Pole Visit Is Not Veteran’s Ambition

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28766, 11 December 1958, Page 7

Pole Visit Is Not Veteran’s Ambition

Sir Raymond Priestley, a vigorous 72, expects this season’s visit to the Antarctic to be his last; and he is one “summer tourist” who has no particular ambition to go to the South Pole. A veteran of Shackleton’s expedition of 1907-9, and of Scott’s 1910-13 expedition, Sir Raymond Priestley will sail from Lyttelton on Monday aboard the U.S.N.S. Wyandot as a British Foreign Office observer and a guest of the United States Antarctic expedition. A geologist of note, he will not lose contact with the Antarctic as he was, shortly before he left Britain, appointed permanent chairman of the newly-estab-lished United Kingdom National Committee for Antarctic Research—the organisation which will direct Britain’s participation in Antarctic studies beyond the International Geophysical Year, which will close on December 31. “Doubling Efforts” “Britain will be doubling her efforts in the Antarctic this coming year—if you exclude the very fine contribution of the TransAntarctic Expedition successfully concluded last season. “For three years we have been waging a rear-guard action against the Treasury,” and were often on the point of giving up the task as hopeless, but now we I have been given all we asked for, and more,” he said. “We will have air support for our southernmost base, On Stonington Island, in Graham land, and will, at awfully short notice, be reopening Halley Bay. The new wintering party is on its way i there now, in the Tottan.” During his few short weeks in : the Antarctic this summer Sir Raymond Priestley is homing to <

visit Scott Base, Little America, . and perhaps Cape Hallett, if this is possible. He was with Shackleton in the Nimrod when the Bay of Whales, near the site of the present Little America station, was discovered, and met Amundsen there in February, 1911, when aboard the Terra Nova. In Christchurch he is staying with Professor N. M. McElwee, of Canterbury University electrical engineering department, who was a lecturer at Birmingham University when he was vice-chan-cellor there. Visits in Christchurch He has several friends here, and hopes to visit his godson, Mr A P. Thomson, Canterbury conservator of forests. When Mr Thomson’s father, Mr Allan Thomson, was found to be suffering from tuberculosis, while waiting to go south with Scott in 1910, Sir Raymond Priestley was brought out to replace him as the expedition’s geologist. Sir Raymond Priestley’s wife was born in Dunedin, and he hopes to see a good friend of hers, Mrs Neill, the wife of LieutenantColonel R. B. Neill, of Helmores lane. His last visit to the Antarctic was as a member of the party aboard the Britannia, during the Duke of Edinburgh’s world cruise in 1956-57. The three-day call to Graham Land he described yesterday as the “shortest Antarctic expedition on record.” If he can find time before he goes south, Sir Raymond Priestley will also get in touch with Mrs J. E. Denton, of 5 Beechworth avenue, Somerfield, to see a collection of Ponting’s photographs and perhaps help her identify them. He should return to Christ- : church in February. 1