OCEANOGRAPHICAL RESEARCH

Evening Star, Issue 21633, 31 January 1934, Page 3

OCEANOGRAPHICAL RESEARCH

DISCOVERY'S ANTARCTIC INVESTIGATIONS LONG VOYAGE TO WHALING WATERS [Per United Press Association.] AUCKLAND, January 30. : The arrival of the royal research ship Discovery 11. to-day marked the end of another stage in her work of oceanographical research in the whaling waters of the Antarctic. The vessel showed little evidence of her buffeting in the heavy seas of the South Pacific Ocean. After anchoring for a short time in the stream she came smartly alongside the western viaduct, where she will berth during her stay in Auckland. The members of her crew were obviously happy at coming to the end of a five weeks’ spell in the uncongenial waters of the Southern Pacific. It was noticed that many of them carried substantial beards, but these were removed shortly after the vessel berthed. The Discovery 11. left London on her third commission on October 21, having been visited prior to sailing by Mr J. H. Thomas, Secretary of State for the Dominions, and Mr Ramsay MacDonald. Her first port of call was St. Vincent, where she took on oil and stores. From there she sailed direct to Tristan da Cunha, where mail and stores were landed for the isolated community on those remote islands. The vovage was continued to South Georgia and the South Shetlands, dependencies of the Falkland Islands, for the Government of which the research work is being conducted. The ship reached the pack ice for the first time on this commission in latitude G 8 south, and then turned northward to the Falkland Islands, calling on her way at Punta Arenas, in the Straits of Magellan. On December 27 the long voyage to Now Zealand was commenced. The greater part of this voyage consisted of a zigzag cruise along the edge of the Pacific pack icc, and the investigation of the whales and their relation to the distribution of the ice, and to that of their food. No land was seen, but only a vast belt of heavy pack ice, which had not been penetrated by previous explorers. During this cruise the Discovcry 11. passed close to the spot from which Admiral Byrd had made one of his flights a few days previously. The cruise in the vicinity of the ice was continued ns far as the Ross Sea, when the ship set a course for New Zealand