CAPELOTTI, P(eter) J(oseph) 1960-

PERSONAL:

Born 1960. Education: University of Rhode Island, B.A., 1983, M.A., 1989; Rutgers University, Ph.D. 1996.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Division of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Woodland 235B, Penn State University, Abington College, Abington, PA 19001. E-mail—pjc12@psu.edu.

CAREER:

Professor of social and behavioral sciences. University of Rhode Island, lecturer, 1989-91; Holy Family College, Philadelphia, PA, adjunct professor; Pennsylvania State University, Abington, lecturer in social sciences, 1997—. Member of advisory board for underwater and maritime archaeology, University of Hawaii, 1998—. Military service: U.S. Coast Guard Reserve, 1989—, attained rank of chief petty officer; called to active duty, 2001-03.

MEMBER:

Council for Northeast Historical Archaeology, Sociedad Cubana de Historia de la Ciencia y la Tecnologia, Society for Industrial Archeology, Lighter-than-Air Institute; Association of Balloon and Airship Constructors, Explorers Club, North American Society for Oceanic History, Phi Kappa Phi.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Named Explorer of the Year, Explorers Club, Philadelphia chapter, 1996.

WRITINGS:

Explorers Air Yacht: The Sikorsky S-38 Flying Boat, Pictorial Histories Publishing Co. (Missoula, MT), 1995.

By Airship to the North Pole: An Archeology of Human Exploration, Rutgers University Press (New Brunswick, NJ), 1999.

The Svalbard Archipelago: American Military and Political Geographies of Spitsbergen and Other Norwegian Polar Territories, 1941-1950, McFarland Publishers (Jefferson, NC), 2000.

Sea Drift: Rafting Adventures in the Wake of Kon-Tiki, Rutgers University Press (New Brunswick, NJ), 2001.

EDITOR

Our Man in the Crimea: Commander Hugo Koehler and the Russian Civil War, University of South Carolina Press (Columbia, SC), 1991.

Barry Jason Stein, U.S. Army Heraldic Crests: A Complete Illustrated History of Authorized Distinctive Unit Insignia, University of South Carolina Press (Columbia, SC), 1993.

Robert F. Bennett, Sand Pounders: An Interpretation of the History of the U.S. Life-saving Service, Based on Its Annual Reports for the Years 1870 through 1914, U.S. Coast Guard Historian's Office (Washington, DC), 1998.

Reviewer for Polar Record and Public Historian; contributor to journals and periodicals, including Polar Record, Explorers Journal, Coast Guard, Crosscurrents, Rhode Island, and Air and Space Smithsonian (magazine).

WORK IN PROGRESS:

As editor, Before the Airships Came: E. B. Baldwin's Journal of the Wellman Expedition to Franz Josef Land, 1898-1899. Research on the archaeology and anthropology of American exploration, mass culture, technology, globalization, and theme parks; cultural development and diffusion in maritime and aerospace environments; historical and archaeological research and preservation of sites from polar and aeronautical history; Arctic (Svalbard); Indonesia (Irian Jaya); and Cuba.

SIDELIGHTS:

A significant portion of P. J. Capelotti's research and teaching focuses on the archeological and anthropological study of American exploration. In his books he shares his findings and theories, most of which have been formed since embarking on his own expeditions near the North Pole, in Indonesia, and in the Caribbean.

By Airship to the North Pole: An Archeology of Human Exploration is a study of two explorers that is told in two parts. David W. Norton wrote in Arctic that Capelotti "tantalizes readers with his interdisciplinary subtitle." Capelotti's research in the Spitsbergen—called Svalbard by Norwegians—archipelago, less than a thousand miles from the North Pole, required an investigation of the artifacts left by the failed attempts to reach the Pole undertaken by Swedish explorer Salomon August Andrée and U.S. journalist Walter Wellman, both of whom made the attempt via airship.

Andrée was considered either mad or a fool for attempting the month-long voyage then deemed to be impossible owing to the fact that his craft could not hold its hydrogen for more than several days. His airship Omen ("Eagle") was lofted in 1897, and Andrée and his crew of two me disappeared soon thereafter. Thirty-three years passed before the remains of their camp were discovered on White Island. Wellman made three failed attempts in 1906, 1907, and 1909 to locate the missing explorer in his own dirigible, America, two modifications of which were paid for by his employer, the Chicago Record-Herald. The French-redesignedAmerica was to be the first gasoline-powered airship to travel within the Arctic Circle, at a cost in modern dollars of between $10 and $15 million. Wellman was not thought to be a particularly able explorer, but he was an outstanding promoter and fundraiser.

Isis reviewer Geir Hestmark commented that Capelotti "tells the story well, pointing out all the bad planning, bad equipment, bad decision making, and bad luck that led to each disaster." Hestmark noted that the details of Andrée's trip are more well known, while those of Wellman's are less so, and felt that Capelotti's study "gives us the man more completely and also presents evidence that his intentions and preparations to reach the Pole were more serious and realistic than has usually been acknowledged."

The remains of these and other expeditions to the Virgo Harbor region, the departure point of both Andrée and Wellman, are examined by Capelotti in the second section of By Airship to the North Pole, which was described by a Kirkus Reviews contributor as "a nice job of historical reconstruction."

Capelotti's The Svalbard Archipelago: American Military and Political Geographies of Spitsbergen and Other Norwegian Polar Territories, 1941-1950 studies the islands that were demilitarized in 1920, then mined by Norway and the Soviet Union until World War II. At that point the British, Canadians, and Norwegians exerted their power to prevent the Germans from occupying the islands and extracting their rich mineral deposits. The Germans did occupy the islands, however, and the Allies returned in 1943 to drive them out, whereupon two Allied ships were attacked and sunk from the air. The British returned to retrieve their wounded and attack the Germans, who fled but then returned in battleships, planning to destroy their coalmining settlements. History's Elizabeth B. Elliot-Meisel called The Svalbard Archipelago "an interesting assessment of the islands' strategic military, commercial, and geological value, providing a unique and important piece in the Arctic literature."

Sea Drift: Rafting Adventures in the Wake of Kon-Tiki is Capelotti's study of ocean expeditions by raft that have embarked since the famous voyages of Thor Heyerdahl, whose sea adventures led to the settlement of Easter Island. Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki was a balsa-wood raft that drifted more than 4,000 miles from Peru to Polynesia and Heyerdahl's memoir of the trip sold twenty million copies in sixty-five languages.

Sea Drift documents the more than three dozen transoceanic raft expeditions that were carried out between 1947 and 2000, on crafts made from balsa, straw, plywood, or bamboo. Travelers include a Frenchman who squeezed fish to quench his thirst and an anthropologist who put six women and five men on a raft to determine how they would interact sexually.

American William Willis crossed the Pacific alone twice while in his sixties and seventies. During his first trip Willis imagined himself to be the sole survivor of a nuclear war that had killed everyone else on earth. "That is just terrific stuff," said Capelotti in an interview posted at the Rutgers University Press Web site. Capelotti was asked whether he ever thought of crossing the ocean himself. He said, "absolutely, yes.… I hope to accompany Phil Buck on at least a part of his around-the-world reed boat expedition. But of course my imagination has always been with explorers like Willis or Frenchman Alain Bombard, who made their voyages alone."

When asked why he thinks Kon-Tiki continues to be a popular book, Capelotti replied that he believes "adventure for adventure's sake is ultimately unsatisfying to the human soul. Humans require adventure as a component of our personalities—it is one of the traits that lead us even in childhood to new learning. But the actual triggers of new developments of the human brain, I believe, are the creative combination of adventure with the search for new knowledge. Nearly every expedition described in Sea Drift encompasses this idea pioneered by Thor Heyerdahl that science and adventure seem to be twin pillars of human development."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Arctic, December, 2002, David W. Norton, review of By Airship to the North Pole: An Archaeology of Human Exploration, p. 398.

Choice, November, 1999, R. E. Bilstein, review of By Airship to the North Pole, pp. 560-562; February, 2002, M. W. Graves, review of Sea Drift: Rafting Adventures in the Wake of Kon-Tiki, p. 1085.

History, fall, 2000, Elizabeth B. Elliot-Meisel, review of The Svalbard Archipelago: American Political Geographies of Spitsbergen and Other Norwegian Polar Territories, 1941-1950, p. 28.

Isis, March, 2001, Geir Hestmark, review of By Airship to the North Pole, p. 221.

Kirkus Reviews, June 1, 1999, review of By Airship to the North Pole, p. 847.

ONLINE

Rutgers University Press Web site,http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu/ (May 5, 2003), interview with Capelotti.*