WYATT EARP RETURNS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 54, Issue 92, 29 January 1934, Page 5

WYATT EARP RETURNS

ELLSWORTH EXPEDITION. ROUGH SEA AND WET SHIP.; (Special to Press Association from Mr , 1 Lincoln Ellsworth.) WYATT EARP, January 26. We are 320 miles from Dunedin, Jnit are making little headway. A strong wind, which swung right round' the' ( compass in 24 hours the day before 1 yesterday, turned to the north-east yesterday and increased to a velocity of 70 m.p.h. Some of the gusts are estimated to have reached SO m.p.h. Heavy white-crested*' waves, appearing suddenly, mounted to an average of 20 feet high, and some rose to 30 feet or more. Swirling foam hid the blueness of the ocean, and the spray whipped from the waves by the wind, stung the faces of those on watch on the Wyatt Earp like hailstones. The Wyatt Earp, a splendid sea boat, rose, / ■ fell, rolled and twisted like a light canoe on a cataract, taking little heavy water on her decks, hut she was continually drenched from the top of the bridge to the alleyways with spray. Water penetrated everywhere, and everyone venturing on deck, including myself, failed to escape repeated soak-

«igs. , • • 'Last evening when I was for the second time hanging my clothes to dry on the fiddley above the engines, a shower came through the engine-room skylight and drenched me yet again. It is impossible to keep the alleyways and messroom free from water. It swilled from end to end, and as we struggled between the rollings of the ship to ladle a few spoonfuls of hot stew from our basins to our lips, part of the ocean on the messroom. floof curled about our feet. How the cook, ;: managed to prepare the meals is still a mystery, as, probably,' were the con- • tents of the meal 1 itself. All throUgh the day and night the wind raged.' At night I tried to rest in my hunk, but I dare not go to sleep for fear of rolling to the floor. With the engine full speed ahead, the Wyatt Earp has just managed to hold,her own. For 24 hours she has made no progress, and at 8 o’clock this morning we were in the same place as we were at 8 a.m. yesterday. About noon to-day the wind partly subsided and we are going ahead, in spite of the wind, the force of which is still rated at half-gale force. We are * making about two miles an. hour. ■ Had the good weather held we would have been in Dunedin to-morrow morning, hut now, as ,to the time of our arrival, so long as this wind keeps up, one guess is as good as another. However, there is no desperate hurry. Even with several days” delay there will still he time to crate the aeroplane Polar Star, which is in Readiness , to he shipped on a boat sailing for San Francisco on February 20, and for me to catch, as I plan to do,, the Mariposa sailing from Auckland on February 10 to the United States. .

ARRIVAL AT DUNEDIN. DISASTER AN HOUR BEFORE START. , DUNEDIN, Jan. 28. With her ironwork rusty and her copper sheathing scarred by, the, icefloes of the Antarctic, the Wyatt Earp arrived in Dunedin this f eveuing. . “It was the bitterest moment or my life,” said Mr Lincoln Ellsworth, to a reporter, “to come so near to success and to have it.snatched from us at the last minute. In trials the machine had gone beautifully. Everything was ready for the dasli “I have no plans for the future. I don’t know if I’ll go back to the Antarctic. Until I get back to America I can’t decide anything. The blow fell suddenly. An hour or two more and we Avould have been in the air and the disaster would not have happened. In 15 minutes five miles of the harrier crumpled.