IN ANTARCTICA

Hokitika Guardian, 31 January 1929, Page 5

IN ANTARCTICA

“D v Russell Owen, copyrighted .1928 by New Volk Times Company and St. Louis Post Dispatch. All rights for publication reserved throughout the world. Wireless to ‘New York Times.’ ”

(United Press Association.—fly Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.)

FLY INTO THE UNKNOWN

HAY OF WHALES. .Tan. 2!)

“There are not many good Hying days down hero on account of the unnatural conditions of vis : bility. where one appears simply to be in a big indeterminate howl of misty white, which merges into an equally m ; sty gray sky. Therefore, when Cyclone Haines trusted the weather umpired of our North Polo expedition, and told us the weather was o.k. we felt that it would lie a pity not to take off. Wo started at 2.50 and got off with a heavy load in thirty seconds, thus indicating the strength of the skis landing gear and the practicability of getting off tho ice barrier with a. full load. Wo wero delighted when the sk iis left tho ground without breaking and we saw the Little America looking little indeed as he faded away behind us. For this take off we must give Balchen credit. We were almost immediately looking into unknown areas. To our left was an unehartered coastline of barrier cliffs and ahead and to our right we had visibility of unexplored parts of the barrier surface at least forty miles. When the conditions are the best down here, the visibility is extraordinary. As long as the bright sun would hold we could check our magnetic compass with the sun compass and could lie certain of our course. We knew before starting, from tho pilot balloons Haines had sent up to a high altitude that we would have a strong wind with vis. We wero making about 120 miles an hour, and the cabin was so full of gear we could not stand up. It was necessary to have seven hundred pounds of equipment in place in ease of a forced landing.” SCOTT’S MOUNTAIN SEEN.

Twenty minutes after our skis loft the snow we sighted a Hay in the harrier to our left and to the right, forward of the Hay, was a long, deep fissure and pressure ridge, which indicated there was land somewhere about. After an hour or so we passed a beautiful hay in the ice harrier, the mouth of which was several miles wide and

tour or five miles deep. j , The harrier surface on the right began to mount higher, which indicated j that land was beneath, and on the loft between pljune and coastline there was a chaotic mass of crevasses extending for about twenty miles, that no foot traveller could make headway over. We are exploring to the right of our course along a four-thousand square miles area hitherto unknown. On we went until a snowpeak looked dead ahead. Jt was Scott’s Nuuatnk’s that we were heading for. a hit of hare rock showing on the northern side. The valiant Scott had seen this peak from file sea in 11)02, when he had fought his way through some ice packs and then in 1011. men had been able to reach it with dog teams after weeks of a struggle along the coast line. We looked down upon the spot where tin's explorer and tlit* rest had been stuck in his tent, for days in the snowstorm, finally having to dig himself and his ' dogs out. [ From then on we were over seas never touched by human feet. We ] could see a number of peaks running south-eastwards. Scott lin'd named them Alexander Mountains. They were around fifteen hundred feet high and several of them showed hare rocks on , the northern side. It is extraordinary j flow pleasing the sight this rock was . after so many weeks of nothing hut ice and snow. NEW MOUNTAINS SEEN. Snow-covered land from these peaks evidently sloped rapidly to the sen. There were extraordinary terraced effects and the whole area was greatly crevnssed. To our left Jloss Sea was frozen over for miles and we noted a large number of ice islands in it. Most of them were round, but some seemed to projject tip a hundred feet Iron) the ice edge. A few minutes later we began dodging snow squalls. \\ e were now over - 'frozen floss Sea and there continued a number of large ice islands. The visibility to the southward seemed excellent, so we set our course back to tbe first peak we bad passed and directed a course to the southward. ’I lie air got very rough here and one bump dropped us five hundred feet. There appeared a channel to the northward of Scott’s Nunatkas, so it is possible that King Edwardland is an island. Halchen has expressed this opinion. However, it is a point yet to be proved. There was perfect visibility 'Vn the south of us. Presently there , w was an exclamation from Halchen. There were mountain peaks dead ahead and showing a lot of hare rock. We were then flying at an altitude rtf 4,000. Soon other peaks appeared to the southward, all of them showing bare

rock. . We must admit that, we got. a kick out of this. We had found a new group of mountains. They run about north and south and in all we found fourteen peaks extending about thirty miles. They are not more than two thousand feet above the sea level, but solid rock certainly looked good down there now. It was apparent there was little movement on the ice over the land in this area, as there were very ofew crevasses J This was quite differ-| Ut from tlMfcsituntiiui around Scott’s Nunatkas. There was far more hare rocks visible here than the peaks we H-l just left. The first peak, lies a little over fifty miles from Scott’s Nunatkas in a west by south direction^

We picked out' one place where an aeroplane landing might lie made. Later on we hope to bring our geologist, Larry Could, there to make scientific investigation. Some reeks were brownish and others much darker. Helore we reached the southernmost peak Halchen wrote a note saving that the gas was getting short and that perhaps we had better return, so we reluctantly changed our course for the Little America.

HR EAKINO ICE. (Received this day at 10 n.in.) RAY OF WHALES. .Jan. 81. The Antarctic played another ol its little tricks to-day and for .two hours in breaking and heaving cakes of ice, the men showed a reckless courage which alone saved the desperate situation. Our dock pier, one to which we were tied to neatly, yesterday broke up and under the hem y swell and with portions ol the barrier crumbling oF ahead, huge cakes buckling and heaving up against the ships and between ns rod the harrier, cakes, on which precious aeroplane parts were resting, forty men worked like trojans and risked their lives to get everything aboard again. They succeeded by a miracle, no man or important article was lost. This occurred with startling suddenness, where all had been quiet, but the swift and efficient work a moment before, on what was apparently a solid pile of snow twenty loot thick, everything began to disintegrate under the men’s feet. It broke all at once, in swift settling and heaving as if an earthquake was taking place, and slowly but with ominous power these huge blocks up-ended and lor a time threatened to overturn and possibly crusn the Eleanor Rolling, which was lying next to them. It scorned they might easily have punched a holm in j the ship and sunk her. As it is we j are moving out, until the broken dock drifts out, and we can go back along- j side the low part of the barrier and resume unloading. \ A BLIZZARD. 1

“Last night while the men wore working on' the dock and hauling up the slope to the Barrier, a blizzard pa mo up from the north-west. It blew hard and thick. Heavy snow obscured the entire view to the Bay. so it was impossible to see more than a few loot. It caked tho clothes of the crew hauling at the crates and getting the stuff over the side, and the cold wind froze them so that they were eased in cracking armour. Tn this thick smother ei snow”they could hear the sighing and moaning of the ice under the pressure of the wind along the Barrier. ’I lie sound was like the wind blowing through the trees rtf a mountain slope, and an occasional distant rumble caused by a detached piece of the Barrier to the north breaking away.

“The experience of Driver floodall was typical of tho others. He felt something like an earthquake below, then he saw a crack opening just behind him and ho jumped across and started for the. ship, leaping over more cracks which ojicned all round him. and no sooner had he reached one of the large cakes, which had been half of our dock, than the whole slope slid with a hissing sound down into the water. A piece of the adjoining harrier 1011, and where there had been a smooth pathway a moment before, was a broken mess of big cakes sliding up and down again in the mush filled water.

“Our dock bad first broken near the Barrier. The top of the crack was about throe feet apart at first hut gradually it opened until it was ten feet wide. Inside a piece rose, until for a tune it threatened to turn over, and if it bad done so. it would have raised havoc with the ships. As tho big crack widened the aeroplane skiis pedestal. a heavy piece of laminated wood, slid down to the smashed ice between the cakes and another pedestal hung over the edge. “One section of a portable house toppled off into the water. Everything was in movement, for there was just enough commotion in the water, partly caused by the breaking of tbe slope and dock, and partly by tbe slight swell, to make the enormous cakes sway and lift ponderous sides, as if to gnaw at us.”

CALL FOR ALL HANDS. There was a call lor all bands and men eagerly tumbled over the side on to the broken ice. The most important thing to save was the centre wing of the hig Ford plane, which lay on the slope of the inner dock cake, so far down that it could not lie seen from the steamer. Mill fiavrooski, a stowaway of the Moiling, lay down and while the others held his legs he slipped over Into tlm hig crack and got hold- of the pedestal plane sections and pulled them out. Pieces of the house, heavy clumsy things, which ordinarily would have been moved slowly, were jarred from the ice to the men’s shoulders and tossed aboard as if they were matchboxes. The ice on which the men were standing sloped more and more and the crack widened. Mvrd ordered all the men to don lifebelts and directed operations, with a megaphone handy, in ease the men were unable to hear him in an emergency. Cot ting n section of the house out of the water was something of a job. but the rope was passed round it under the slush and it \vas rescued before it had time to get soaked. W e saved everything except halt a dozen sacks ol coal, which sank to the bottom. Amid a heavy squall the shore linos were cast oil' and the ice anchors were drawn ill by winches and fortunately j we (Id not lose one ol them. t The two ships, still lashed together, I began to drift out into the hay. and work was immediately began loading the cargo .from the Moiling into the City of New York so that the Moiling' 111 av get hack to New Zealand and come down again on another trip before the bay begins to freeze. The remains of our dock drifted out \ i

to son and Liu? last wo saw of them I (11*v ware I'ar away. There was a pile of pieees of aeroplane crates lying on top of a cake, but we do not need them.