FRENCH EXPEDITION PLANS YEAR ON ADELIE LAND

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23091, 2 November 1949, Page 4

FRENCH EXPEDITION PLANS YEAR ON ADELIE LAND

(By Edwin Hooker, a Reuter Correspondent) PA IMS. The French polar expedition ship Commandant Charcot is ploughing southward through the South Atlantic with II men who are to make a second attempt to spend a year in Adclie Land, the French sector of the icebound Antarctic, continent. In command of the ship, a 1460-ton wooden vessel with Diesel engines, originally built as a ncfclavcr for the United States Navy, is Commander Max Douguct, of the French Navy.

Since its discovery in January. 1840, by the French navigator, Dumont D'Urville, who named it after his wife, Adclie Land has been visited once—by the western group of Sir Douglas Mawson’s Australian expedition in 1913. It forms a wedge separating the two sectors of the Australian Antarctic dependency. Last February, Commander Douguct found Adelie Land's 150-mile coast blocked by huge masses of ice, and after many attempts had to postpone landing the party till this season, but exceptional ice conditions enabled the expedition to map and land on the l seldom-visited Ballony Islands in New Zealand's Ross dependency, as well as making important weather and ice observations and taking soundings along the Adelie coast. Air Scouting Over Tack Ice This time, the Commandant Charcot has on board a four-seater Stimson plane in which M. Pierre Vidlund will make reconnaissance flights to guide the ship through the ice pack and find a suitable landing place and base site. M. Vidlund will return with the ship after the landing is made. Also on board when the Commandant Charcot sailed from Brest on September 10 were Dr. Jean Sapin-Jaloustre, medical officer and biologist; M. Francois Tabuteau, hydrographer, M. Yves Ballette, map specialist, who took part in the Australian expedition to Macquarie Island last year; M. Alexandre Henri Boujon, meteorologist; M. Andre Paget, a technician, whose special charge is the huts in which the party will live and work through the Antarctic winter; M. Robert Pommier, veteran of two Spitzbergen expeditions, in charge of photography and dogs; M. J. A. Martin, in charge of supplies and cinema work; and M. Rene Gros, radio operator. M. Liotard. M. Mario Marret, chief radio man who took part in last year's French expedition to Greenland, and M. Albert Harders, his oilier assistant, flew from Paris to join the ship at Dakar at the beginning of October. Scientific Equipment At Hobart, where the Commandant Charcot is due about November 30, she will take on board a large amount of material left behind there last March. Tin's includes scientific instruments of all kinds and two “weasels”— tracked vehicles similar to those which have been found extremely useful by the French Arctic Expedition now on the Greenland Icecap. The expedition will also be joined there by the “husky" dogs who will draw the specially • designed sledges which are to be used for exploring the unknown interior of Adelie Land. There were originally 35 of these dogs, including some presented by the British Graham Land expedition and others brought back from Greenland by M. Paul Emilio Victor, Polar expedition chief. But since they were left at the Melbourne Zoo in March, births have brought their total to at least 42. On their expeditions into the interior of the frozen continent, the explorers will use double-walled tents of cellular construction designed to open like an umbrella and resist winds of up to 125 miles an hour. H Layers of Clothing To resist temperatures which may reach 50 and even GO degrees centigrade below zero (90 to 108 fahrenheit degrees below freezing) they will wear as many as 14 layers of clothing, and their rations, calculated to be sufficient for two years and a half in case the ship cannot reach them next year, will furnish 6000 calorics per man per day. Their radio equipment will enable ihe expedition to keep in touch with the British weather stations in Graham Land on the far side of the continent and with Paris by way of Noumea, in the French Pacific Colony of New Caledonia. Tt will also be useful in guiding sledging expeditions back to their base in thick weather. This year's expedition is intended to open the way for a larger party next year. Nevertheless, it. intends to take a large bite out of a programme which includes: 1. Finding n landing place and establishing a base. 2. Exploring the French sector of the Antarctic, which extends from 136 to 142 degrees east longitude and from the Antarctic Circle to the South Pole. 3. Studying the hydrography and oceanography of the coast, ‘including tides and the discovery of safe anchorages. 4. Mapping the country, finding the best loutes and setting up advanced bases. 5. Making a geological examination of the territory. Here the main difficulty will be to find some outcrops of rock not. entirely covered by ice and snow. 6. To study meteorology in a country which, besides having the toughest climate in the world, is regarded as the “weather factory” for a large part of the Southern Hemisphere. 7. Other research, including seismology, the study of the atmosphere and of the Aurora Australia. All these investigations will he continued by next year's expedition.