ON POLAR FLIGHT

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18179, 29 August 1933, Page 3

ON POLAR FLIGHT

MEMENTOES OF EXPLORER FLAGS AND CHARMS Among the effects .which Mr Lincoln Ellsworth, the famous American explorer, has brought to the Chateau, Tongiifiro National Park, is an American flag which he proposed to carry with him on the 2900-mile aeroplane flight he has planned to make across the Antarctic continent. Also in his possessOfi is a special flag, designed in colors to symbolise land, sea, and sky, which was presented to him by the National Geographical Society before he left New York. It is made of canvas, oiled to make it waterproof, and is contained in an .airtight metal cylinder. In showing these and other personal articles of his equipment Mr Ellsworth said that it was ‘not his intention to drop them from the .aeroplane during its flight, as lie did when he flew over the North Pole in 102(1 with his great friend, Amundsen, in the airship Norge. “We are not going near the South Pole,” he said, “and 'there is therefore no particular landmark for us to diop them on, nor do I think wo shall drop them when wo have accomplished our -object and reached the Weddell Sea, on the other side of the great continent. Our plan is to fly straight back to our ship in the Ross Sea without a stop and the flags will come back with us. After that, well, I expect they will find their way into museums for safe keeping as mementoes o:f the expedition.” . Of a much more intimate nature is the silver cross the explorer intends to wear during the flight. Mr Ellsworth is not a superstitious man, but, like nearly all great explorers, past and present, does not despise carrying a charm. This little cross, which is one of his most valued possessions, he has worn on all his expeditions, the epic aeroplane flight in Arctic with Amundsen in 1925 when their two aeroplanes were lost to the world for 25 days; the Norge flight, from Spitsbergen to Alaska, via the Pole, in the following year, and the great Arctic flight with Rr. Eckenpr in the Graf Zeppelin in 19.11, On all these historic expeditions the silver cross never left him.