AURORA'S WIRELESS.

Taranaki Daily News, 22 June 1916, Page 7

AURORA'S WIRELESS.

HER FATEFUL MESSAGE. How the message which told of the misfortunes of the Aurora, one of the fihipa engaged in Sir Ernest Shackleton's Antarctic Expedition, was trans-

mitted is now told for the first time. By a freak of nature it was sent 900 miles with an apparatus nominally suitable for about 200 mile* radius. Through the Wireless Press the situation is described by Mr. Lionel Hooke, the operator aboard the Aurora. When the Aurora, under Lieutenant Mackintosh, R.N.R., was about to leave Sydney in December, 191-4, for her journey to the Ross Sea, wl-ere she was to await the arrival of Sir Ernest Shackleton and his party after their journey across the Antarctic Continent, it was suggested that tdie ship might he materially safeguarded in her perilous journey if she carried a wireless equipment. No sooner was the suggestion made than

the people of Sydney, with their traditional public-spirited generosity, subscribed for the necessary plant. The one purchased was that which proved so useful in the Mawson expedition a short time before.

It was hoped that with two or three wireless stations operating in the Southern Seas, and a constant stream of traffic between New Zealand and the Straits of Magellan, useful signals might be exchanged on occasions when help might be considered 'necessary. There was just

the remote possibility also that, under j "freak" conditions, some message might get through to the wireless station established for scientific legearch in Maequaiie Island, and another much more powerful station at Awarua, in the south of New Zealand. The installation was given an effective transmitting radius o f - about 200 miles, and Hooke reports that he was able to keep in constant communication with Macquarie Island until the period arrived of perpetual daylight, when wireless si»uals carry only about a third of the distance which is possible in darkness.

When the Aurora wa« carried away by the blizzard of May 10, 1015. Hooke at once endeavored to get in touch with the marodned party, hoping that they had been able to erect the receiving installation previously landed. On June 1, basing his hopes on the fleeting possibilities of abnormal wireless conditions, Hooke began to call Australia, but without success. One reason for this was that the Commonwealth, in the interests of economy, had recaPcd the staff of the wireless station at Macquarie Island. This' removed the first possibility of in-ter-communication with the little party drifting in the Antarctic ice. During the long Antarctic winter, after the ship liad been crushed in the ice, Hooke, overhauled his apparatus, and night after night sat in his cabin straining to catch sounds- which would tell of the world's knowledge of the ship's fate. Twice in August he heard faint signals, hut they were unintelligible. Not until March 25 this year, with a quadruple aerial 80ft above deck, did Hoo'ke succeed in obtaining definite signals from stations in Tasmania and New Zealand, 980 miles distant. Then followed the message which thrilled the world, and which was transmitted 900 miles with an apparatus normally suitable for about 200 miles' radius-