PETER THE WHALER

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 11, Issue 88, 7 October 1947, Page 6

PETER THE WHALER

What ho, what ho, ma hearties. Weil once more we are having blustery weather as I write this. The old ship is rolling a little at her anchor and I will have to go aboard and make sure everything is safely battened down before night. I had my high powered telescope out to have a look at' conditions in Whakatane a little while ago. I spent a long time rigging it up and finally all was ready for a look. I peered in the end and guess what I saw;. Mr Butinsky peering down the other end! Well I soon removed him. Fancy him doing that! He did look funny magnified though I will admit. Well I hope by the time that you read this that the- weather has cleared and the sun will be shining down. Must get on with the story now. Cheerio P.T.W.

OUR STORY

ON AN ICE FLOW

Landing by ’plane near the North Pole, in the Central Polar Basin, Ivan Papanin and three other Russian scientists camped for nine months on a drifting ice-floe which carried them more than 1500 miles south to the coast of Greenland. In addition to stores and other equipment, they had to carry half a ton of scientific instruments. They proved that the Pole was not a barren waste, devoid of beast or bird life.

The ordeal they endured is recorded in Papanin’s diary: “Life on an Ice-floe,” translated by Fanny Smitham. A' constant anxiety was: would the floe break' up in the pounding ice and precipitate them into the freezing depths? At one point, after the floe had quaked with a violent shock, fissures in the ice compelled them, to shift quarters, but the main part held. “One of the fissures,” Papanin recorded, “has cut us off from the far aerial mast and the silk radio tent we pitched yesterday.” When blizzards raged they had to shovel for hours clearing their camp or they would have been' completer ly buried and no .’plane could have found them. The blizzard “tore fiercely at our lightweight tents . *. . Our hydrological instruments need constant attention to prevent them from freezing. After each blizzard we have to settle in afresh.”

In another the cry went up: “Quickly, come and help! The storm is smashing the radio tent!” Jumping to his feet, Papanin seized his deerskin coat, but the wind tore it out of his hands and blew it into a fissure. “Lying flat and sometimes kneeling (the wind was too strong for us to stay on our feet), Eugene and I held on tightly to the canvas which was straining away from our hands, while Ernst crawled inside the tent and packed up the equip-

ment of the radio station. When we crawled out we pulled up the few remaning pegs and that was the end of the tent.”

They had hot meals from concentrated foods cooked on primus stoves, but once, when the tent was tightly laced to keep out the gale, a stove burst into flames and set fire to it. Papanin wrapped his hands in rag, seized the blazing primus, and flung it outside, escaping with slight but painful burns. All the time they were drifting steadily south on their floe. Imagine the thrill when, after nine months, Ernst looked out one morning and cried: “Land, land!” At last, Greenland’s icy mountains rearing their shaorp needles from that grim, grey waste. That same day they shot three bears and had fresh meat. The radio told them that two expedition ships were heading for them at the ice-edge; any hour now a searching plane would make contact. When it did land, guided by a beacon they had lighted, and the pilot jumped out, the excitement was terrific.

After the pilot had taken off again and night fell, the party could see the searchlights of the two icebreakers forging towards them from the outer world. When they reached the ships and saw men carrying banners coming towards them, Papanin says: “Tears of joy ran down my cheeks. We felt happy, yet at the same time rather sorry to leave the floe we had lived on for so long.” * * * *

What is it you look for, but are glad when you can’t find it?—A hole in your stocking.