IN POLAR FIELDS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIV, Issue 110, 9 April 1934, Page 2

IN POLAR FIELDS

EXPEDITION REMINISCENCES. Reminiscences of his experiences on Polar expeditions were narrated by Sir Hubert Wilkins with delightful ease of conversational style when he addressed the Palmerston North Rotary Club to-day. Opportunity was taken to make the occasion—a very suitable one—Daughters’ and Sons’ Day, and Mr W. G. Black presided over a large attendance. The young visitors were heard in song. Stating that it was very pleasing to see the daughters present, Sir Hubert Wilkins paid a tribute to the assistance given by the Esquimaux women to the expeditions with which he had been connected, but added that they could be troublesome at times. Such an embarrassing situation had occurred when he was working among the aborigines of North Australia. During his sojourn there the chief of the tribe died, and Sir Hubert discovered, during the funeral ceremony, that he hao been bequeathed the chief s e *gh wives. (Laughter.) AVhether in the Arctic or anywhere else, however, men realised that their womenfolk were expecting them to do their duty arm make achievements. That, in the ac of despair at critical stages had buoyed them up to continue on to success. In the field the explorer wt ne« difficulties and excitement. At home their wives and children had the harder ta-sk of watching and uniting. However, it was not all fun and adventure on expeditions. ..... c Joining up with the expedition of Stefansson, said Sir Hubert he ."' aB told that adventure in 1 olar J ou neys was the outcome of incompetence, inexperience and ignorance of conditions. Polar disasters and exploration history were full of such things. Compelled' to hunt for food with Stefansson, they had shot a few Polar bears and seals, but in the end were compelled to subsist on owls and ravens, tlio only bird life available. T Americans with the party would no eat crow, but the speaker found boiled owl quite good eating. They were saved from starvation when they found an abandoned whale carcase stripped of its fat. They ate the meat, though it was not nice. After that Sir Hubert decided that fast transport by ’planes must displace dog teams, but Stefansson contended that flying at 100 miles an hour they would discover nothing. LANDING AMONG ICE. It took a long time, continued Sir Hubert, to persuade anybody that it was possible to use ’planes in these low temperatures, and at first the Royal Aeronautical Society would not give its support. However, Americans were willing to take a chance on anything, and Mr Henry Ford and others willingly found 150,000 dollars for finance. People had said it was not practicable to use ‘planes, just as they opposed the submarine project because they wrongly, considered it would bo too dark and cold under the ice. Six hundred miles from land the engine of the ’plane in which Sir Hubert was flying in the Arctic failed. Amundsen and Byrd had said there was not a possible landing field, but the machine came down safely. Sir Hubert dug a hole in the ice and with depthsounding instruments discovered that there was 18,000 feet of ocean beneath them. Though his fingers were frozen in the operation, the pilot accompanying Sir Hubert got the machine into the air again, but it later flew into a storm 15,000 feet thick, and made its course along the top of it. Fnally the engine failed again and they had to glide down through the inky blackness. Feeling the cushion of air near the earth, they levelled off the machine and, though they could not see, it suddenly struck, they felt a twisting motion and found themselves in a smooth place, in the morning they found that one wing had caught a jagged piece of ice, which had miraculously slewed the machine round in the only available smooth ice patch for miles. It was a very small patch and just a few yards ahead were great hillocks of ice. NAKED—AND BELOW ZERO. Faced with a journey of 120 miles to land, they must have crawled 60 or 70 miles miles of the distance, owing to the dangers of fractures or sprains, Sir Hubert added. Carrying a heavy pack, he fell through the thin ice, and when he was coming up again, still submerged, to the ragged hole in the top where he climbed out again, he discovered that it was not nearly so dark underneath the ice as had been supposed. He emerged saturated and was compelled to rub the fur of his reindeer clothing in the snow to dry it, meanwhile running up and down naked ill a temperature of 40 degrees below zero. When the submarine project for the Arctic was first mooted, said Sir Huberft, people regarded it as impossible, but he had 18 years’ intermittent experience of submarines, and twelve years of the Arctic. The difficulties anticipated were purely imaginary. People had said the vessel would strike an iceberg. There were none in the Arctic. The ice was not hundreds of feet but only 14 or 15 feet thick, and 25 per cent, of the Arctic was not covered with ice. At the North Pole even there was at times no ice. A lane of water five miles wide had been seen there. “The Nautilus was crowded with everything that every crank could think of,” said the explorer, “and we dared not leave it off. Because the Nautilus was bought at the nominal cost, of one dollar. The United States Navay lent it to me; it was regarded by. people as an old, obsolete, brokendown vessel. Actually it had cost 1,500,000 dollars to build, was only ten years old, and had just finished a voyage of 6000 miles when acquired. She had to be destroyed under the Naval Treaty. Her torpedo tubes were taken out and three other engines were put in.” Instancing how a very little thing could make all the difference between failure and success, Sir Hubert said that not having had his teeth examined’ like others of the crew before he departed the chief engineer of the submarine developed terrible toothache in the Atlantic. Losing liis memory, he opened the wrong valve, filling with water an engine and smashing it to pieces, as well as others. They accepted a tow from a passing battleship. When they reached England the engineer disappeared for two days, but was located in hospital suffering from loss of memory and an abscess on the brain. That toothache caused a lot of trouble and cost thousands of pounds.

Concluding, Sir Hubert said the success it was hoped to achieve with the expeditions was not immediate, but it was hoped to fill in the gaps in the work of Scott, Shackleton and other explorers to make the information useful in order that in time it would be possible to forecast the nature of the seasons.

The speaker was accorded a vote of thanks on the motion of Mr B. J. Jacobs. Visitors welcomed were Messrs H. Newton, F. W. Vosseler, It. Young (Wellington), V. E. Smith (Feilding), J. Iv. Hornblow (Foxton), L. A. Peters, W. L. Black, J. W. Smith, D. McDonald and Rev. H. L. Richards (Palmerston North).