Navy Programme In Antarctic

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30555, 25 September 1964, Page 3

Navy Programme In Antarctic

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, September 24. Five tours on the weather station, two supply voyages to McMurdo Sound, and a fourweek oceanographic cruise in the stormy southern ocean are the Antarctic operations planned this summer by the Royal New Zealand Navy.

The Navy Office said today the weather duty would be carried out by the frigate Pukaki, under LieutenantCommander A. G. Rhodes. She will spend about 10 days each month from October to February on what is regarded as the Navy’s roughest duty. This involves steaming in circles in an area known for gales, high seas and snowstorms on the edge of the ice belt 900 miles to the south Of Bluff. From this position the Pukaki will send back weather reports on which flights from Harewood to the Antarctic will be based. She will share this duty with the United States ship Mills. The Antarctic season will begin in Auckland in midNovember for the support ship H.M.N.Z.S. Endeavour,

under Commander P. R. H. Silk. She will begin loading at Auckland and collect further cargo and stores at Wellington and Lyttelton before sailing in December for Scott Base. She will take 40 tons of cargo and 600,000 gallons of fuel to the Antarctic on her first voyage. This supply voyage will be repeated in February and between the two, from January 11 to February 5, the ship will make an extensive oceanographic cruise on the southern ocean. The Endeavour is due back at Auckland on March 8.