HAZARDOUS FLIGHT

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 907, 26 February 1930, Page 9

HAZARDOUS FLIGHT

WILKINS’S ADVENTURES IN ANTARCTIC “DAMP AIR LIKE FOG” LONDON, Tuesday. In a copyright message from Montevideo, Sir Hubert Wilkins says: After leaving Deception Island on January 25, we ran into high seas and snow squalls. We rounded the edge of the pack ice southward in latitude 70 degrees 10 minutes, longitude 145 degrees. There we awaited better weather. The season was fast passing and the weather continued bad. We were disheartened, and tha men suffered severely from seasickness. The wind changed to the southward on February 1. We launched an airplane in dangerous conditions. Cheesman was at the controls and dodged the scattered ice and managed with great skill and courage to get the machine into the air. Visibility was bad. and the air rough. It was impossible to keep the airplane on an even keel. We proceeded 100 miles south, and encountered a snowstorm. The damp air filled the cabin with fog like thick smoke. The engine revolutions died down and the machine seemed to be choking. She sank lower and lower toward the rough ice. Suddenly the atmopshere cleared. The engine picked up, and we plugged further south for 50 minutes. Then Clreesman excitedly drew my attention to a dark mass looming where Captain Cook’s “strong appearance of land” is marked on the chart. We were positive we could corroborate the explorer’s discovery, but decided to keep on our course. Soon we discerned more dark looming masses and decided that they must be land behind the Barrier. We elatedly hurried on to what we thought would he a great new discovery of land.