RACE AGAINST TIME

Evening Star, Issue 21634, 1 February 1934, Page 9

RACE AGAINST TIME

THE BYRD EXPEDITION HEROIC EFFORT TO SAVE SUPPLIES Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright. NEW YORK, January 30. In broken, pitted pressure ridges and crevasses west of Little America 44 marooned men are struggling with dog teams to save tons of winter supplies from going with the rapidly crumbling ice into the water. The four-mile ice front around the Bay of Whales appears to ho disrupting at an accelerating rate. Since Wednesday the edge of tho ice has moved a mile. In the past twenty-four hours myriads of cracks have opened in the raised flooring of the bay ice. A crack inches wide between the supplies and the permanent camp, was rapidly widening at 7 o’clock in the evening. The Jacob Ruppert is still hove-to in the bay. At least a dozen times she has attempted to moor but the ice is always unstable, Once the vessel anchored to ice at the foot of the west barrier in South Chamberlain Harbour, which appeared to be holding, and the party landed 200 feet from the shore. They noted a minute crack in the ice. Twenty minutes later they returned and found it three feet wide. The party hurriedly ro-erabarked, and the Jacob Ruppert cast off her moorings. Within half an hour the ice at the landing spot, one mile and a-half long and 200yds wide, broke off and drifted into the bay, with the floor of the bay, over which the Jacob Ruppert rested, raised 12ft in the air. From the bridge of the Jacob Ruppert the tents at the pressure camp are visible. There are dog drivers rushing sledges loaded with supplies through the pressure area to the barrier overlooking Little America. It is a run of three and ahalf miles, and very exhausting to the men and dogs, winding through deep ice furrows and around huge ice boulders. Continually appearing crevasses are a menace to the drivers. Lumber with which it was intended to construct the broadcasting shack was nailed to telephone poles to form improvised bridges over several larger crevasses. “If tho transmitter had been on shore we would have used it as an abutment,’’ Verleger commented. Through the bottle-neck of the passage, crews under June, Taylor, and Demas have already jammed upwards of 100 tons of stores. The dogs are only getting an occasional rest. The men continue to fight, toppling sledges or slewing them round ice columns until exhaustion drops them. Three cooks, including one of the New Zealand stowaways, are supplying food, and constant radio communication is kept with the Jacob Ruppert, Captain English, of the Bear of Oakland, advised Admiral Byrd that the vessel was within three and a-half days’ sailing of the Bay of Whales, apparently making a record run from Dunedin.- , , • ......