ICE BARRIER BREAKS.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 1 February 1929, Page 2

ICE BARRIER BREAKS.

EXPLORERS’ DESPERATE SITUATION. RECKLESS COURAGE IN RESCUING GEAR BAY OP WHALES, Jan. 29. Mr Russell Owen reports: “The Antarctic played another of its little tricks to-day and for two hours, in breaking and heaving cakes of ice, the men showed a reekless courage, which alone saved a desperate situation. Blizzard Blows Up.

‘'Last night, when the men were working on the dock and hauling tilings up the slope to the barrier, a blizzard came up from the north-west. It blew hard and thick. The hpavy snow obscured the entire bay, so that it was impossible to see more than a few feet. It caked the clothes of the crew hauling at the crates and getting the stuff over the side, ami the cold wind froze it to them, so that they were cased in crackling armour. In the thick smother of snow they could hear the sighing and moaning of the ice under the pressure of the wind along the barrier. The sound was like the wind blowing through the trees of a mountain slope, and occasionally there was a distant rumble caused by a detached piece of the barrier to the north'breaking away. “The experience of the dog driver, Goodalc, was typical of others. He felt something like an earthquake below; then he saw a crack opening just behind him. He jujmped across and started for the ship, leaping over more cracks, which opened all round him, and no sooner had he reached one of the large cakes, which had been half of our dock, than the whole slope slid with a hissing sound down into the water, and a piece of the adjoining barrier fell. Where there had been a smooth, high pathway a moment before, was a broken mass of big cakes.

"Our uock had first broken near the barrier. The top of- the crack was about three feet apart at first, bin it gradually opened until it was ton feet wide inside. The piece rose until for a time it threatened to turn over; if it had done so it would have raised havoc with the ships. As the big crack widened, the aeroplane skis' pedestal, a heavy piece of laminated wood, slid down to the smashed ice between the cakes and another pedestal hung over the edge. One section of the portable house toppled off into the water. Everything was in movement, for there was just enough commotion in the water, partly caused by the breaking of the £lopc and dock and partly by the slighr swell, to make the enormous cakes sway and lift their ponderous sides as if to gnaw r at us. All Hands on the Ice.

There was a call for all hands and the men eagerly tumbled over the sitlo to the broken ice. The most important thing to save was the centre wing of the big Ford plane, which lay on the slope of the inner dock cake, so far down that it could not be scon from the steamer. Bill Gravrooski, the stowaway of the Bolling, lay down and while the others hold his legs, he slipped over into the big crack and got hold of the pedestal and plane sections and pulled them out. Pieces of the house, heavy, clumsy things which ordinarily would have been moved slowly, were jarred from the ice, on to the men r s shoulders and tossed aboard us if they were matchboxes. The icc on which" the men were wording sloped more and more and the crack widened. “ Commander Byrd ordered all the men to don lifebelts and directed operations with a megaphone handy in case the men were unable to hear him in emergency. Getting the section of the house out of the water was something of a job but a rope was passed round it under the slush and it was rescued before it had time to get soaked. Y c saved everything except half a dozen sacks of coal, which sank to the bottom amid the heavy squall. The shore lines were cast off, the ice anchors wore drawn in by the winches and fortunately we did not lose one of them. The two ships, still lashed together, began to drift out into the bay and work was immediately begun loading the cargo from Bolling into City o. Now York, so that Bolling may got tack to New Zealand and come down again on another trip before the bav begins to freeze. The remains of oni dock drifted out to sea and the lasi ■wo saw of them, they were far away A pile of pieces of aeroplane crales was lying on top of the cake, but w c do not need them. _____