Music While They Work On U.S. Ships At McMurdo

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28160, 26 December 1956, Page 6

Music While They Work On U.S. Ships At McMurdo

(From BRIAN O’NEILL, “The Press’ correspondent with the United States Navy Task Force 43 in the Antarctic]

ABOARD U.S.S. GLACIER, McMURDO SOUND, Dec. 23.

Cargo handling to ragtime is now the order of the day in McMurdo Sound. Tonight, honky tonk piano tunes with drum accompaniment blared out over the frozen bay as steel-helmeted Seabees went about lifting supplies from the freighters moored at the edge of the sea ice to the United States Navy’s icebreaker, Glacier. The icebreaker is ferrying 200-ton loads of fuel, trac-

tors, snow vehicle treads and heavy sleds to the discharge point 10 miles nearer, but still eight miles from the American base at Hut Point. A magnetic tape running in the Glacier’s radio room piped out a continuous stream of melodies through a dozen loudspeakers on deck. Zany syncopations of “My Wild Irish Rose,” “Good Old Summertime,” and “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” carried half a mile over the glistening snow and broken ice to the other five ships of the navy convoy. The 13,000 foot volcano, Erebus, lay obscured in mist, but the ice cliffs along the west side of Ross Island, looking for all the world like Dover in the distance, shone glistening white as the sun hit them through a gap in the overcast.

Way out on the bay some of the district’s permanent residents were gathered. They were a group of crab-eating seals and Adelie penguins, which stood in wonder. The distance was just a little too great to tell whether the penguins, which are noted for their clowning antics, were actually jigging in time to the beat of the music, or were merely agitated by the strange sound in multiple decibels. The powerful loud speakers of the Glacier were loud enough anyway to drown the caterwauling of the brown skua gulls flapping around the Glacier’s 120 foot mast to inspect a green pine branch lashed there as a Christmas decoration.