Stamp Story No. 99 Antarctic Explorer Was A Wild West Fan

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29994, 1 December 1962, Page 8

Stamp Story No. 99 Antarctic Explorer Was A Wild West Fan

[By

KEN ANTHONY

r PHE ship's name, if not the A ship herself, will be familiar to all Western fans —for this is the Wyatt Earp, named after the famous Texas marshal of fact and fiction! But how did it come about that a ship named after an American hero should appear on a stamp from such a remote area as the Falkland Islands Dependencies in the far Antarctic?

In fact, the ship was originally a Norwegian fishing vessel, a wooden-built ship of 400 tons displacement, called the Fanefjord. In 1932 she was bought by Lincoln Ellsworth, the American explorer, to take part in an Antarctic expedition with Sir Hubert Wilkins, the Australian explorer. But first of all Ellsworth, obviously a Western fan himself. renamed the ship after Wyatt Earp. Ice was the enemy of this ,new Wyatt, not quick-on-the-

draw deperadoes, and the ship’s hull was reinforced to meet the challenges ahead. The dates on the stamp, 1934-36, refer to the period of her best-known Antarctic voyages, during which some early attempts were made to carry out aerial surveys. In 1938 Ellsworth made another voyage in the Wyatt Earp, but in the following year, with the outbreak of war, she was taken over by the Royal Australian Navy. Shortly after the war she was retired from the Antarctic service, and in 1959 went aground near Brisbane and broke her back—a sad end for a gallant little ship. Five years before this, however, tiie stamp illustrated was first issued. It is one of a series (which is still current) showing ships used in the Antarctic at various times in the preceding half-century.—(Cen-tral Press Features, Ltd. All Rights Reserved).