ANXIOUS PERIOD

Southland Times, Issue 21288, 8 January 1931, Page 7

ANXIOUS PERIOD

MAWSON EXPEDITION BATTLE WITH STORM AND ICE PACK ’BERG NARROWLY AVOIDED (United Press Assn.—By Telegraph—Copyright) , Sydney, January 7. A message from Sir Douglas Mawson states: —- Since my last message Providence has sustained our best efforts to copc with an exceptional hurricane. The ’berg-strewn waters of Durville Sea were lashed into fury, consolidating the pack into a grinding mass against the ship. The frozen spindrift and fleecing snow obscured our view so effectively that only by a miracle we missed crashing into a gigantic tabular ’berg, which loomed up about a length ahead. The brave ship tumbled and staggered in the unequal onslaught, but steadily drove back to the leeward of the most gigantic mill ever conceived by the fury-driven, heaving, frenzied, grinding ice-masses of this vicious pack. We survive to relate that by skilful handling the Discovery escaped destruction, and Captain MacKenzie succeeded in working the ship, through God’s great will, into the calmer waters of the slack area. Within one day the whole body of the pack ice was driven 50 miles and crumpled against the immovable grounded barrier of ice and ’beres charted as Clarie Island, where the slack water closed us in for a moment, but after an anxious struggle we emerged staggering into the leaping, spuming sea, and it was now clear enough to make navigation possible. The wind has now moderated, and we may laud tomorrow on the shores of the high ice-cased land which lies on our starboard beam.