VIKING SHIP IN THE THAMES

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17094, 29 October 1929, Page 5

VIKING SHIP IN THE THAMES

LONDON, Sept. 5. Londoners so inclined have been able this week to stroll by the Thames near the House of Parliament and look across a few yards of intervening brown muddy water to a small vessel which is A replica of the Viking ships which played so great a part in maritime history centuries ago. We are assured that it is the first Viking ship which has come to London for 500 years. Moored now in the shadow of "Big Ben," this little craft will soon be venturing across the great oceans in quest of adventure. She hears a great name, the name of the greatest modern Viking, Roald Amundsen, the fearless adventurer and explorer who braved death a thousand times before he met it in the Arctic wastes. It is planned that the Roald Amundsen is to spend the next two years sailing across the Atlantic, round Cape Horn, up the United States and Canadian coasts to Alaska, and back through the Panama Canal to Norway. It is a bold venture for a. wooden boat, 60ft. long and 15ft. wide, carrying but ai single mast and one square sail as driving power. But Captain Folger, her commander, three years ago crossed the Atlantic in a smaller ship with a. crew of three, and he and the six men now with him have no qualms that the journey they are now beginning will be equally successful.