ROSS SEA WHALING

Southland Times, Issue 20642, 14 November 1928, Page 8

ROSS SEA WHALING

C. A. LARSEN SAILS SEASON’S PROSPECTS UNCERTAIN FINAL ARRANGEMENTS All has been hurry and bustle at Paterson Inlet since Friday afternoon last with the arrival of the 12,000 ton Norwegian whaling Vessel C. A. Larsen from Norway, to undergo her final preparations for the annual voyage of three months to the Ross Sea in quest, of the whale. There are innumerable details to be attended to. The final touches have to be put to the five chasers which accompany the mother ship, and the hundred minor adjustments to be made which only experts can handle. The wireless apparatus has to be rigged up and perfected on the chasers. It would be no exaggeration to say that the busiest man in the busy area of the Inlet for the few days spent there was the chief wireless operator. His responsibility is enormous. On his efforts depend the very lives of the men in the chasers as the compass is of no value in the frozen south owing to magnetic influences and direction has to be arrived at by the wireless direction finders. On account of the failure of this apparatus on one of the small vessels the departure of the fleet had to be postponed from Monday until yesterday.

Then there are the last of the stores to be taken aboard the C. A. Larsen and the first of the apparatus prepared for the despatch of the quarry. This work continues until the ice is reached when all is in readiness for the flensing, cutting up, boiling down and the many processes which the blubber, flesh and bone have to undergo.

Sharply at 11 o’clock yesterday morning the C. A. Larsen weighed anchor with the Government nautical expert, Captain Hooper and Captain Neilsen, on the bridge and steamed out of the Inlet. The chasers fell in behind and formed an impressive sight for the few scattered watchers on the shore. The passage was made without difficulty of any sort, the Star XI, taking off Captain Hooper, leaving thence for Bluff with him and the customs officers, to the accompaniment of the shrill and penetrating whistles of the chasers and the deeper note of the mother ship. Five days’ steam will see the fleet encounter the first of the ice and for the next 200 miles the C. A. Larsen will have to fight her way through the 200 miles of ice surrounding the Antarctic. It is a matter of conjecture when she will reach the whaling grounds. The minimum time for the passage is five days, but on one occasion five weeks were occupied in penetrating the area. She is to return to Paterson Inlet on March 1 and will proceed two days later to New York, to discharge her cargo of oil and thence Norway for survey and overhaul.

Captain Neilsen told a reporter that he could not say what their prospects were for the season. He could only hope that the whales were there again as he had every reason to anticipate they would ’ and in no diminished numbers. If the whales were there the rest could be safely left to the fleet. The rival ship the Neilsen Alonso had already arrived at the grounds and was reputed to have 4000 barrels to her credit, but he was dubious of the veracity of the news. The Ship's History. This is the third voyage *of the C. A. Larsen to the Ross Sea. In the 1926-27 season she and her sister ship the Sir Janies Clark Ross secured 786 whales yielding 70,300 barrels of oil and last year a record was established, 1455 whales being brought in by the chasers to produce 124,000 barrels of oil. It will be remembered that on her return voyage she struck Faro Rock at the entrance to the Inlet, ripping her plates from bow to mid-ship, and was run on to the beach. This was a most unfortunate blow as the C. A. Larsen was a full ship carrying 12,000 tons of whale oil valued at some £300,000. Most of this valuable cargo was saved, 9850 tons being pumped into the oil Hanker Spinanger, chartered for the purpose after the mishap and taken to New York. About 1000 tons were lost through the tanks being stove in and the Larsen herself discharged the remaining 2000 tons at Rotterdam.

The vessel was eventually refloated and taken to Port Chalmers where temporary repairs were carried out. She proceeded thence to England where her builders, Swan Hunter and Wigham Richardson Ltd. of Newcastle-on-Tyne had already prepared plates and frames for permanent repairs. This repair work occupied the space of five weeks. A thorough overhaul was gone through and the recommissioned whaler went to Sandefjord, Norway, to prepare for the next trip s-outh. She arrived at the Inlet via Wellington on Friday. The C. A. Larsen was formerly a British oil tanker named the San Gregario, launched in 1913, and is to-day one of the largest whaling ships afloat. She has been rightly described as a floating refinery. A unique feature of her construction is the slipway in her bow up wffiich 100 ton carcases can be hauled on to her foredeck for flensing and cutting up. This enables whales to be held during rough weather which, under the old conditions, it would have been impossible to work alongside. It is perhaps unnecessary to add that this is a great money and labour saving device. She has a short wave (32.5 metres) sending set by means of which she can keep in daily communication with the Norwegian radio station at Bergen, 14,000 miles distant from the Antarctic and in addition she is equipped with a broadcasting set which keeps her in touch with the smaller vessels of the company. She has a gross tonnage of 12,093 tons, a length of 527.2 feet, a beam of 66 feet and a moulded depth of 33.9 feet. Her engines are situated aft. Altogether she was specially reconstructed to withstand the pressure of the ice. The big ship is named after the late Captain C. A. Larsen who commanded the Sir James Clark Ross on her first two voyages and who died aboard her in the Ross Sea in 1924. For two.years prior to the start of operations he spent a two years’ survey in the frozen south. Captain Larsen had a vast experience of whaling in the Arctic and Antarctic regions and other parts of the world. It was Captain Larsen who commanded the Antarctic in which the Swedish expedition, under Dr. Otto Nordenskjold, left Gottenburg in October 1901. After calling at the Falklands, Staten Island (near Cape Horn) and the South Shetlands, the ship went into the Weddell Sea where Nordenskjold and five men were landed on an island to spend the wintelr. When summer came the Antarctic did not put in an appearance and the party had to spend a second winter there. In the following spring, 1903, Captain Larsen with five of his men turned up at the hut with the news that the Antarctic had been wrecked the previous year and the crew had been forced to spend the winter in a stone hut which they had built on an island. The whole expedition was rescued by the Argentine gun boat Uruguay which had been sent out to search for any survivors.

THE BYRD EXPEDITION POINTS TO DETERMINE. A passenger to Wellington from San Pedro by the C. A. Larsen was Commander Richard Byrd, the famous airman and explorer and the leader of an expedition which combines with scientific exploration an attempt to reach the South Pole by an aerial route. The C. A. Larsen and her equipment has been made available to Commander Byrd and her presence within ten degrees of the Pole for three months of the year will add substantially to the safety of the members of the party. The whaler is carrying a few stores and a set of seaplane floats to the Ross Sea and the expedition’s vessels will get in 'touch with her there.

Captain Neilsen, of the C. A. Larsen, in an evening’s chat with a reporter, who visited the Inlet for the purpose, was able to impart some interesting particulars of the Byrd expedition. The expedition will live more than a year on the ice and equipped as it is with the most modern scientific instruments and having a larger reserve of stores than any previous Antarctic expedition, the results of its researches should be more marked than those of the men who have gained the South Pole before them, but under more arduous and hurried conditions. From the Ross Sea the two vessels of the expedition, the City of New York and the Eleanor Bolling, will reach the great ice barrier, a cliff-like mass of ice, rising in places to 250 feet. Only one landing place, at the Bay of Whales, is practicable for the purposes of the expedition, and there the stores will be unloaded onto the floe. From the landing will be encountered a mile of sea ice, then a gently rising ice slope extending to the horizon. Between the Bay of Whales and the South Pole lie nearly 5,00,000 square miles, unexplored and containing no vegetation or animal life. In that vast expanse of ice Scott, Shackleton and Amundsen have left their trails but what remains to be discovered yet ? A point that has yet to be solved is whether Antarctica is one continent or two large islands and this will be paid special attention to by the expedition. Known facts concerning the huge area are that the plateau rises to a height of 10,000 in the interior and that two mountain chains run inland from the Ross Sea at the ice barrier. On the other side of the great ice barrier lies Weddell Sea which is supposed at one time to have been connected with the Ross Sea by a clear stretch of water as the characteristics of the two seas are much the same. No definite depth can be given for the ice, but it is supposed that the flights over the country will disclose definite contours which will give later exploration parties something to go on in arriving at the conclusion that the continent, as it is accepted to be, was two huge islands before the ice age. The trend of the mountains in King Edward Land will be closely contoured to determine whether they are a continuation of the Adean formation. The expedition generally is on a more extensive scale than any other undertaken in former years and is not, as many misunderstand, a dash for the Pole. It is an attempt to survey the whole of the polar plateau and is one certain to result in securing valuable scientific knowledge. It is purposed if possible to map the country beyond the Pole with the aid of aerial cameras specially constructed for the purpose. Among other studies the members of the expedition will be occupied with auroral observations, earth radiation, radio activity of ice and snow, glaciology and meteorological work. Chief among them is the latter as storms in the southern regions affect the climatic conditions of the hemisphere. The Aurora Australis phenomenon will receive investigation - . A new sextant camera for registering on a film the exact latitude and the time of making an observation has been lent to Commander Byrd by Commander M. R. Pierce, of the U.S.A, naval air station. This instrument alleviates any chance of error in calculations and enables the observer to check his observations at intervals. It registers the exact angle between the sun and the horizon in addition to the actual time.

Pioneer work in flying in the Antarctic will also be done by the expedition. Conditions beyond the barrier for the planes are unknown, but a comparatively calm base is to ber found on the barrier. Once the mountains are negotiated it is anticipated that better conditions will exist. It is doubtful if a landing will be possible at the Pole as a slow landing will necessarily have to be made on the hard, uneven ice and great difficulties are attendant upon a take-off at an altitude of about 10,000 feet with a loaded plane. In an easterlv direction the worst storms are expected to be encountered, but this area will be worked and mapped by short flights for bases and forced landings will not be so dangerous owing to the shortness of the distances.

HABITS OF THE WHALE ENGLISH DOCTOR’S STUDIES. A passenger to the Ross Sea on the trip this year is Dr E. H. Marshall, of London, about whom particulars have already been given in the Southland Times. He is to study the habits of whales in the Ross Sea in furtherance of the work carried out by the Discovery expedition operating from South Georgia. Asked by a reporter concerning the nature of his work, Dr Marshall said he would be mainly occupied with securing samples for the specialists at Home, deepsea soundings, surveys and general oceanographical work. One branch of his W’ork was to take water temperatures and samples of the water at depths from the surface Io 500 metres, these to be sent Home to the hydrologists in England. He would also use two nets for procuring samples of marine life. One had a very fine mesh to be used for collecting the minute plant life of the Antarctic and a bigger one for collecting specimens of whale food or kril. He has also among his gear a kind of shotgun to shoot silver plates into whales to see if it will lead to any solution of the problem of the migratory passages of the whales. This method has been adopted by the expedition in South Georgia, but so far none of the plates have been recovered, although all whaling companies have been advised of the experiment.

Dr Marshall was attached to the Discovery expedition as the medical man of the party and became so interested in the work that he has taken it up on his own account in conjunction with the men of the Discovery.