Byrd’s Supply Ship Reaches Dunedin

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 515, 19 November 1928, Page 1

Byrd’s Supply Ship Reaches Dunedin

RAN THROUGH HURRICANE STOWAWAY NOW MESS-BOY Press Association DUNEDIN, To-day. Carrying 33 members of the Byrd Antarctic Expedition, the steel vessel Eleanor Bolling, named after Commander Byrd’s mother, reached the lower harbour on Saturday evening and berthed at Dunedin yesterday. The vessel sailed from New York on September 16 and en route to Norfolk ran into the same hurricane that caused such devastation in Florida. Among the personnel are Professor Gould, geologist of the expedition, Mr. W. G. Haines, meteorologist, Mr. M. Hanson, senior radio engineer, Captain McKinley, aerial photographer, and William Gavrouski, an adventurous boy, who, having twice stowed away on the City of New York and the Eleanor Bolling, was finally allowed to sign on as mess boy. After loading stores, including tractors, sleighs and petrol, the vessel sails to-morrow far Wellington. WHO OWNS SOUTH POLE? BYRD EXPEDITION RAISES QUESTION WORLD FISHING GROUNDS If important discoveries are made by Commander Byrd in the Antarctic, it is understood, says the New York correspondent of the Melbourne “Herald,” that the question of territorial claims of certain nations on the Antarctic continent will come to a head. The Prime Minister of Australia, Mr. S. M. Bruce, raised the question of British rights in the Antarctic at the last Imperial Conference. A special committee was appointed to investigate. Sir Douglas Mawson, the famous explorer, has, it is understood, complained that Australia has been somewhat negligent of British rights in the Antarctic. He stated that, after the war, Great Britain was anxious that Australia should take control of that part of the Polar territory explored by Mawson’s expedition, but that, as nothing had been done, France had laid claim to Adele Land. Sir Douglas contends that Adele Land is very valuable, economically, and that Ross Sea, now administered with its contiguous land territory, by New Zealand, is teeming with edible fish, as well as whales, and may become one of the world’s greatest sources of fish supply. Great Britain’s attitude, now as in the past, is that territorial rights are only discussed when they arise: The attitude of the Royal Geographical Society is that claim to territory by right of discovery is debatable. This has, too, been the attitude of the United States Government. While France challenges British authority over Adele. Land, observers are recalling the Act of .Settlement of 1887, passed by the House of Commons, as giving the necessary machinery to proclaim British Sovereignty over the whole of the Antarctic continent. Only in regard to the Ross Sea and the Falkland Islands had this sovereignty been promulgated and administered.