ON DRIFTING ICE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23364, 2 December 1937, Page 11

ON DRIFTING ICE

RUSSIAN POLAR OBSERVERS POSITION NOW PERILOUS IN THE GRIP OF CURRENT (United Press Association) (By Electric Telegraph—Copyright) LONDON, Nov. 30. (Received Dec. 1, at 5.5 p.m.) The Times special correspondent says the position of the four Russian Polar observers is now perilous. They are in the grip of the Polar current and are drifting like Nansen’s Fram 40 years ago towards the Spitzbergen coast. Messages coming through with unfailing regularity show they have drifted 100 miles from the starting point, staggering from east to west as the winds and ice pressures dictate. Their fate becomes a matter of serious concern. These drifting icefields have been surveyed from the air by Amundsen and Sir Hubert Wilkins and others, but no explorers have previously entrusted themselves to the tender mercies of the irresistible ice stream. Escape for the Russians would be all but miraculous in a tumbled mass of grinding floes that sweeps down the wild coast of east Greenland. The Russians are in the depth of the Arctic winter night, lit only by the moon, stars and aurora, and are probably experiencing conditions similar to those experienced by the Fram, whose master, Captain Sverdrup, wrote: “ The ice round us roared, screamed, and trembled as if a tremendous gale was blowing.”