POLAR VOYAGERS

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2729, 25 March 1916, Page 6

POLAR VOYAGERS

NEWS OF SHACKLETON'S .EXPEDITION

SOUTHERN GROSSING NEXT YEAR . ■; V ) ■ ■■ -■■■ V • t By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright Buenos Aires, March 23. ■ ; Shackloton's ship Endurance is oxpccted daily. A whaler lias brought Sir Ernest Shackloton'» diary of the voyage to..South. Georgia. The. whalers thero said: they had had; a. bad -ice season, . the pack unbroken. Shackleton . abandoned tlie idea of crossing tho continent that year, and decided to winter in the'Weddel Sea, in tho hopo of reach— I ing 77deg., 30min. south before being, frozen in. ■■■ •• .-Tho diary says a stowaway was discovered in the tank locker. ■He said it , • was_ his-only, chance of: joining the expedition. Ho. was made cook's'help. - Shackleton's Pole party would probably ' be himself. Wild, Marston, r Hurley,, and Macklin; Tlio men were in splenfid'hcaltli. He expects to'take cinema lms of the Polar'journey. . It is diffi- ' cult to realise South Georgia.' It lias a !■■■ population-of 2000 in the The ■ ; liomos of tho station managers are; rei.' plete * with. ,'overy'comfort, and .electric.. ' light; everywhere; The,island .was'most valuable to the expedition, because the : dogs could be- exercised and fed with fresh meat. Hurloy has a good, camera: and many; feet of film to enable moving pictures to bo taken ; for the first time . on a Polar journey. [South Georgia is a group of islands j nearly 800 miles east by south of tho i Falkland Islands, of. which, they are a i- dependency. They bare an area of 1000

square milee. • The islands were ;disi covered, in 1675, arid were'taken pos- ' session of by Captain Cook in 1775.] '

THE ROSS SECTION OF THE EXPEDITION

EXPECTED AT HOBART

"If all goes well with us we .'should turn up at Hobart Isome time in March," said Captain Mackintosh, commander of the Ross Sea 'section . of Sir Ernest . ohackleton's expedition., on : his : departure, from Sydney for the south by the Aurora in December, 1914. Sir Ernest Sshackleton himself; who 'went to'the Antarctic different route, and who. . left; a. 1 couple of months earlier, had said, ■ "Look for us at the beginning of' Maroh." A- little uneasiness has been ,felt by some people on account of the absence all the time the Aurora has ■beenin the Antarctic—and that is nearly mouths—of, any wireless message 1 from her., . Captain.'J.. K.."'Davis, .-who was ih ( command of the*, Aurora on the Jlawso'n. expedition, 'stated : recently.: however, that the'inference that some-' thing : untoward had happened was not at all justified. He pointed out that the Mawson expedition had for the first year found it impossible to get its wireJess going;, owing to the difficulties in erecting masts and insulating 1 them. In ally case the installation with which the Ross Sea party was equipped was not a -ugh-power pne,i and. provided it were -bow. working, .the fact that the station on Macqiiarie Island, which would have been, the intermediary in the communications, had lately been dismantled would account for the silence. , ! rjl ®.section of the party under Captain Mackintosh loft Sydney on Decomher 14, 1914, . for tho Ross Sea base, on tnls side of the Antarctic Continent, .and the other, the main party, led 'by Sir Ernest. Shackletou himself, left a couple of months "earlier from the South American side in the Endurance, for the Weddell Sea,-base. The objects of tne great advanturo were to cross the Ant-' 'arctic from sea to sea, securing for the British ilagj the / 'honour of being the first carried across the South Polar continent, to carry .on. similar scientifio work by: the . patties' operating from the two bases, and to trace unknown por- . tious of the coastline. t Previous explorers have sought or reached the Pole,-and retired as they had come. Sir Ernest Shackleton's intention was to go right on, beginning at Weddell Sea; and; ending up at,the Ross Sea, on the other side, ' not'only of the continent, but of the world, sledging or walking the entire'distance; 1 He-took with ■'him 120 .dogs, .bred in Alaska' and Siberia, to act as food-carriers and to bo later as food. Shaoklcton's Last Letter, In. the last' - letter v written by Sir Ernest; Shackletou,... before'; his stout 1 little ship bore his party away, tho programme for the attempt to . cross Antarctica was sketched. "Tho party that will, I think, cross the continent with mo;" he . wrote, "-will bo Frank Hurley, (of Sydney), Frank "Wild, Crean, George Marston, and. Macklin. They are all splendid men, and fit and capable ..of looking after the dogs. They indeed spend the -whole time -with the dogs, and the latter know them, and are amenable to them. All but Mack-, linj who is a surgeon, have done a lot' of sledging. , Macklin is a. splendid, strong fellow; ,and a good companion. Hurley is a great -worker, , and I think it 'Trill be a good stroke to take him, for he has a splendid, camera, : that is right for 1000 ft.: of film, and ncv-or have moving pictures been taken on a journey. The other men are all good and keen workers.,; --Clark, - the ./biologist, Wardie, geologist, and James; magrieticiah, havo already been doing much, ■work important to science, which -will make an interesting , record ..when itcomes to be written; You must not look for -as -until about the beginning of March, 1910. Tile Endurance, with the other members of the Weddell Sea Party, will return to South' Georgia about that time, do some scientific work, and then go on to Buenos Aires. 'What I expect to.happen is this: We ought to land about the end of December. If the ice.had been lip north we: would have landed about the beginning of December. ■' Wo . shall at once investigate the road to the south, and if Filchener's land-place proves to bo any sort of harbour suitable for the ship, I shall*put down.both anchors and wait for her io freeze; in.

"Then I shall know,,that tho ship "will be«handy to tako off the remainder of :tho shore party about February 1, 1916. I am not v goirig to risk them later. The ship will ;go north,- then to South Georgia. As we are not too-well off for coals during the winter, the hands -will be employed in skinning seals, and taking the blubber, -which will bo used to stoke the boilers on the way up. The cross-country party will have their depots laid ont; and be ready to start about November I,' 1915, and ■we ought to cross in foiir months, and •bo met on the other side, (by.; Captain Mackintosh's Ross Sea party) in February. So far for my hopes. What God may arrange no one can say. Things ■have not worked well so far, as the ice conditions are so bad, but that is a matter,; which it is impossible to foretell from year to year."

Captain Davis, on his visit to Sydney, the other day, said he saw no reason why the party should not como through all right. They were thoroughly well equipped and. led by the most experienced of Antarctic explorers, and with ordinary luck should turn op safely about the duo time. Captain Mackintosh's Party. Captain Aeneas Mackintosh, R.N.R., who is in command of the Ross Sc-a-party, was a member of the Shackleton Expedition of -1907-9 as a second officer of the Nimrod, and was subsequently with the land party. The officers, "the staff, and the crew of the Expedition that left aboard the Aurora (wliich is only half the party) were as follow.—!

Aeneas A. Mackintosh. R;N.R„ commanding the party. J. R. Stenhous'o, R.N.R., chief officer, S.Y. Aurora. .A- T'adniiau, M.1.M.C., chief engineer, S.Y. Aurora. A. Stevens, ALA., B.Sc., lecturer in .geography m tlio University of Glas~ gow, geologist and chief of tho scioutxfio staff. '

A- Spencer-Smith, 8.A., F. It. Hist, ,S., chaplain und pbotograpiier. J. L. Cope, 8.A., M.B.j Cambridge, surgeon._ \ lr A- Keith Jack, M.Sc., of Brighton, VlO toria, physicist and assistant biologist. ■ •

R. W. Richards, of Ballarat, Vicphysicist. Irvine 0. Gaze, of Melbourne, commissariat officer.

dogs neSt Jos ' Ce ' ® yt * ney > in charge of

.A- H- consm of tlie explorer, who lost-his,life in the Mawsori expedition; m charge of motors. , S; E- Wild, brother of Frank Wild stores mam party) ' in; char S° of

Hayward, secretary. U a Mauger, carpenter. _ Hooke, wireless operator. Jwwa . Pat ?n, boatsmain. . S.Atkin, W. Kavanagh, A. Warren J. Downing, C. Glidden S. Grady w' Mugridge, I. Wise, J. Gates '

COINC NORTH. By Telegraph—Press -'Usociation-Oopyrifht Oftn+nin a G0p l enha8 1 e ' 1 ' March 23. + Uaptam. Amundsen, the explorer with the Norwegian support is summer .ftai? orfhflm WaskaTnlh corny 0n a vo >' a g° °f dis-