Who Owns Antarctica ?

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 836, 3 December 1929, Page 9

Who Owns Antarctica ?

“IMPUDENT BRITISH CLAIMS”

American Paper’s Attack

DIFFICULT PROBLEM FOR POWERS

(United P.A.—By Telegraph — Copyright) B . WASHINGTON, Monday. 1a 1 AIN S claims to the Antarctic are based on nothing but impudence and effrontery,” declares the “Washingtoii Post,” asserting that Commander Richard E. Byrd’s night to the South Pole strengthened the claim of the United States.

The “Post” points out that Lieutenant Wilkes, of the United States Navy, discovered the Antarctic in December! 1832. whereas the British captain, Sir James Clark Ross, did not see land prior to 1840.

The newspaper contends that Commander Byrd’s expedition is more practical. He has discovered new lands, and claimed them and occupied them for the United States.

BYRD SEES NEW PEAKS

COMMANDER’S OWN STORY OF POLAR FLIGHT

DIFFICULTIES AND PERILS By COMMANDER R. E. BYRD Copyrighted, 1928. by the “New York Tunes company and the St. Louis “PostI((spateh. All rights for publication reserved throughout the world. Wireless to the New York Times." Reed. 9 a.m. BAY OF WHALES, Sun. Flying down here with a cloudcovered sky is like flying in a world that has turned to milk. There is nothing to check on. Horizons disappear, and there is no way to tell where the snow begins, how rough the surface is, or even how high we are above it. TRIBUTE TO LOST COMRADE When we took off with our heavy load, clouds partly covered the sky. There was, however, a rim of green on the horizon to the south, and we knew it would be clear beyond. As the skis left the snow, all I could see in that white bowl beneath us was a little group of my shipmates throwing their hats in the air, wild with joy that at last we were headed toward the Pole. A warm glow of affection for those fellows went through me. They had given us our great opportunity, and they were unselfishly glad. My mind shot back to an exactly Similar scene in the Arctic spring, on May 9, 1926, when the late Floyd Bennett and I rose from the snow of Spitzbergen and headed north to the Pole. Many fellows who were in the cheering crowd at Spitzbergen were below me now. It had been three of us, Bennett, Bernt Balchen, and myself who had set out on this job two years before, and the three of us would he together at the finish —for we all knew that Bennett’s spirit flew with us. He had selected our Ford plane, prepared it, and flown it; and had helped with our early plans, so that his genius and his friendship were with us, helping us to reach our goal. The last thing we put in the plane was a stone that came from Floyd’s giave at Aflington. We weighted with it the American flag. We proposed to drop it on the South Pole. A strong easterly breeze forced iis to head 10 degrees left of the course to allow for this wiiid, and so the plane crabbed along toward the south, with its nose pointed well to the left of the trail. We had constantly to check our course by the drift indicator, an instrument through which the ground is sighted to ascertain the amount the wind lias caused the plane to drift from its true direction.

We enjoyed the first few hours of the flight, when we had time to look around, for flying over this mysterious Barrier never loses its fascination. Shortly after we passed the crevassed

area 150 miles from Little America, we sighted the mountains to the westward. MAJESTIC RANGES Again I was struck with the majesty of these ranges. We saw one great mountain mass end and another one, unaccounted for on the maps, begin to the south, and run toward the Beardmore Glacier. Great white glaciers flowed into the Barrier, and about 100 miles off were some alpine snow-cov-ered peaks, towering high over the Barrier, that glistened like fire from the sun’s reflection, so that they looked like great volcanoes in eruption. Soon, the great mountains ahead loomed up, and an hour afterward we sighted the trail party 300 miles due south of Little America. There could be no doubt that so far we had come south as straight as an arrow. It was well, for we had messages and photographs to drop for Dr. Gould and his party. We planned to leave food and fuel at our mountain base for them, and In order to enable Dr. Gould to locate the cache —a little speck in those great spaces—Captain McKinley had located tho spot on the photographs he had taken on our base-lay-ing flight of the surrounding mountains. We dropped these in a bag attached to a parachute. We could see two or three of the boys dashing after it, for they knew it contained also radio messages from home and letters from friends at Little America, with cigarettes and various other things which the trail party had requested by radio.

Immediately upon dropping the package we started our long climb to get over the hump about 100 miles ahead. Here was a great uncertainty. For many months our minds had concentrated on the knotty problem of getting over this rampart without having to leave behind our mapping camera, without which the geological value of our flight would be greatly lessened. Neither Harold June. Bernt Balchen. nor I could manipulate the 1001 b. camera, as aerial surveying is highly specialised work. Captain McKinley, with his three months' food, polar equipment and surveying outfit, weighed barely 600 pounds. This cut down by about 1,000 feet the highest altitude at which we coulijl fly. We had made very careful tests with the plane, and had checked and re-checked our figures for weeks. Finally we decided that we could just stagger over the hump with the extra 6001 b. Balchen, McKinley and June were glad to take a chance, because of the value of the results that might he obtained. However. there must be no mistake about our load. Every ounce of food, every piece of clothing, everything that went Into that plane, including ourselves, had to be weighed carefully. George Black, our supply officer, did the weighing, and when he told me that the total weight of the plane was around six and a-half tons, I knew there was no mistake about it.