and Frænkel contemplating the fallen Eagle (see image above).Andrée and Frænkel also kept meticulous records of their experiences and geographical positions, Andrée in his "main diary," Frænkel in his meteorological journal. Strindberg's own stenographic diary was more personal in content, and included his general reflections on the expedition, as well as several messages to his fiancée Anna Charlier. All three manuscripts were eventually retrieved from the ice on Kvitøya in 1930.
The Eagle had been stocked with safety equipment such as guns, snowshoes, sleds, skis, a tent, a small boat (in the form of a bundle of bent sticks, to be assembled and covered with balloon silk), most of it stored not in the basket but in the storage space arranged above the balloon ring. These items had not been put together with great care, or with any acknowledgment of adopting indigenous peoples' techniques for dealing with the extreme environment. In this, Andrée contrasted not only with later but also with many earlier explorers.
Sven Lundström points to the agonizing extra efforts that became necessary for the team due to Andrée's mistaken design of the sleds, with a rigid construction that borrowed nothing from the long proven Inuit sleds, and were so impractical for the difficult terrain. Andrée called it "dreadful terrain", with channels separating the ice floes, high ridges, and partially iced-over melt ponds. The men's clothes included no furs but were woolen coats and trousers, plus oilskins. They wore the oilskins but the explorers reported always seeming to be damp or wet from the half-frozen pools of water on the ice and the typically foggy, humid Arctic summer air, and preoccupied with drying their clothes, mainly by wearing them. It would have meant certain death to lose the provisions lashed to one of the inconvenient sleds into one of the many channels that had to be laboriously crossed.
Andrée Frænkel Strindberg