THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS TUESDAY, JANUARY 5, 1937 ANOTHER ARCTIC VENTURE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22618, 5 January 1937, Page 8

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS TUESDAY, JANUARY 5, 1937 ANOTHER ARCTIC VENTURE

So Sir Hubert Wilkins is set on making another attempt to go by submarine under the North Pole. He is prepared to put his last penny into the venture—he has enough pennies to total £25,W/)—and hopes England will subscribe the remainder, about £IO,OOO, required to make the scheme financially practicable. Is England likely to do this' It is not improbable. His first venture of the kind, made in 1931, ended in failure, but that was not his way of describing the result. Retreat partial success enough success to justify another try with another submarine built especially for the task: this was the description he preferred. And he was willing at once to discuss details of the retreat and of the further effort he was determined to make. The Nautilus —the submarine he then used—vras defective, he admitted, for the special purpose; there were suspicions of this when she first put to sea for her trials; even the unusual appliances with which she was fitted could not. it seemed, make her equal to the strange demands. That was the opinion of Stefansson, who thought so much of Wilkins as to have him as second in command in Arctic exploration, and had himself earlier suggested just such an under-sea polar journey. In ten or twenty years' time, so Stefansson commented when Sir Hubert made his first announcement of his purpose, a submarine voyage of this kind would be a commonplace, an experience without danger; but a vessel of particular qualities would have to be constructed. This condition, it can be assumed, is now likely to be fulfilled, so that even the "ticklish time" Wilkins and his party had in the initial venture is not likely to be remembered as a deterrent of support for the second.

If Sir Hubert Wilkins ■were the sort of man to hold risks lightly this second enterprise might be dismissed as recklessly foolish. It happens, however, that he has a secure reputation for scientific poise of mind and an aptitude for practical endeavour. To the impressive fact that to bo seasoned an explorer of the Arctic regions as Stefansson the idea of a sub-polar voyage first appealed must be added his confidence in Wilkins for the task. Sir Hubert, who is a Briton of Australian birth, has given continuous proof of a distaste for merely spectacular exploits. It is said of him that there are few things he has not done and few places where he has not been. In 1910 he learned to fly; in 1912-13 he was with Turkish forces in the Balkan war as a photographic correspondent ; as soon as this occupation left him he joined Stefansson's Canadian expedition in the Arctic. News of the World War reached him there in 1915, and he returned to take a commission in the Australian Flying Corps; his war service was distinguished by a double winning of the Military Crosß and by two other mentions in despatches. Next he essayed the flight from England to Australia, but was beaten by disaster in the Mediterranean. Almost immediately thereafter he joined the British Imperial Antarctic Expedition, again (as under Stefansson) being second in command. During the two years of Shackleton's last voyage south he was naturalist; and since then, after much scientific work in the Northern Territory of Australia and in the heart of Africa, he has been almost continuously busy in the Arctic and Antarctic alternately; he achieved a marvellous flight from Alaska to Svalbard across the frozen north, and began the planting of meteorological stations along the fringe of the south - polar continent. He has

revealed a penchant for filling gaps between the discoveries of others, a disposition quite the reverse of that tending to wild-goose chases. When the human factor of this second submarine venture is considered it must be acknowledged that, besides being no braggart, he is neither reckless nor unskilled nor inexperienced. But is this contemplated effort likely to be worth while! It will have risks in plenty, no matter how well equipped the expedition may be: Stefansson's "ten or twenty years" have not passed. To dive beneath the far-stretching ice-field, submerging to a depth sufficient to clear the bases of the heavier masses of the floe, and to set a course involving, in all, hundreds of miles at that depth—even if it be traversed in "short dashes of about 12 hours each" —must be hazardous. A mishap to delicate mechanism, a failure in its hum?.n handling, a miscalculation of any essential factor —and tragic death would be faced: at least, so the - imagination of stay-at-home mortals sees things. And for what? To be better able to plot the Arctic currents, to find out something about the depth of ocean thereabout, to test (as with certain land - areas said to exist) the truth of some suppositions; these interests may not seem important, but to geographers and others they are so. And when to minds like Stefansson's and Wilkins' they mean much there can be no very cogent protest. To wish Sir Hubert well in both the planning and the execution of his project is right. He deserves support and success.