"The first stop on on our flight to Greenly Island, over 700 miles away, was to be a place
called Seven Islands, a distance of 285 miles from where we were, with nothing but icefields
and bad weather to look forward to. At least the plane cabin was heated from an engine exhaust
device. No more than 40 miles,from St. Agnes we ran into a blinding snow storm so we
climbed to four thousand feet to escape it - and ended up in heavy clouds and ice that buffeted us pretty good. I could tell that Vachon, our pilot, was getting a liltle uneasy. Not being able to see the ground for over an hour. the conversation in the cabin directed itself to where we
actually were, the storm seemed to lessen so we went back down to two thousand feet and with the occasional break in the clouds were able to get our bearings.
Finally locating Seven Islands. Vachon circled a tiny village to let them know we were landing and headed out to a frozen lake about two miles away. Our landing was uneventful, but the snow was so deep the plane had to be towed by Ihe Islanders to a better area.
We still had 410 miles to go to get to Greenly Island, but we first had to warm the plane motor up enough so it would start. Vachon had the answer and produced two acetylene torches. handing me one and removing the engine cover we stood there for nearly an hour warming the nearly frozen engine oil. Vachon went in the cockpit and primed the engine while Fernstrom and I pulled on the starter crank handle. After a couple of attempts. The reluctant
engine finally coughed and sputtered back to life. Due to the deep snow it took us nearly a
quarter of a mile to get airborne again. even though we had a much lighter load as Stanton
and Roberts decided they had enough adventure and stayed behind at Seven Islands. The
lighter load increased Ihe plane's airspeed, at times we were indicating 120 miles per hour
but fierce headwinds seemed to slow us down to almost a stand still. To miss the storms we
would stay as low as 400 feet or as high as 10,OOO feet. We often talked about the courage
of the Bremen crew, flying for 36 hours through many storms like this, knowing there was no
place to land but in the cold Atlantic Ocean. We are lost! We should have seen Greenly
Island hours ago, all we can see is ice and snow. We descend to a few hundred feet and
spot a dog team moving across a frozen bay. We swing around and land in hopes these people can help us. With a variety of French and English, we were able to understand that they didn't know where Greenly Island was, but that we had landed on Middle Bay.
P. Q.: Our chart showed that Greenly Island was no more than 20 miles away. Once back in the air I soon spotted a small island with a lighthouse. We had finally made it to Greenly."