STORMY TRIP

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 61, 13 March 1934, Page 8

STORMY TRIP

BYRD'S SHIP RETURNS

BACK FROM ANTARCTICA

(By Telegraph)' (Special to the "Evening Post.") DITNEDIN, March 12. After 14 days of gales, hurricanes, and mountainous seas that broke over her decks like avalanches, the Bear of Oakland arrived at Port Chalmers from the Antarctic this afternoon looking little the worse for her rough handling, except for the loss of her bowsprit, which was snapped'-off .while the vessel was forcing her way through the pack ice' in /the Bay of Whales. "Serious gales broken only by hurricanes," was how Lieutenant English, who is in command of the vessel, described the trip to a reporter. "Sometimes it was bad, and when it changed it got worse. "The day we left the Bay of Whales, February 26, the ice was veryhard," Lieutenant English added, "and this was clear evidence of a coming freeze-up. Only a week before it was soft and crumbling. We had just come Crom a cruise to King Edward the Seventh Land around 40,300 square miles of territory, and found pack ice which Admiral Byrd said was the heaviest he had seen in his life. That ice had all gone. to the west, and we skirted it in coming to our rendezvous with the Discovery. We left the pack ice behind in the Bay of Whales, but after that we encountered a large field of the bergs which drift around those waters all the year round. About a week afterwards, however, we were clear of the ice. From records I have seen I don't believe any other vessel has had such a stormy passage in those waters. "The. r jiping party in the Bay of Whales are all reported to be in" the best of health and spirits, with plenty of work ahead of them. For a time it was feared that the ice on which they were camped would crumble, as . there was a big rift in one part, bnt the freeze-up has disposed of that likelihood." v ■ . The Bear of Oakland will be laid up at Port Chalmers for the winter.