THE AURORA.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 17206, 28 June 1916, Page 7

THE AURORA.

[FnOil ObE CORRESPONDENT.] . DUNEDIN. June 27. In accordance with the arrangement come to between the Government and Messrs John Mill and Co., a start has been made with the preparation for relieving Captain Macintosh and his party from the solitudes of the Antarctic. The Aurora is to go into the smaller dock at Port Chalmers tomorrow morning, there to he sighted.by the surveyors as a preliminary to fitting her for sea, and it is now definitely settled that Captain Stenhouse is to have charge of tho relief ship. He will provide her with a crew and sail her down to the ice and take such measures as his knowledge suggests for bringing back the louely mou. Tho party Cf the Endurance’s men left on Elephant Island, in the South Slietlaads, on April 24 numbered twenty-two. They were in charge of Mr Frank Wild, who had n 'distinguished record with the Mawsou expedition, and was second in command of the yiiackleton expedition. He was one of the party of five selected for the projected march across the continent of Antarctica. Another of the party now awaiting relief :s Mr Frank Hurley, who was tho photographer with Sir Douglas Mawson, and who obtained the splendid pictures reproduced in Mawson’s book, “ The Home of the Blizzard.” Ho took a moving picture camera as well as an ordinary camera, in order to kinema the march across the Pole. Dr Macklin is also a member of the party. Sir Ernest Sliaclcleton’s companions, who mado the great boat voyage with him to South Georgia, were Captain Frank A. Worsley, and Crean, MacNish, M’Carthy and Vincent. Elephant Island is n small island ir. the South Shetland chain, on the border of the Antarctic legion, lying about SCO miles to tho south-east of Cape Horn, in about 62 degrees south latitude. The South Shatlands are desolate. rocky, mountainous places—some ot the peaks rise to over ouuu feet—and at this time of the year they are covered in snow and ice, concealing everywhere the scanty vegetation of lichens, mosses and hardy grasses. They produce nothing that will bo of use to the men exiled on their melancholy bills, but tliG seas abound in seals, and there are pnnguins, albatrosses and other seafowl to bo caught.