WAYS OF TRAVEL.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 238, 8 October 1936, Page 6

WAYS OF TRAVEL.

AIRSHIP MOST COMFORTABLE.

SIR HUBERT WILKINS KNOWS,

(By IRA WOLFERT.) NEW YORK, August. Sir Hubert Wilkins, who lias just returned from a fruitless search in Europe for a shipyard that is not too rushed by Government orders to build him a submarine that will carry him under "the North i'ole and who is now beginning a search for a shipyard here that can do it, has been "'on che go" steadily for the last 20 years and may well be the greatest rolling stone on earth, but he refuses to claim the title.

Sir Hubert Wilkins.

Since 1910 the longest he has stayed in any one place is six weeks, but lie says it is hopeless to try to figure out just how many millions of miles he has covered since that time or how much it has cost to do it. He lias crossed all the oceans and seas there are, has been back and forth across the Atlantic a hundred times, and has used every form of conveyance known to man —from sledftes in the Antarctic to an airship in the Pacific. The most uncomfortable!! "The submarine," he says. The most comfortable? "The airship." "I once crossed the Atlantic in a ship the size of Columbus' Santa Maria," said Sir Hubert, "so I speak from experience when I say Colum'bus never really knew how uncomfortable ail Atlantic crossing could be, simply because he was born before the submarine. The time I crossed in the Nautilus we had a crew of 23, the rookies among whom had had at least fourteen years' experience on undersea craft. We travelled awash and with battened down hatches, but the difficulty was not so much in the air we couldn't get in as the air we couldn't let out. The smell of burning oil lay thick all about us, and it got into the food, so that, whether you ate salt pork or strawberry shortcake, it all tasted the same. It all tasted like oil. Nineteen of the crew got seasick and stayed that way for about live days. They had to work, though. There were 110 rails to lean over, so they crawled around inside with a 'bucket in one hand and a spanner in the other." Sixteen Hours Enough in 'Plane. Sir Hubert rates the airship over the aeroplane for long-distance travelling, chiefly because "there is a greater sense of security cai the airship." "Since lfllO," he said, "I have travelled as much in 'planes as in anything else. I used to- make transcontinental hops in 1925 in mail 'planes, long before there was any regular transcontinental passenger service. I used to ride in the mail compartments, and the elapsed time for the journey was frequently as much as 27 hours. And once I made a non-stop flillit of 20 hours and 20 minutes from Alaska to Spitzbergen. But I will tell you this much; sixteen hours in a 'plane is just about the comfort limit for a good strong set of nerves, aiul the longer you fly, the more you know about 'planes, the shorter that comfort limit gets. "What happens is this: You know that the forward drive on the ship, the thing that keeps it up, is the motor. The motor roars along outside your ears. You cannot escape the sound, and before long you are listening for it. You are straining to hear every separate explosion in every separate cylinder. A miss in the motor and your heart misses with it. A flutter, an unwonted rattle among the valves, and the sweat starts to rise 011 your forehead. Sixteen lionrs of constant, straining concentration 011 a roar of sound gets to be pretty exhausting. Comfort of the Airship. "On the airship you do not hear the motors and you know also that, even if the motors go dead, you can still keep aloft." The airship gets the palm for oceanic crossings even over the new stiper-liners, according to Sir Hubert, "because really they are more comfortable. Faster, for one thing. No vibration, for another. And no rolling and 110 pitching. And the sense of security is almost as great. "I have made four transatlantic crossings in Zeppelins and once, 011 the Graf, I flew five and one-half days from Friedrichshafen to Tokyo. I have never seen a single seasick passenger, nor have I ever heard of anyone getting seasick 011 a dirigible* Yet I know that even the captains of the huge luxury liners -get seasick sometimes. "There is, of course, plenty of room for improvements In the conveniences for passengers —more cabin space, etc. I have heard some Americans complain that there is only one bath on board the Hindenburg for the use of all passengers. But, since the voyage lasts on an average two and a half days, I think that this is a complaint which would be confined nearly exclusively to people 011 this side of,: the Atlantic, where the bathing habit is more popular." (Copyright.—X.A.N.A.)