American aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart was attempting to fly round the globe, when her plane disappeared. Fleming Philippa Jorissen is part of an international team that believes her craft may well be found on an uninhabited island in the Pacific.
Fleming Philippa Jorissen helps in search for Amelia Earhart’s plane in the Pacific
Colin Clapson
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“I find it very difficult to say how likely it is that we’ll find the aeroplane, but I certainly hope so” says Philippa Jorissen, one of the researchers heading to Nikumaroro Island to search for Amelia Earhart’s missing aeroplane. “In the US, she’s a real heroine; everyone knows her and her story.”
Philippa is part of an international research team from Purdue University in Indiana and the Archaeological Legacy Institute (ALI) in Oregon. Together, they are searching for aviation pioneer Earhart’s missing aeroplane to determine whether she actually crashed on Nikumaroro Island.
Jorissen completed a master’s degree in archaeology in Leiden and then moved to Oregon to pursue her PhD. “I specialise in island archaeology, mainly on islands in the Caribbean and the Pacific. That’s how I came to be involved in this project.”
After six days at sea, Jorissen finally set foot on Nikumaroro for the first time.
“We took the boat out to the island for the first time today. It was quite an adventure. The sea is quite rough. You have to transfer from the large boat to a smaller one and then navigate that smaller boat through a narrow channel. That’s quite a feat in itself,” laughs Philippa.
“We’ve laid out a path today so that we can carry all our equipment to the other side of the lagoon and then start our fieldwork.”
“The island is completely uninhabited. No one has been here since 2017”.
But is Earhart’s aeroplane really on Nikumaroro?
“We know both a lot and very little about it,” Philippa explains. “There are a huge number of theories about where she crashed. According to some theories, she landed somewhere near Japan or was taken prisoner. But there’s also a theory that she crashed near this island. That has become one of the more widely accepted theories.”
Several expeditions have already been to Nikumaroro. “Her radio signals have also been traced back to this spot,” Philippa says.
“When a hurricane passed through here in 2015, someone started looking at the satellite images. An object appeared in the lagoon that could not be identified. It was a new object, which some people think might well be Amelia’s aeroplane.”
‘I became involved in the project when they showed me the satellite images taken after the hurricane had passed,’ says Philippa.
Earhart a pioneer in many fields
Earhart was a pioneer in the field of aviation, but she was much more than that.
“For example, she was married, but she told her husband she wouldn’t stop flying. From a young age, she stood up for herself and tried to break through gender norms. I think that’s what makes her particularly popular today.”
“At the start of the 20th century, it was absolutely unheard of for women to be in the spotlight like that, certainly not in a male-dominated profession like that of a pilot. She also continued to pursue records: amongst other things, she was the first woman to make a solo flight across the Atlantic and set records for flight distances.”
“Her final attempt was a flight round the world. But sadly, that ended in tragedy.”
Amelia’s aeroplane crashed and has never been recovered.