POLAR VOYAGE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 256, 26 September 1933, Page 7

POLAR VOYAGE.

RECOGNITION OF TERRITORY. BOSTON, Sept. 25. Admiral Byrd’s supply ship, Bear of Oakland, underwent its final preparations to-day preparatory to starting for the South Polar regions tomorrow. Foodstuffs and scientific instruments have been placed aboard and the clearance papers have been issued. The expedition’s flagship, Pacific Fir, has been renamed Jacob Ruppert, in honour of the New York baseball magnate and brewer, who is one of the expedition’s principal sponsors. Admiral Byrd will leave on the Jacob Ruppert in about a week. He expects to overtake tlie Bear of Oakland long before she reaches the base at Dunedin, the voyage to which is expected to require about two months. According to dispatches from Washington, the Post Office Department announced that a post office will be established in Antarctica called “Little America.” This is one of the first official acts recognising the territory explored by Admiral Byrd as a United States possession. MR ELLSWORTH DELAYED. 1 PILOT ILL AT CAPETOWN. CHRISTCHURCH, Sept. 25. A delay in the plans of Mr Lincoln Ellsworth for his Antarctic flight will probably mean that the Ifyrd Expedition will be ahead of him, and that Rear-Admiral Byrd’s flight across the South Pole will be accomplished before Ellsworth’s expedition arrives. The delay is caused by the fact that Mr Bernt Balclien, the noted aviator and explorer, has lrad an attack of appendicitis at Capetown. Mr Ellsworth did not hear of Mr Balchen’s illness until his return to Christchurch from the Franz Josef glacier. The message said that Mr Balchen had undergone an operation, that he was recovering well, and that it was expected that the Wyatt Earp, with its equipment for the expedition, including the Northrop-Delta lowwing monoplane, would reach New Zealand about November 7. The disarrangement of his plans has not worried Mr Ellsworth, nor has the possibility that the other expedition will anticipate him. Rear-Admiral Byrd had not yet announced his plans, and Mr Ellsworth said he did not know what his fellow American proposed to do. “I suppose I’m too old to worry about the competitive side,” he said. “I told Byrd when last I saw him that it did not matter who made the first crossing, as long as it was accomplished, and the things we want to find out were made known. That will be the great thing.”