Andrée’s Story: The Complete Record of his Polar Flight, 1897. From the diaries and journals….

In the diaries and journals of the three participants there is little or nothing on the materials they had with them except mention of their logbooks. On the other hand, the following accounts of the discovery of the men’s remains and artifacts show some interesting discoveries.

p. 154: When the scattered relics of his body were discovered by the crew of the Bratvaag, there were found, among other things, in the left inside pocket of his [Andrée’s] jacket a memorandum-book and a lead-pencil. This book contains the last notes written by his hand, but unfortunately they have come to us in a very fragmentary condition. The place where Andrée sank into his last slumber, and which was marked merely by the clothes that had covered the upper part of his body, was so high up against the slope of the cliff that the ice which covered it has certainly melted away several times during the thirty-three years that have elapsed. As a result, the book has been incessantly exposed to the action of the air and the summer heat, and mould has grown rankly from the glue of its covers. In consequence, only the outer edges of the pages have been preserved, while the parts of the leaves lying toward the backbone of the book have become in many places a complete pulp. In spite of the extreme care that has been taken to preserve the written parts, it has not been possible to save more than a few fragments of Andrée’s last words to those who should come after him, and these fragments are difficult to decipher….

p. 167, a description of Nils Strindberg’s observation book, kept impeccably even when on the ice of “The Sledge Journey, 1897.”

p. 190-92, account of preliminary preservation of logbooks, maps, and books found at the Andrée site in 1930, 33 years after the expedition failed.

p. 204-05 refers to a “sack of books” or “parcel of books” found in the abandoned boat.

p. 209: description of notebooks and logs.

p. 230: preservation measures for diary. (See photocopies for these last entries under Andrée.)