CHECK TO EXPLORERS.

Evening Star, Issue 21621, 17 January 1934, Page 6

CHECK TO EXPLORERS.

Widespread sympathy will be felt with Mr Lincoln Ellsworth and his gallant companions in the. misfortune that has frustrated their bold Antarctic enterprise at its very commencement. Adventurous as it was, the flight by aeroplane which caused new knowledge to be gained of the South Polar regions formed only one part of the plans of Admiral Byrd’s expedition of a few years ago, as a like flight will do in the design of the present expedition under that leader. Aerial survey, however, was the sole purpose of Mr Ellsworth’s undertaking, and the damage to his aeroplane, which could not be repaired on the polar ice, left no alternative to the explorers but to return to civilisation. Their stay in the Antarctic fastnesses was planned to be a short one in any case; it was expected that by the beginning of March they would be back in New Zealand waters. But it was hoped that in that time Mr Ellsworth and Mr Balchen would have performed the flight of 2,900 miles from the Ross Sea to the Weddell Sea and back again, which 4 would throw new light on the geography of those vast regions. The two main questions to be solved were whether the Ross Sea Bight on the one side and the Weddell Sea Bight on the other side of the Antarctic Continent continue through to divide Antarctica into two great islands, and whether the Graham Land mountains, which seem to be an extension of the South American Andes, continue on to join the Queen Maud Range. Those problems will not be solved in the present season, since the breaking up of the ice shelf on which it bad been unloaded has caused disaster to the explorers’ aeroplane, and the ice will have closed in, preventing all entrance to the Bay of Whales, before their vessel, on its way back now to New Zealand waters, and probably America, can return. Aeroplanes have done good work in both North and South Polar exploration since Sir Douglas Mawson planned to take the first one, at a very different stage of the craft’s development, with his expedition of 1911-14 to the Antarctic, and ,it was smashed up by accident in Australia. Flights of Sir Hubert Wilkins, Admiral Byrd, and Mr Balchen in both Polar regions will be recalled. Precautions seem to have been taken by Mr Ellsworth’s expedition against almost every mischance except that which actually befell, and whicli no precautions probably, short of the carrying of a second aeroplane, could have guarded against. Additions for this season to our knowledge of the South Polar tracts must be left to Admiral Byrd and his company. The high hopes of his competitors in adventure deserved a better fate, but it is fortunate that the disaster which has wrecked their plans for the present was unaccompanied by any loss of life. ■