Where Is The Missing Airship?

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 375, 8 June 1928, Page 1

Where Is The Missing Airship?

If wireless messages for help have been received from the Italia, why did they not give the position of the airship? Captain J. K. Davis, Commonwealth Director of Navigation, whose experiences in the Antarctic enable him to visualise conditions with which General Nobile and his crew have had to contend, is puzzled by the omission, says the Melbourne “Herald.” The first thought in the mind of a navigator in distress is to give his latitude and longitude. Messages, it is cabled, were received in Italian, French and English recently, which proves that the wireless was working sufficiently to have transmitted, in one language, the vital information as to the supposedly helpless ship’s position. Assuming that the ship was drifting, Captain Davis believes that it is in the direction of Siberia, the coast of which is 900 miles from the position, near Spitzbergen, from which the last message was received, to the effect that the Italia was fighting against a strong gale as she made for her base at King’s Bay. The general circulation of air is toward Siberia, but if the ship is powerless cross currents may keep her drifting about the vast Polar waste. From Spitzbergen to Norway is 600 miles, and in Norway are the two most experienced Arctic explorers in the world, Captain Amundsen and Captain Wilkins. Their advice upon relief measures will be invaluable. Captain Davis is of opinion that if the Italia is drifting, there is every likelihood of her reaching a safe landind, but that might be on a coast remote from settlement. MONTHS MIGHT PASS Weeks, or even months, he said, might pass before word could be sent to civilisation, unless the ships wireless could be put into service again. It was not unlikely that such a landing would be made on Nova Zembla, an island 400 miles long, devoid of communication with the Siberian mainland. The British and European weather bureaus, he pointed out, would be able, from data received from widely separated stations in the far north, to plot the course of the winds at the week end, and give an indication of the direction taken by the drifting airship. A strong blow might drive it 30 miles an hour. A relief expedition would, therefore, have an idea where to look for the airship, and need not comb the polar area of 810,000 square miles in which it might be drifting if the winds were variable. “THERE IS STILL HOPE” It was to be hoped, said Captain Davis, that men would not rush off in airplanes to search for the missing explorers. That way lay tragedy. Steffansson had referred to the “friendly” Arctic, but an ill-equipped expedition would probably perish. The value of experience such as that of Amundsen, or Wilkins could not be exaggerated, for the Arctic, even in its present summer, with continuous daylight, was no place to get adrift in. Unless provision had been made for a long march, it was impossible for a party, if the airship had crashed, to reach safety across the frozen wastes. All that was really known, said Captain Davis, was that the Italia was last heard from some miles from Spitzbergen. about Lat. 81 north and Long. 20 east, and that a message for help had since come out of the void. Hope should not be abandoned, for so much was known of the general laws gov-. erning polar weather that by now there would have been plotted, with some degree of certainty, the force and direction of the wind since the Italia presumably had got adrift.

Captain John King Davis was chief officer of the Nimrod in Shackleton’s Antarctic Expedition 1907-9. He was captain of the Aurora and second in command of Sir Douglas Mawson's expedition from 1911 to 1914. He also commanded the Ross Sea relief expedition which rescued the survivors of the Shackkston Expedition in 1916.