RECKLESS COURAGE AMID CRASHING ICE

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 576, 31 January 1929, Page 6

RECKLESS COURAGE AMID CRASHING ICE

ANTARCTIC HAZARDS

Grinding Floes Gnaw at Ships, Threatening Disaster and Death A DESPERATE SITUATION BY RUSSELL, OWEN Cop-nehted, 19-8, by the "New York Times" company and the St. Lents "Post-Dispatch." All rights for publication reserved throughout the world. Wireless to the "New York Times.” Reed. 9/5 a.m. Bay of Whales, Tuesday. The Antarctic played another of its little tricks to-day, and for two hours amid breaking, heaving cakes of ice our men showed a reckless courage which alone saved a desperate situation. Our dock pier, the one to which we were tied so neatly yesterday, broke up under a heavy swell, and with portions of the Barrier crumbling off ahead, huge cakes were buckling and heaving up against the ships; and between us and the Barrier cakes on which the precious airplane parts were resting.

Forty men worked like Trojans and risked their lives to get everything aboard again. They succeeded, and by a miracle no man or important article was lost. The thing occurred with startling suddenness. Where all had been quiet, but swift and efficient, work, a moment before, on what was apparently a solid pile of snow 20 feet thick, everything began to disintegrate under the feet. The ice broke all at once, swiftly settling and heaving as if an earthquake were taking place. And slowly, but with ominous power, these huge blocks upended, and for a time threatened to overturn and possibly crush the ship Eleanor Soling, which was lying next to them. If one had turned over, it might easily have punched a hole in the ship and sunk her. As it is, we are now safe, and the >thips are moving out until the broken dock drifts out and we can go back alongside the low part of the Barrier and resume unloading. Last night. while the men were working on the dock and hauling things up the slope to the Barrier, a blizzard came up from the north-west. It blew hard and thick. Heavy snow obscured the entire bay, so that it was impossible to see more than a few feet. It caked the clothes of the crew hauling at the crates and getting the stuff over the side, and the cold wind froze it to them, so that they were cased in crackling armour. A RACE FOR LIFE In a thick smother of snow, they could hear the sighing and moaning of the ice under the pressure of the wind along the Barrier —a sound like the wind blowing through the trees of a mountain slope, and an occasional distant rumble which was caused by a detached piece of the Barrier to tho north breaking away. Goodale’s experience was typical of others. He felt something like an earthquake below. Then he saw a crack opening just behind him, and the ice there settled slowly but surely. He jumped across and started for the ship, leaping over more cracks which opened all around 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, and a piece of the adjoining barrier fell. Where there had been a smooth, high pathway a moment before, there was a broken mess of big cakes sliding up and down again in the mush-filled water. Our dock had first broken near the Barrier. The top of the crack was about three feet apart at first, but it gradually opened until it was 10 feet wide. The inside piece rose until for a time it threatened to turn over, and if it had done so it would have raised liavoc with the ships. As the big crack widened, the airplane skis’ 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 the portable house toppled off into the water. SHIPS THREATENED Everything was in movement. for there was just enough commotion in The water (.partly cause d by the breaking of the slope and the dock, and partly by the slight swell) to make the enormous cakes sway and lift their ponderous sides as if to gnaw at us. There was call for all hands, and the men eagerly tumbled over the side to the broken ice, not with a thought of themselves, but intent only on saving Iheir precious material. The mort important piece of this was the centre wing section of the big Ford plane, which lay on the slope of the inner dock cake, so far down that it could not be seen from the steamer. Bill Gavrooski, a stowaway on tho Eleanor Boling, lay down, and while others held his legs he slipped over into a big crack and got hold of the pedestal and the 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 and to the men’s shoulders and tossed aboard as if they were match - boxes. They paid no attention to the movement of the ice on which they were standing, as it sloped more and more and the crack widened. Hope, wire, and odds and ends of stuff were thrown over the side, under Commander Byrd’s direction, while he walked about telling them what to save. First he had to don a lifebelt, in obedience to his own order, after all the others were provided with them, and he had a megaphone in his hand, so that there would bo no possibility of not hearing him in an emergency. ONLY COAL LOST Getting tho section of the house out of the water was something of a job. but Joe Deganahl jumped down on it. and thrust his arms into the slush so that he might pass a rope around it. Then he grabbed the hands of those above him. and was lifted out, and the piece of the house was rescued before it had time to get soaked. Wo saved everything except half a dozen sacks of coal, which sank to the bottom. Amid a heavy snowsquall, the shore lines were cast off. Tho ice anchors were drawn in by the winches and. fortunately, we did not lose one of them. The two ships, still lashed together, began to drift out into the bay, and

work was immediately begun loading cargo from the Eleanor Boling into the City of New York, so that the Boling may get back to New Zealand and come down again for another trip before the Bay begins to freeze. The remains of our dock drifted oiit to sea, and the last we saw of them they were far away. A pile of pieces of the airplane crates was lying on top of the cake, but we do not need these pieces. FLIGHT OF DISCOVERY COMMANDER TELLS STORY ROCKY PEAKS FAR SOUTH (By Commander R. E. Byrd) Received 9.5 a.m. BA-Y OF WHALES, Tuesday. There are not many good flying days down here, on account of the unnatural conditions of visibility. Here one appears simply to be in a big and indeterminate bowl of misty white, which merges into an equally misty gray sky. Therefore, when “Cyclone” Elaines, the trusted wefether-mapper of our North Pole expedition, told us the weather was 0.K., we felt that it would be a pity not to take off. We gave our plane the gun at 2.50, and got off with a heavy load in 30 seconds, thus indicating the strength of the skis and the landing-gear, and the practicability of getting off the Ice Barrier with a full load. So we got some “kick” when tha skis left the ground without breaking, and we saw “Little America” looking little indeed, as she faded away behind CREDIT TO BALCHEN For this take-off we must give Bernt Balchen the credit. His face ahd June’s showed their pleasure and relief. We were almost immediately looking into unknown areas. To our left was the uncharted coast line of the Barrier cliffs, and ahead and to our right we had a visibility of unexplored parts of the Barrier surface, for at least 40 miles. When the conditions are best down here, the visibility is extraordinary. In the after-part of our small cabin crouched June, sitting 'on one of our sleeping-bugs, and busy with the radio. Forward was Balchen, gradually getting the plane on her course, as the sluggish compass settled down. As long as the bright sun would hold, we could check the magnetic compass with the sun compass, and we could be certain of our course. We knew before starting from the pilot balloons that Haines had sent up to high altitude that we would have .a strong wind with us. We were making about 120 miles an hour. The cabin was so full of gear that we could not stand up. I found myself sitting on our primus stove cooker. It was necessary to have 7001bs of equipment in the plane in case of a forced landing. A BEAUTIFUL BAY Twenty minutes after our skis left the snow we sighted a bay in the Barrier to our left, and to the right, forward of the Bay, was a long deep fissure and pressure ridge*, which in^ 5 - cated there was land somewhere about, After an hour or so, we passed a beautiful bay in the Ice Barrier, the mouth of which was several miles wide, and four or five miles deep. The Barrier surface on the right began to mount higher, which indicated that land was beneath; and on the left, between the plane and the coast line, there was a chaotic mass of crevasses extending for about 20 miles, that no foot-traveller could make headway over. W© were exploring to the right of our course along a 4,000 square miles area hitherto unknown. THE SCOTT NUNATAKS On we went until a snow-peak loomed ahead. It was the Scott nunataks that we were heading for—a bit of bare rock showing on the northern side. Valiant Scott had seen this peak from the sea in 1902, when he had fought his way through some ice packs; and then in 1911 men had been able to reach it with dog teams after weeks of struggle along the coast line. We looked down upon the spot where the explorer Brestaud «had been stuck in his tent for days in a snowstorm, finally having to dig himself and his dogs out. From then on we were over areas that never had been touched by human feet. We could see a number of peaks running south-eastwards. Scott had named them the Alexandra Mountains. They were around 1,500 feet high and several of them showed bare rocks on the northern side.

It is extraordinary how pleasing the sight of this rock was after so many weeks of nothing but ice and snow. The snow-covered land from these peaks evidently sloped rapidly to the sea. There were extraordinary terraced effects, and the whole area was

greatly crevassed. To our left the Ross Sea was frozen over for miles, and we noted a large number of ice islands in it. Most of them were round, and some seemed to project up 100 feet from the ice edge. FROZEN ROSS SEA A few minutes later we began dodging snow-squalls. AVe were now over the frozen Ross Sea, and there continued a number of large ice islands. The visibility to the southward seemed excellent, so we made our way back to the first peak we had passed, and directed our way to the southward. The air- got very rough here. One bump dropped us 500 feet. There appeared a channel to the northward of the Scott nunataks. so it is possible that King Edward VII. Land is an island. Balchen has expressed this opinion. However, it is a point yet to be proved. There was perfect visibility to the south of us. At this time June received a radio message from the City of New York that thp Eleanor Boling was in sight. Presently there was an exclamation from Balchen. There was a mountain peak dead ahead, showing a lot of bare rock. AVe were then flying at an altitude of 4,000 feet. Soon other peaks appeared to the southward, all of them showing bare rock. ROCKY MOUNTAINS AVe must admit that we got a “kick” out of this. We had found a new ground of mountains. They run about north and south and in all we found 14 peaks extending about 30 miles. They are not more than 2,000 feet above sea level, but the solid rock certainly looked good down there in the snow. It was apparent that there was little movement in the ice over the land in this area, as there were very few crevasses. This was quite different from the situation around Scott’s nunataks. There was far more bare rock visible here than on the peaks we had just left. The first peak lies little over 50 miles from Scotts’ nunataks in a best-by-south direction. AV e picked out one place where an airplane landing might be made. Later on, we hope to bring our geologist, Larry Gould, there, to make a scientific investigation. Some of the rocks were brownish, and others were much darker. Before we reached the southern-most peak, Balchen wrote a note saying that the gas was getting low, and that perhaps we had better return, so we reluctantly changed our course for “Little America.”