Hell On Ice

The Mercury Center on the air. The Columbia Broadcasting System welcomes you to the 14th program in its weekly series featuring Orson Welles and the Mercury Center on the air.

The knife's brilliant Broadway company turns from their cycle of dramatized literary classics to relive for us a stirring adventure of recent history. It is Orson Welles' own adaptation of Hell on Ice by Commander Edward Elsberg, The gripping story of the disastrous early expedition to the North Pole.

My name is Melville. As retired chief engineer of our Navy, their share of honors come my way. The engines and boilers will still be all around 12,000 miles under force. They have to take a place from the battle line at San Diego with my creation.

Since then I've designed the engines for half the warships that show the American flag. But now as I look back over my life, I can only humbly hope that the name of George Melvore may be.

A little remembered is one who served under Captain DeLong. On the last voyage of the steamship Jeannette, I still read and reread my log of that trip. Though the yanks been dry near thirty years.

Here's the first entry. July 8, 1879, 3.40 pm, Pacific time. Drenette Wade anchor. Destination, the North Pole. Ready to go. Already below, Captain, along. Ready, Chief? Ready, Captain.

That's Demon Hunter. Yes, sir. They've been done a third job on the Drenette. They built an extra sheeting around a hull of six inch Oregon pine, welded down with iron straps and a truss of massive beams across a blockhead.

I remember noticing as soon as we were underway, shouldn't that wallow a bit in the waves instead of knifing them clean? Much he was a small ship, bought quite a ton in displacement, I reported to you for long.