BREAKING THE ICE

Evening Star, Issue 20372, 2 January 1930, Page 9

BREAKING THE ICE

THE BYRD EXPEDITION ANXIOUS MOMENTS A TRAGEDY FEARED WHALER'S AEROPLANE MISSING . Special to Press Association from the Byrd Expedition by Russell Owen. (Copyright.) BAY OF WHALES, December 30. The bay ice is beginning to roll up on the eastern side and break onto ,lafoons of water in which seals play, he last two weeks have been unusually warm, and for three days now we have had hours when the sky overhead is clear and the sun uhines down with midsummer warmth. The men wander round on the snow without caps or gloves, wearing glasses; to protect their eyes from the brilliant light. They sit on boxes basking in the sun sleepily in odd moments, and sometimes someone can be seen stretched on an engine crate drowning; in the warmth. Signs of the breaking' of the ice have been watched with great, interest, for on what happens to the bay depends in a large measure themethod of loading the snips. If the ice does not go out, and stays as it is now, it will be a tremendous task to. get the planes aboard, and although there is a creaking np on the eastern side of the bay,, the central part and the western side.ate smooth and unbroken, as during the winter. - With' regard to the puck ice, the whalers report that it is the heaviest they have seen for years. It is 151) miles wider than last year, when it stretched across our path Irons latitude. 68 to 70, 250 miles of almost solid pack, but this year it reaches Ircm latitude 67 to 74, three degrees further,,or 450 miles of pack to be penetrated. So heavy was the ice that one of the first whalers to go'through lbs': a chaser in , the crush. This condition is delaying the start, of our ships from New Zealand, tor. it was hoped that they would have been on their way long before this. It is probable that the City of ‘ New York wul start in’a few days and sail to the .pack to "save coal, and the Eleanor Bolling, which is a steel ship, will follow her some days later. They will meet at the edge of the ice and come through together for mutual safety. It is hoped that bv the time they reach here the pack will have been broken sufficiently! and. they will be able to get' through in a. reasonably short time and with' safety. Most ships have been abo to get through fairly easily after the middle of January. . At least we hofc.- so, for with the job done everybody .wants to get home, and it still seems a long way off. It will be a treat day when the mas theads appear own the bay. * AEROPLANE VANISHES—TWO MEN ON BOARD. Another tragedy has been written on the ice-strewn sea of the Antarctic. An aeroplane which was used in scouting for whales by. the whaler Kosmos vanished near the edge of the ice pack, despite a search for it si no} Christmas -Day. It was flown by Lief Lier, a wellknown pilot in Norway, who had with bim as apassengerDr Ingvakl Sdileineri the ship’s doctor, and a son of a well-known physician in Oslo. The eceroh for the missing men is being continued by the Kosmos, although after five days of desperate effort', in which the entire ice pack was penetrated . deeply between Scott Island and Balleny Islands there is little hope • that tney will be founc . What happened to them must have come so suddenly that Lier had no opportunity to make a safe landing” on the ice or in a sheltered ice bay. The loss of the two young men, both of whom were popular on the ship and at home, spoiled , the Christmas for the whalers, and they are saddened by ( the accident, which they could hot avert, and which they have tried so hard to overcome by rescue. operations. i The Kosmos, which is commanded by Captain Larsen, is, the largest of the Norwegian whalers. She is a 22,000-ton ship, built specially for ;his work. She is really a boating factory for rendering the blubber from whales brought alongside by small chasers. It .had been thought in recent yearn that an aero-, plane would be of value in spotting whalet, and Commander Byrd’s expedition, coming through last year, did much to hasten the experiment. A light two-seater aeroplane, a Gpysy Moth, with a 100 horse-power Cvrrus engine, was fitted with pontoons and Lier was engaged as pilot. Balclien knew him well, and so did Carl Petersen, one of our radio operators, and ! met. him in Oslow on the way to Spitsbergen with Captain- Amundsen and Ells worth in 1926. He was a tall, hand- . some man of thirty-two, who until this trip had been doing commercial flying in Norway, using his own planes. He learned to lly in Hungary in 1921, and after seven hours of solo flying bought a plane and flew it home over Germany and Sweden —quite a feat for a new pilot. Lier ’ had made a number of good flights in his small plane, and its use hath been completely successful in s whaling. One day he flew in all 700 miles. He was always easeful, knowing < the danger of getting out of touch with the ships, and in addition to using radio when he flow alone he kept along the edge of the pack, with the mother ship or dome of the chasers in sight- But on this occasion he did not carry radio , because of the added weight of , his passenger. , ; . The day Lier disappeared ho started at 6 in the evening, when the summer sun was high in a clear sky. Whaling operations had_ been resumed after the Christmas festivities (the whalers are on the other side of tie date line from -as., so that our Christmas was December 26 for them). He started and had with him fuel for five or six hours. His orders were to inspect the ice pack -■ edge to the west of the Kosmos. The three big whalers north of the ;pack were'strung out west af Scott Island—the Larsen, which helped Commander [ Byrd so > much last year, and the Southern Princess were near Scott Island, and the Kosmos was more to the westTh'e. plane carried emergency rations for two days as the possibility of a forced landing Was always present, but it did not seem dnneerons in view of Lier’s method of fly ing within sight of the ships. Captain Andresen had taken every possible safety precaution. : After six hours had _ passed and Lier bad not returned anxiety bupan to he felt. The chasers of the Kosmos were ordered out to look for the plane, and as time went on the chasers from the other two .ships also joined the search, so that there were sixteen of these fast little vessels tearing olong at fourteen knots across, the edge of the pack. Then the two whalers to the east came np to aid their chasers and nunted the entire territory between Scott’s Island and the Kosmos, and then a small fleet' struck off to the westward. In the five days that have, ('lapsed they have searched 220 miles to the westward of the Kosmos. Some of them penetrated

the pack at intervals as much as 160 miles from the edge. They returned back in parellel lines far apart, sweeping the entire area for a long distance from the edge of the pack. It is unbelievable that Lier made a mistake in his coarse, as the sun was visible at the time and he.could have followed the edge of the pack. The pilots here are more inclined, to believe that, owing to'engine failure in a climb, he fell off on the wing and spun into the pack or the sea. The sea was fairly smooth at first, but after the second day it rose and became foggy. The weather cleared again in a short time. After the first hunt there was a conference of captains on the Kosmos, and there seemed very little hope from the way the search had been carried out that the plane could bo found. The chasers of the Kosmos are still searching, however, penetrating the pack, which now seems breaking up, wherever possible. Commander Byrd was much concerned when he heard of the mishap, and sent word to Captain Andresen that he' wished’it were in his power to do something to help. From the extent of the search which has . already been mac\e it is certain that the plane could not have drifted beyond the distance reached by the whalers. He also offered to send down the City of New York to search if she would be of assistance, ft would have been impossible to fly Tom here to aid in • the search, for there are no pontoons for the planes, and the dritsnes to the northern edge of the ice pack is more than 80(1 miles further than to the Pole itself. Even f a plane could get that far it would be impossible for it to land and refuel, and it would have to turn round immediately and fly back. The possibility of such help was immediately dismissed by the whalers as too hazardous, and Captain Andresen wired to Commander Byrd to-day: “The risk of a plane even flying up here from your base would bo a great one in view of the uncertain weather experienced outside of the pack, _ there being many days of fog at this time of the year. I thank you for your generous offer of help in our time of trouble, and know that you are with us.”