IN LOOSE PACK-ICE

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 69, 14 December 1933, Page 9

IN LOOSE PACK-ICE

Ellsworth Expedition Ship STORMY VOYAGE Terrific Winds; Lumpy Seas ALL ABOARD CHEERFUL (Received December 13, 7 p.m.) (Special to the United Press Association —by radio. Copyright.) The Wyatt Earp, at Sea, Dec. 13. Two icebergs were sighted by the Lincoln Ellsworth Antarctic expedition ship Wyatt Earp at 5 pan. local time on Tuesday, and behind them loomed the ice link. By 7 o’clock we had passed twenty more, and entered the edge of the loose ice pack at approximately lat. 63.17, long. 1’4.06. At 1 a.m.-the loose pack was ahead as far as we could see. Through terrific winds and lumpy seas the Wyatt Earp has, since leaving Dunedin, beaten her away amid whitecapped waves almost 1000 miles toward the Antarctic pack ice. Driven spray lashes the deck, and with incessant rain smothers the ship in dripping wetness. Slanting rain and soft, low clouds limit the vision to a mile or so, and the hazards of navigation are enhanced by the fact that only once in the last six days has Captain Holth been able to find by solar observation the ship’s position. Of such are the terrors of sub-polar ocean travel —to a landsman—but to all aboard trained in and familiar with high latitude seas it is all in the day’s work. The careful selection of the ship and crew and the adequate preparations made to meet such conditions ensure that everything goes according to plan.

All aboard are cheerful and sense no hardship. Had the decks been indiscriminately and loosely crammed, the deck-load would have been overboard some time ago. But in spite of the snappy rolling of the ship and the tumbling waters, everything inboard goes smoothly. The temperature is now only 5 degrees Centigrade above freezing, which sounds much colder than 41 degrees Fahrenheit. Yet so well fed and hearty are the men of the crew that most of them have not yet donned their heavy underwear and none have , broken out their woollen gloves or mittens. However, the conditions we now experience are not to be treated lightly. It is to be expected that in spite of Mr. Ellsworth’s ample preparations, discomforts and hardships will occur before he and Balchen have. completed their hazardous long flight of discovery.