BYRD EXPEDITION

Greymouth Evening Star, 1 February 1934, Page 6

BYRD EXPEDITION

UNLOADING DIFFICULTIES. [BY CABLE —PBESS ASSN. —COPYBIGHT.] NEW YORK, January 30. x , In broken and pitted pressure-ridges and crevasses west of Little America, 44 marooned men are struggling with the dog teams, to save tons of winter supplies from going with the rapidly crumbling ice into the water. The four-mile icefloat around the Bay of Whales appears to be disrupting at an accelerating rate. Since Wednesday, the edge of the ice has moved a mile. In the past 24 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 is rapidly widening. At seven in the evening the Jacob Ruppert was still hove to in the Bay. At least a dozen times she attempted to moor, but the ice was always unstable. Once the vessel was anchored to the ice at the foot of the West Barrier, south of Chamberlain Harbour, which appeared to he holding, and a party were landed. Two hundred feet from the shore, they noted a minute crack in the ice. Twenty minutes later, they returned and found that this crack was three feet wide. The party then hurriedly re-embarked and the Jacob Ruppert cast her moorings. Within half an hour the ice at the landing spot, to the extent of one and a half miles long and 200 yards wide, broke off, and drifted into the Bay, with the floor of the Bay, over which the Jacob Ruppert rested, raised 12 feet 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 three and a-half miles run, and is very exhausting to both the men and the dogs, winding through deep ice furrows and around huge ice boulders. Continually appearing crevasses were ever a menace to the drivers. Lumber that is. intended for the constructing of the Broadcasting Shack has been nailed to telephone poles to form improvised bridges over several of the larger crevasses. “If the transmitter had been on shore we would have used it as an abutment,” Verlger commented. Through the bottle-neck of the passage, the 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 righting their toppling sledges, and slewing round ice columns, until their exhaustion drops them Three cooks, including one of the New Zealand stowaways, are supplying them with food. Constant radio communication is being kept with the Jacob Ruppert.

BEAR OF OAKLAND. NEW YORK, January 30. Captain English of the Bear of Oakland, has advised Admiral Byrd that the vessel is now within three and a-half days’ sailing of the Bay of Wales. She is apparently making a record run from Dunedin.