POLAR EXPEDITION

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 79, 27 December 1937, Page 11

POLAR EXPEDITION

Air Mail — Own Correspondent)

To Sail in Windjammer

(By

LONDON, Nov. 27. An Antarctic expedition is to sail from the Thames in the New Year in a windjammer which is at present lying ofr Gravesend. She is the schooner-rigged Westward, formerly named the Danefolk, which was built in 1920 for tho Australian grain trade. The Westward has been converted into a yaeht with 60 cabins, and is now fitted with two auxiliary motors. She is to be used to carry the personnel and heavy equipment of the expodition to Lyttelton, New Zealand. An aeroplane is included in the equipment. At Lyttelton the 26 members of the expedition will transfer to the Shackleton, a wlialing vessel of only 170 tons, which is now being refitted in Norway. The Westward has been lent to the expedition by Mr. H. K. Hales. Mr. Ernest Walker, the young l8ader of the expedition, is now making final preparations in his offiee abroad the Westward.

He said that the base for the expedition will be Cape Jones, South Victoria Land. "The chief object is to caTry out a pioneer air survey of the coast line of Oates Land," he said, "and there will be geological and cartographical survoys in South Victoria Land. Several expeditions have previously tried to determine the coast line of Oates Land, without success." Mr. Walker has served in the R.A.F. He is a meteorologist and a geologist, and was a member of an expedition that explored James Bay, Hndson Bay, three years ago. Dr. Rohleder will be chief of the scientifie staff, and Dr. Fountaine, who was a member of the Wager Arctic Expedition, will he surgeon and assistant cartographor. Dr. A. D. L. Hussey, who went with Sir Ernest Shackleton in the Quest, is chairman of the Expedition Committee. Huskies are to be transported from Canada, and most of them are being endowed by publie schools and societies.