Fallen Family

Publicity-seeking George R. Hutchinson would have beamed with delight had he seen the front-page space he occupied in the U. S. Press last week when he and his "flying family" were wrecked, then rescued from Greenland's bleak eastern coast. But he must have made a wry face over such comments as:

". . . We have said before that Hutchinson ought to be clapped into jail for thus imperiling his two little daughters. . . . He certainly deserves some punishment, not only for his own act, but as a deterrent to other parental irresponsibilities. . . ."--New York Evening Post.

'There is ... no doubt universal condemnation of a flier who, for commercial exploitation, took two children on a flight of this sort. . . . The flight was undertaken as a builder-up for radio broadcasts, in which the whole family were to take part--undoubtedly a beguiling idea from the advertising standpoint."--New York World-Telegram.

". . . They ought to left [sic] the father out there a couple of more days just to throw a scare into him for taking those children."--Will Rogers.

Pilot Hutchinson would have made a particularly wry face over the Evening Post's blunt comment, for in 1925 he narrowly missed being clapped in jail for embezzling $34,220 while employed as a bookkeeper in Philadelphia's Benjamin Franklin Trust Co. Obtaining a suspended sentence by agreeing to turn over 10% of his earnings to his bonding company, he was paroled for 25 years. He is now out of Pennsylvania by permission of the chief parole officer.

In their Familia Volano, a big black-&-silver Sikorsky amphibian, the Hutchin-sons--George, 30, Blanche, 28, Kathryn, 8, Janet Lee, 6--and a crew of four had hopped by easy stages to Labrador (TIME, Sept. 5), thence across Davis Strait to Greenland and down the coast to Julian-ehaab. Hopping off from there to the booming salute of a Danish warship, Pilot Hutchinson skirted the southern tip of the great island, headed north for Angmagsa-lik. His itinerary called for successive hops to Iceland, the Faroe Islands, England, Rome.

Shortly after turning northward, a bird struck a wing of the big amphibian. Airmen always think this is a bad augury. Halfway to Angmagsalik the party ran into a blinding blizzard that whipped up a nasty sea, blotted out the visibility. Snow so loaded the plane that the speed was cut to 60 m.p.h. Unable to climb above the storm, Pilot Hutchinson dropped to 50 ft. With windshields caked with snow, he dodged icebergs and cliffs until forced to make a practically blind landing. Drift ice punctured a pontoon. Radioman Gerald Altfilisch sent out SOS calls and their position, soon received a reply from Angmagsalik that the Scotch trawler Lord Talbot would rescue them within two hours. Breaking waves quickly put the set out of commission. Pilot Hutchinson taxied the crippled ship to shore where the family and crew salvaged what they could before it turned turtle and sank in shallow water.

On the rocky, desolate island where they found themselves, the ill-clad group huddled in driving snow. Young Kathryn's cold, contracted earlier, grew worse. During the night they sent up rockets, burned oil and films.

Next day the family and crew built a flimsy shelter with stones and a piece of fabric stripped from the plane. From clambering over the rocks in thin shoes, the children's feet were bruised and bleeding. New shoes were fashioned from life preserver covers. Soup and coffee were warmed over an alcohol flame. As the second night began the group split a quart of champagne which Mrs. Hutchinson had saved.

Later in the evening they spied a light at sea. Burning their last films, oil and flares, they hailed the trawler Lord Talbot. At dawn the next morning she nosed in through the ice to pick them up. As they boarded the ship, they saw an iceberg slowly crush the wreck of the Familia Volano.

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