NORTHWARD BOUND.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 24 June 1925, Page 5

NORTHWARD BOUND.

ALGARASON SAILS.

FLIGHT BY AIRSHIP

BY CABLE—PRESS ASSOCIATION—COPYRIGHT

LONDON, June 22. Lieut. Grettir Algarason’s expedition to the North Pole sailed to-day on board the ship Iceland, eii route to Spitzbergen. Mr Gordon Burt, of Dunedin, has been appointed chief engineer of the exploration ship. Grettir Algarason is a mercantile marine officer who was formerly a journalist, and he will have as his associate Commander Frank Worsley, D. 5.0., the New Zealander, a member of the Shackleton party. Algarason and Worsley intended to race Captain Amundsen to the North Pole, but they were delayed. The crew of the Iceland comprises 20 volunteers, practically all in their twenties. The flight to the Pole will be made in an airship. “When we reach the Pole,” Algarason said in an interview recently, “we will descend by a rope ladder to the ice and spend several hours making calculations. Then we will make a bee-line for Alaska, thus proving that;we have been over the Pole. This will involve a flight of over 2000 miles. “We carry fuel for 2500 miles,” he added. “If the airship is destroyed we have a sledge and foodstuffs to last 600 miles. We stand a sporting chance.”