AE on Norwich Island Part 4

Amelia Earhart on Norwich Island

Part 4

July 3rd, 1937

A golden, glorious morning.  The sea sparkled. The beach glowed pure white with golden tinges.  Little white terns and big black-and-white boobies soared overhead, and out over the reef and ocean.  The breeze was light and cool. Puffy cumulus clouds moved sedately across the deep blue sky.  And her headache was gone, her sinuses clear!  What a difference! And they were safe! On land!

But there was no Itasca.  No ship of any kind, no smoke or sail on the horizon. 

And it had been a hard night, dozing on the coral rubble with the crabs exploring all around her, looking for ways to test her flesh.  After a quick trip to the plane, bringing down the kite and sending a few messages out into the void, she had continued the first fire watch while Fred slept in the raft; it seemed the crabs couldn’t get at him over the bulging inflated gunwales.  Put on dry socks, put the wet ones and shoes by the fire to dry.

When her wristwatch said it was time for him to relieve her, she had let him sleep on; he was the injured one.  Stoked up the fire. Tucked her slacks legs into her socks, covered her face and hands with extra shirts.  This seemed to discourage the crabs a little, but they never seemed to sleep. Their stolen seashells clattered over the coral.  She had slept, but only fitfully, and the little monsters were still all around her now.

Looking on the bright side, the Electra was secure on the reef.  So, if Itasca didn’t arrive in the meantime, the first order of business would be to wade out there once the tide got a bit lower, and send the kite up again. And collect what they might need in the course of the day, run the engine to charge the battery – if the gas held out – and send more distress calls before it got too beastly hot inside the ship’s aluminum skin. 

She should fetch the first-day covers ashore, too; it wouldn’t do for them to get wet or moldy.  And the engine covers; if they had to spend another night here – god forbid! – she could fashion them into a sort of hammock.  Elevate herself above the crab population. 

She looked over at Fred. He was lying quietly enough in the raft, but he was ghostly pale. The lump on his head looked a deeper red than before, with streaks of white and purple.  She could almost see it throbbing.

“Fred?” 

He didn’t answer.

“Oh my god…”

She rummaged in the zippered bag, found her compact. Stumbled through the coral in her socks to his side and flipped it open, held the mirror under his nose and immediately giggled.  Not only did his breath fog the mirror; he was snoring lightly.  She snapped the compact shut and at the same time realized that the truly first order of business was to relieve herself – how long had it been?

“Doesn’t matter.”

She worked her salt-stiffened oxfords onto her feet and picked her way up into the brush that crowded the top of the steeply sloping scree-beach.

Just inside the edge of the brush, the vegetation actually opened up somewhat. She walked fairly easily inland a few yards, found a driftwood log to sit over while she did her business.  It took awhile – heavens, she was bound up!    

“Though yesterday should have scared it out of me.”

She shook her head and squinted, straining. Had she emptied the cockpit pee-bucket? Couldn’t remember.

Wiping herself with soft leaves grabbed off one of the bushes, she was starting to ease herself up when motion off to the left caught her eye.  She gasped at the sight – surely the biggest crab she had ever seen.  A good foot, maybe more, across the back, with great huge claws on either side.  Not a hermit crab – no seashell attached.  Dark, purplish brown in color, with beady red eyes on stalks.  Looking at her.

“Wouldn’t want to meet you in a dark alley.”

She was surprised at how her voice quivered.  

“Or on a dark island.” 

She threw a rock at it, and it sidestepped a bit but didn’t retreat.  She zipped up her pants and started back toward the beach. The crab didn’t follow; she checked.

Fred was stirring.  Rolling around, actually, and groaning.  And the sun was burning down through the thin shade of the tree.  He really had to be moved.  She crouched next to him, shook him lightly.

“Fred?  Fred?  Are you awake?  We need to move, get better shade.”

“Marie?” 

He opened his eyes, shut them again.

“Let’s get you into some better shade, then I’ll see what I can do.” 

She got her arm around his shoulders and lifted him into a sitting position.

“Oh, god, Marie, my head!”

Marie?

“I know, I know, Fred.  Come on, we’ll get you into the shade, find some water.  It’ll be OK.” 

He seemed to get the idea, and wobbled to his feet, pulled on his shoes.

“OK, Marie.  Shorry I’m…..”

“Shh.  Lean on me, Fred.”

They stumbled up over the crest of the beach into the brush with his arm around her shoulders. She couldn’t support him too long without falling down, but had to find some real shade.

“Can’t keep moving you. You’re too heavy.”

“You’re too good to me, Marie.”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s a fact.  Here, here’s a nice tree.”

It was quite a large, spreading tree, like a gnarled old oak with light gray bark and big leaves.  Good shade, and though it was perhaps fifty feet inland, the breeze wasn’t too much reduced.  She eased him down to the ground.

“Now, Fred, you just relax while I go get the raft for you to rest in.”

“Just give our bags to the porter, Marie, with a nice tip.”

“Right.  I’ll do that.  Just you rest.”

She dragged the raft up to the tree and helped him into it.  Wondered how long the rubber would last before it ripped, or cracked. He was snoring almost before she had him settled.

“It’ll last till Itasca gets here.”

She scanned the horizon. Empty.  What now?

What she usually did with time on her hands. Located her notebook and pencil, sat down under a tree.

Dear Mrs Eho,

Well, Mammy, I have written you from some ‘xotic locales, but none as ‘xotic as this one. Your loving doter is safe and sound, on an honest-to-goodness desert island! A castaway! With an injured companion – poor Fred hurt his head in the landing, but I don’t think it’s serius. They’ll fix him up when Itasca gets here.

Which should happen any ol’ time now. In the meantime, I do have a lovely view. The ocean couldn’t be bluer, nor the sky, just punctuated by puffy cumulus clouds and crisscrossed by soaring white and black birds – terns and frigate birds, I think, and lots of boobies. And I just saw a red-tailed tropic bird. No unnatural sounds, just the sough of the wind, the thunder of the surf breaking white on the reef, and the bird cries.

Not a bad place to take a li’l break, though on balance I’d rather be on Howland. Whither I shall repair – with Fred and our lovely ship – as soon as the Coast Guard gets here.

She chewed on the pencil. No use going into detail. Glanced at Fred – snoring peacefully – and out at the plane. Time to go. The rest of the letter could wait.

Down the beach slope and out onto the reef flat.  The tide was low, so there was almost no water on the reef, but it was slick with algae.  She fell down twice, the second fall leaving her on hands and knees, perhaps fifty feet from the plane. She looked at it standing there in the bright tropical sun. She hadn’t really given it a proper post-landing inspection yesterday.

“Seriously, Amelia, as if you had nothing else to do…”

With the tide out, the shimmering reflections on the ship’s belly were much reduced. She could see it clearly, and – was there something strange about it? Something missing? She stood up, worked her way to the wing and then to the fuselage, got back on hands and knees to peer under it.

“Oh my god....”

The starboard pitot tube was bent back, and the antenna that had been attached to it was – gone. She sidled back under the plane’s belly. Yes, the ventral mast that had supported the wire was half-broken, hanging by a shred of metal, and the wire itself was nowhere to be seen. The aft mast was gone altogether.

“Maybe when we landed – it was pretty rough.”

But that wasn’t the explanation. Takeoff was just as rough, and with so much weight…

Shaking her head, she crawled in the side door, worked her way forward to the cockpit.

“Lost it at Lae. Almost for sure.”

What would lacking the belly antenna have done? Severely limited direction finding, but…

“We never even got decent contact, so would it make any difference?”

She slid into her seat. It was already baking hot.  No point trying to start the engine right now; she wouldn’t have time for more than a quick message before the heat became intolerable.  Clicked on the radio, listened.  Nothing.  Thumbed the mic button to transmit.

“Any station, any station.  This is Amelia Earhart.  Down on an island south of Howland, on 157-337 line of position, near ship on reef, named Norwich.  Navigator seriously injured.  Send help please.  SOS, SOS.  Uh… northwest end of unknown island, uh, south of equator. Earhart Out.” 

No response. 

“Belly antenna probably wouldn’t make much difference here anyway….”

Or would it? She shook her head. OK, now try Morse for more range.  She used the mic button to send three dots, three dashes, three dots.  The button seemed a bit sticky somehow.  Tried KHAQQ – God, she was bad at Morse.  Slow, hesitating, afraid of forming the wrong letter, and – yes, the button was sticky, which didn’t make it any easier.  Waited, listened.

No response.

Too hot to stay.  Come back tonight.  Better range at night anyway.  If they were still here when night came -- if Itasca hadn't come by then. Though surely… She depressed the mic button again.

“KHAQQ to any station.  Look for us on reef, northwest end of island near Norwich shipwreck.  Be advised, I am flying a kite.”

She switched off, crawled back over the fuel tanks.  Pulled the two engine covers out of the tail – light, strong Grenfell cloth; she could envision how to weave their cinch-up cords together to make a hammock.  Up over the fuel tanks and found the two desert water bags – both half-empty.  Grabbed them both.  And there was the little tin briefcase Fred had bought in Africa; he’d appreciate that, if…  Bundled everything up in the engine covers, almost fell out the door, and made her way back across the reef flat. The water bags sloshed on her back.

“Half full. Think half full, not half empty.”

Stumbled on. Stopped suddenly. Damn, she had forgotten the first-day covers. Shook her head and continued toward shore. They’d be there tomorrow, assuming…

Fred was sitting up when she got to the tree, looking bemusedly at a crowd of hermit crabs that had formed around him, and poking at them with a stick.

“Amelia!  There you are!” 

He smiled at her. Surprised, she almost burst into tears.

“Oh, Fred!  You’re OK?” 

“Well, my head feels about a mile across, and hurts like hell, but other than that….”

“Here, have some water.  Let me look ...”

He drank greedily.  Don’t drink it all. She pulled back his hair and looked at his lump.  Bigger than yesterday, angry, blotchy red, blue, white.  Almost certainly a concussion, and heavy bruising.  The gash was oozing pus, and was clearly infected.  What to do?  Try to keep it clean, encourage the body to heal itself.  Nothing much I can do to stop the infection.

She stumbled down to the water with the cup from her thermos, gathered some sea water and returned, rinsed the wound.  He winced, but didn’t cry out.  She dabbed it gently with Mercurochrome on gauze from the smaller first aid kit, covered it with a light bandage from the large tin one.

“OK, Fred, just you try to rest, while I go try and find us something to eat.”

“There are these crabs.  They look like they’d be happy to return the favor.”

“Pretty small, but there are bigger ones; I saw one this morning.  Anyhow, let me scout around.”

“No sign of Itasca?”

“No, and no sign there’s anybody living on the island.  But I haven’t looked very far.”

“We circled, didn’t we?” 

Didn’t he remember? 

“Yes, so sure, if anyone’s here, they saw us, and should have been here by now.  You relax and commune with the crabs, while I go look for some food.”

“OK.  Just let me get this head under control and I’ll help.”

“Of course; I know.” 

She started toward the shore, then stopped.  No food in the plane, and as for the reef – fish were a given; she could always catch fish, but then she would have to cook them.  What she needed was instant food.  Fruit – mangos, papayas, coconuts, breadfruit, bananas. 

There were those bumpy things on the bush where Fred had slept; she noticed now that similar bushes were scattered all along the landward side of the beach.  Good to eat, or poisonous? 

“There’s got to be more.  Real fruits.  It’s a tropical island, for goodness’ sake.” Not one of the Filberts, true, but… She smiled at the memory of GP’s silly book – and another from her childhood. The Coral Island.  Lots of food on that island, at least for resourceful young British sailors.  Water, too.

“Little did I know…….” 

She worked her way around a big bush and headed inland.

Her twisting path through the trees finally brought her to the edge of the pond she had seen from the air – hardly more than a puddle, surrounded by thick brush. She found a thin spot in their wall of twisted stalks and pushed through, fell through on her knees at the edge of the pond. Touched the water with a finger and tasted it. Salty.

“Damn…”

And not so attractive as a bathing place as it had looked from the air.

“The surf will do, if need be.”

She backed out of the brush, stood up and began to retrace her steps. Got lost. Stopped, took stock. Listened for the boom of the surf and walked toward it; it steadily got louder.

She scrambled around and over the roots of a fallen tree – one of the grey giants – and stopped short.

“By the grace of God! Manna from heaven!”

She almost wished she were Catholic so she could cross herself. 

It was someone’s camp – had to be, though long abandoned.  Pieces of deck planking from the shipwreck, big tattered pieces of tarp peeking up from under the deadfall, a boathook, an oar, a dutch oven – and a pile of cans.  Unopened cans, almost certainly food cans, a dozen or so.

The crabs had eaten the labels off everything, so she couldn’t tell what they contained.  Some of them were bulging, but most were not.  She selected a couple of the least rusty among the latter and found her way back to Fred’s tree, feeling like singing and skipping. 

“Took me a li’l shoppin’ trip; got us some vittles!”

Fred looked at her wide-eyed. “What tree did you find those growing on?”

“A can-taloupe tree, of course! Seriously, they were in a pile back in the bush, with quite a few more, and other stuff. Must be from the Norwich.”

Her sheath knife opened the cans handily.  One was full of peaches, the other was corned beef.  Both smelled all right.  They consumed both with glee, and drained the peach juice.  It was pretty tinny, tasted of rust, but it could have been ambrosia.  She went back to the pile, and in two more trips brought all the rest of the intact, non-bulging cans.  Ship’s biscuits in one big square one – stale but edible.  Mutton stew in another.  They started a new fire and cooked the stew, ate it all with biscuits. She lay back against a log and patted her tummy.

“It’s enough to make you believe in miracles. Should last us till Itasca gets here.”

Fred picked mutton out of his teeth with a stick. 

“Way I figure it, the Norwich  crew must’ve been marooned here awhile, salvaged supplies to live on, and these are what they left when they got rescued.”

“Wonder how long it’s been there.”

“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

“Gift goat, you mean?”

“Ouch!  Don’t make me laugh!  Splits the fu… the head.” 

He had suddenly gotten pale again, squinted his eyes.

Unwelcome memory. What was the boy’s name?  Jimmie?  In the hospital in Toronto, with the bad head wound.  Out of his skull one day, perfectly coherent the next.  His gee-whiz smile as he talked with her one day about flying, how he was going to be a pilot.  How they had connected, back when her own rapture with flight was just beginning. How she had massaged his stiff shoulders.  How the next day his fever had skyrocketed, and by midafternoon they pulled the blanket up over his eyes and took him out.

“Lie down, Fred. I’m going to go look for water.” 

She checked his dressing, decided it would do for the time being. Patted his shoulder; squeezed it.

She worked her way around and sometimes through or under the bushes.  The boys in The Coral Island had found fresh water – where?  In a spring on the reef, wasn’t it?  And running down a cliff?  The land rose inland, and she walked that way with hopes for a spring, or a pond, but nothing materialized. 

Something was tickling the back of her mind, something surprising she had read in an encyclopedia, or in National Geographic, about coral atolls.  She stopped, looked down, scuffed the ground with her foot.  Under a thin layer of leaves, it was all broken coral, just like on the shore.

“No soil. No springs, no creeks.  No mountains.  No … aquifer.”

But the trees grew; they were getting water someplace.  There was something special about coral islands and water.

“There’s fresh water, but you have to have roots to get at it.  Or dig, I guess.”

That must be how people could live on coral islands; they must dig wells.  But no one lived here, which must mean….

“Oh damn.”

She sat down, trying to fend off the wave of panic creeping over her.  Succeeded, for now.

“OK, so there’s no spring, and the pond is salt…” 

But there were those ponds she’d seen as they rounded the south end of the island.  Could they be fresh?  Maybe, but Fred probably couldn’t walk that far, at least not till his head improved, and it would surely take her half a day to get there, another half to get back.  And before then the Itasca would certainly be here.  But…  She sprang up and began walking south, just to see what was in the way.

What was in the way was a channel, a hundred yards or more wide, cutting right through from the sea to the lagoon.  She was going to have either to wade or swim across it or go back north, east, and down the other side of the island, through thick vegetation, it looked like.

“Well, I won’t dissolve.”

It was an opportunity to rinse off. She took off her shoes and socks – finally semi-dry – and waded into the water.  It felt good, cooling but not cold.  Up to her knees, then washing around her waist.  Squishy sand underfoot. She ducked under, came up shaking her hair. Started to unbutton her shirt.

The shark fin seemed to come out of nowhere; suddenly it was circling her.  Then another.  Not big – after her initial start, she decided the sharks weren’t more than three or four feet long.  But still….

“Go!” 

She splashed the water, kicked at them, almost fell over. 

“Shoo!” 

They continued to circle, but didn’t come any closer.  She carefully backed up until the water was only knee deep, then turned and splashed ashore.

“OK, that’s not going to work – at least not without the raft.”

And for now, Fred needed the raft to keep the crabs away.  So how to get water?  She sat on the beach and let the sun warm her skin, dry her hair and clothes.  Raw fish were a possibility, she thought, but salty.  How to get rid of the salt?

She contemplated her drying shirt sleeve.  In the bright sun she could almost watch the salt crystals form as the water evaporated.

“Evaporating…..” 

She grimaced. 

“Oh Amelia, you are such an idiot! All you need is a sun still! The famous sun still!”

She shook her head, smiling. That serious conversation with Gene and Gore in the car coming back from the Army-Navy game -- well, Gore took it seriously, as he did so many things, and Gene was genuinely worried about her, thinking through the options. She, though, had treated it as something of a joke. Stuck on a desert island? No water? Easy, build a sun still.

“Great plan, Amelia, so…”

So how? With what? It would take a watertight container of some kind, with a sloping glass lid...

"Perhaps in the wreck..."

Out to the wreck. Lots of barrels, some steel boxes. Here was one she might be able to top with a piece of glass.

"But where's the glass?"

Wheelhouse, of course. She scanned the bridge, couldn't see whether it had windows.

"OK, Millie, time to climb."

Through a gap in the hull, up a burned, twisted steel staircase, along a burnt wooden deck -- holding on to whatever she could, careful not to fall through. Up another staircase, then up a ladder, and finally out onto the main deck.

"Carefully, carefully..."

Why hadn't she told Fred where she was going?

"Well, what could he do?"

Hands on knees across the burned wood and steel deck -- the wood was charred and unsafe, but there was enough steel to support her. Finally, she threw herself against the superstructure, found a ladder, climbed.

She came out at last on the bridge, facing the wheelhouse -- which had been gutted by fire.

"Well, damn."

There had been windows -- big ones, with thick glass, but they were all shattered into tiny fragments, many of them melted into mere globules.

"Hot."

Meaning the fire that had ravaged the ship, but it applied to her, too. She sat on what was left of the bridge deck, mopped her brow.

"OK, without a big piece of glass I can't build a sun still..."

What about the Electra? Remove one of its windshields? Shook her head; she wasn't ready to do that. If she could, and she wasn’t sure she had the tools.

"But maybe one of the smaller windows..."

Were any of them big enough? 

"Maybe...."

She gingerly worked her way to the bridge rail, looked at the Electra. Baking in the sun. If she detached the window by Fred’s table…

“Maybe…”

Maybe in the stern of the shipwreck? She peered at it under her palm. Not very hopeful – burned like the rest of the hulk, rusting, and a long way off across fragile burned decks. The Norwich was a big ship, stern hanging off the edge of the reef in the clear green water.

“Must’ve hit full speed to drive so far up on shore. But there must’ve been survivors.”

Would there be any big sheets of glass in the engine room, or the cargo holds? She couldn’t think why, and surely they had gotten at least as hot as the superstructure.

She scanned beyond the ship and the plane, beyond the reef, out to the horizon. Maybe she wouldn’t need a still.

Nothing.

But something else was tickling the back of her mind. 

She was halfway down the ladder to the main deck when it hit her.

"Of course! Millie, you can be so dense!"

She hung for a moment on the ladder, remembering a summer day in Atchison. A hot prairie day, blue sky though not as blue as here. Two bored girls, playing along the bank of a creek. Pidge asking --

"What if we were lost in the woods?"

"We wouldn't get lost."

"But suppose we were kidnapped or captured by Indians and abandoned in the woods."

“I’d climb a tree, see which direction the sun seemed to be going, figure out where north was, and….”

“But what would we eat and drink?”

"We'd trap small animals to eat, and drink clear, cold water from the streams and springs."

"But..."

"Maybe trap a deer; we could dig a pit."

"But what if the water was -- well, look at the water in the creek!”

Green, slimy with mold, it had been. Water striders traversing its surface.

"We'd … we’d distill clean water from it."

“How?”

The answer, which they had promptly put to the test that lazy afternoon, was something vaguely remembered from a magazine article -- some adventure magazine ostensibly for boys -- how to make a still from...

"Dutch oven! And I know just where to find one!"

Back at the wreck survivors’ campsite, she dug the dutch oven out of the vines that covered it, and found its low-domed top lying nearby.  Both were badly rusted, but serviceable.  Carried both back to their camp.  Fred was sleeping; he seemed peaceful enough.  She took the dutch oven, its lid, and the peach can down to water, washed them out thoroughly.  Used the peach can to ladle about three inches of seawater into the dutch oven and carried it back to camp.

Down again to the shipwreck then, where she thought she remembered – yes!  A heavy ceramic coffee cup, half buried in the sand.  She rinsed it out – OK, she thought, she could tolerate a little salt – and brought it up to the camp.

The fire had gone out, and blowing on the coals didn’t re-ignite it.  “Damn,” she swore, glancing at Fred, still snoozing.  His chest rose and fell gently, and he was snoring a bit.  His lighter lay at his side.  It didn’t take her long to get a cheerful little fire going.  She set the dutch oven firmly in the midst of the flames, placed the cup in its center, and put on the lid upside-down.  Sat back and watched. 

“Have to find a way to make fire if we run out of lighter fuel before… Or flints.” 

She smiled tightly; she had already thought of something, and she could get what she needed when she went to the ship tonight.  Thank God the water hadn’t gotten any higher under it, hadn’t made it float!  It was shining in the sun, the yellow kite flying bravely above it in the steady wind.

The water in the dutch oven was boiling, steam seeping out around the edges of the lid.  No problem. Most of it would condense on the lid, run to its lowest point, and drop into the cup.  At least it ought to. It had worked to purify creek water in Kansas.  She smiled, remembering how reluctant Pidge had been to drink the product.

“But not I, and look at me now.”

While she waited, she took another walk to the shipwreck but didn’t find anything useful. Stared out to sea, looking for a mast, smoke, a sail. 

Nothing.

The fire was burning out when she returned to camp.  Carefully, using her extra shirt as a potholder, she lifted the inverted lid of the dutch oven and looked inside.  The dutch oven was almost empty, with a rim of salt forming near its bottom, but the cup was half full of water.  She carefully maneuvered the pot out of the fire and left it to cool.  Walked back down to the beach, scanned the horizon with the binoculars. 

Nothing. 

When the cup had cooled enough to touch, she lifted it to her lips, tasted the contents.  Still a bit salty, but that was probably from washing the cup out in seawater.  It was basically fresh. 

“Oh, Glory be!”

Look at her, talking like her grandmother.

“Clever girl.”

“Fred! You’re awake!”

“Yeah, shouldn’t I be?”

“No, I’m glad.  Let’s see your noggin.”

“It’s OK, but I’ve got to….”

“What?”

“Uh, go to the head.”

“Oh.  I haven’t found anyplace better than a bush back there.” 

She waved into the brush. 

“Pick a bush, any bush.  You need help?”

He looked daggers at her, said nothing, but when he tried to get up he fell to his knees, hands to his forehead.

“Oh goddamn!”

“Here, let me…” 

She started toward him, but he waved her away, struggled to his feet and staggered into the bush.  It was fifteen minutes or so before he finally came back, gingerly lowered himself to the ground.

“Whew!  No… no sign of Itasca, I guess….?”

“No.  It’ll be dark soon, and maybe cool enough so I won’t bake in the ship; I’ll go back out there and try calling again.”

“Tide should be low soon.”

“It was going out awhile ago.  Anything you want from the ship?”

“Not unless you have a bottle of scotch squirreled away.”

She threw another stick in the fire.

“’Fraid not. I thought I’d get the octant.”

“Get the sextant if you’ve a choice.  No need for all the bubbles when you’re not bouncing around in an airplane.”

“Well, I was thinking to get it for a lens, use it to focus sunlight and make fire when your lighter gives out.”

“Shit!  -- Sorry, but – well, we won’t be here that long.”

“No, no, but just in case.”

“Sure.” He lay back carefully, throwing his arm over his face.  “Just in case.”

Notes

“…first day covers…” AE carried a collection of stamped commemorative “cover” envelopes and had them canceled at each of her stops; the idea was to sell them at the end of the trip as a fundraising device.  See Sound of Wings p. 239-40; Last Flight p.107; Amelia Earhart’s Shoes pp. 59-60.

“…found her compact.” Photos of AE during and before the World Flight show her holding what appears to be a square compact, and such a compact survives in the Earhart collection at Purdue University.  We have found what appear to be fragments of a mirror of consistent size at the Seven Site on Nikumaroro, together with pieces of material chemically consistent with rouge and what appears to be the corner of a small, thin metal box, again consistent with the thing(s) AE holds in the various images. See http://ameliaearhartarchaeology.blogspot.com/2012/09/artifacts-of-seven-site-compact.html.

“Had she emptied the cockpit pee-bucket?” Although the Electra had a lavatory aboard, it was aft of the navigator’s station, requiring a crawl back over the auxiliary fuel tanks to access. I assume that AE equipped the cockpit with a bucket, as seems to have been common practice at the time.

“…surely the biggest crab she had ever seen.” Nikumaroro is home to many Coconut or Robber Crabs (Birgus latro), the world’s largest terrestrial arthropod.  See http://eol.org/pages/2982586/overview , http://www.arkive.org/coconut-crab/birgus-latro/ and http://tighar.org/wiki/Coconut_crabs_(Birgus_Latro) .  Although famous for being able to husk coconuts, B. latro is an omnivore.  We have observed them dismembering rats, and they (together with C. perlatus) have been enthusiastic participants in TIGHAR’s taphonomy experiments, rapidly reducing lamb chops and a pig carcass to skeletal remnants; c.f. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBXpSSEcXYs

“Marie?” The late Betty Klenck Brown, who as a young girl heard and recorded a series of radio transmissions that may have come from AE and Noonan after their disappearance, reported that the male voice repeatedly referred to “Marie.”  See Finding Amelia: Chap. 17; also see http://tighar.org/wiki/Betty's_Notebook and http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Documents/Notebook/notebook.html

“… quite a large, spreading tree.” Pisonia grandis, or “buka” in the Tunguru (Gilbertese) language. Indigenous to the atolls of the area but mostly cleared away on populated islands to make way for coconuts, pandanus, and other important food and fiber plants. Still common on Nikumaroro and more so in 1937.

“Dear Mrs. Eho.” AE wrote her mother often, and often used pet names like “Mrs Eho” and “Mammy.” In correspondence with her and others close to her, she often employed creative sentence construction and spelling See Letters from Amelia.

“The starboard pitot tube was bent back…” There is good evidence for loss of the Electra’s belly antenna on takeoff from Lae. For discussions, see TIGHAR 1999, “The Lost Antenna,” https://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Research/Bulletins/20_LostAntenna/20_LostAntenna.html and 2000, “The Lost Antenna II,” http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Research/Bulletins/26_Antenna2/26_Antenna2.html

“God, she was bad at Morse!” Neither AE nor Noonan had good Morse code skills. See https://tighar.org/wiki/Failure_to_communicate for discussion.

“…near ship on reef …” Amateur radio listener Dana Randolph reported hearing a transmission from AE on July 4, 1937 saying “ship is on reef south of the equator” (Finding Amelia:142-43; also See http://tighar.org/Publications/TTracks/2005Vol_21/onreef.pdf).  The reference to a “ship” could mean the Norwich City or some other ship, but AE also routinely referred to the Electra as a “ship” (See Last Flight).

“The button seemed a bit sticky somehow.” There is some uncertainty about the details of AE’s radio transmission equipment, but the consensus seems to be that on those rare occasions when she tried to send Morse Code she did so by depressing and releasing the microphone button. TIGHAR radio expert Mike Everett has suggested to me that the lengthy, seemingly inadvertent voice transmissions reported by Betty Klenck Brown (See https://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Documents/Notebook/notebook.html) might have resulted from the microphone button being stuck in the depressed position.

“Grenfell Cloth” “A closely woven twilled fabric of ply yarns of Egyptian cotton. Water repellent, windproof, and reversible” (from Fairchild’s Dictionary of Textiles, quoted in TIGHAR Tracks 6:4, p. 5, 9/29/90, which also quotes a March 7, 1937 New York Herald-Tribune interview with AE in which she describes “specially made covers of Grenfell cloth for the propellers and engines.” See www.tighar.org/Publications/TTracks/1990Vol_6/0604.pdf

“…desert water bags” In an interview published on March 7, 1937 in the New York Herald Tribune (reproduced on page 192 of Amelia, My Courageous Sister), AE reports that she will be carrying two desert water bags aboard the Electra.

“…the little tin briefcase Fred had bought in Africa.” After lightening the ship in Lae, “(a)ll Fred has is a small tin case which he picked up in Africa.”  Last Flight 1937:131.

“Not one of the Filberts…” In a remarkable coincidence, in 1921 (some seven years before meeting AE), GP wrote and published a spoof on the classic South Seas adventure tale under the pseudonym Walter E. Traprock (or George Shepard Chappell, depending on whether one reads the flyleaf or the cover). Titled The Cruise of the Kawa: Wanderings in the South Seas, the novel describes the apocryphal author’s discovery of the equally apocryphal Filbert Islands, at the junction of the Equator and the 180^th Meridian – about four degrees of latitude north and six degrees of longitude west of “Norwich Island.” Among the delights of the Filberts was a virtual constant rain of nuts, which together with readily available fish and plenty of water made the islands a virtual paradise. It seems likely that a copy of The Cruise … was readily available to AE in the years before the World Flight, and that she read it at some point for amusement.

 “The Coral Island”  I’ve been told (but have not been able to confirm) that this 1858 book by R.M. Ballantyne – also said to have inspired William Golding’s Lord of the Flies – was a favorite of Earhart’s in her youth. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coral_Island

“…pond she had seen from the air.” This pond, often dry, is at 4^o39’21.65”S, 174^o32’22.14”W. We don’t know whether it was full or dry on July 2, 1937.

“It was someone’s camp…” Left by Norwich City survivors. See http://tighar.org/wiki/Norwich_City_Survivors'_Shelter for discussion of this camp, photographed in 1938-39 by the New Zealand Pacific Aviation Expedition (See https://tighar.org/wiki/New_Zealand_Survey_(1938) .

“In the hospital in Toronto.” “Jimmie” and his fate are pure speculation on my part, but AE did work as a nurse’s aide in Toronto toward the end of World War I (See for instance Sound of Wings p. 25, Courage is the Price pp 102-3; Courageous Sister pp.49-54.

 “…something special about coral islands and water.” AE is remembering that on coral islands there is often a buried “lens” of fresh water; see for instance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lens_(hydrology). I have no idea whether she actually knew about such lenses, but see no reason why she wouldn’t have read or heard about them.

“What was in the way was a channel.” Known during the colonial period (1939-63) and today as Tatiman Passage, this channel is at about 4^o40’04”S, 174^o32’17”W.  Sharks are plentiful and inquisitive. Most are black-tipped reef sharks, not particularly dangerous, but there seems to be no reason to think that AE knew this – and they are certainly startling to unsuspecting waders.

“…that serious conversation.” “On the way home from the Army-Navy game at West Point with Gene and Gore (Vidal) the previous fall, AE had talked about her round-the-world flight… Gore and his father each responded with worries about the Pacific. Amelia, though, … answered ‘Oh, there are always islands.’ … ‘Then,’ Gore remembered, ‘they discussed just how you could survive and what would you do if there was no water? And if there was no water, you would have to make a sunstill and extract salt from sea water and how was that done.’” East to the Dawn pp. 384-85.

“Pidge asking…” “Pidge” was the Earhart family’s pet name for Amelia’s younger sister Muriel.

Dutch oven as still. It is widely known that pots with domed lids can be adapted to distill fresh water from salt. See for example http://www.survivopedia.com/how-to-turn-salt-water-into-drinking-water/ . AE’s knowledge of this use for a dutch oven is speculation on my part, but seems plausible. Her dialogue with her sister is, of course, made up.

“I think we fight too many wars…” AE seems to have been a fairly dedicated pacifist, though not especially aggressive about it. For example, she was quoted as saying: “(a)s an individual, I’m opposed to war” See Sound of Wings: 201.