CRUISE TO ANTARCTICA

Stratford Evening Post, Volume I, Issue 77, 10 March 1931, Page 5

CRUISE TO ANTARCTICA

.ORGANISED BY COUNT VON LUCKNER EXPEDITION PLANES TO BE SALVAGED DUNEDIN, This Day. Advice received by a resident of Dunedin from a member of the Byrd Antarctic Expedition, writing from New York, states that the opportunity has been offered to a limited number of adventurous American men andwomen to accompany Count and Countess Felix von Luckner and selected members of the Byrd expedition on the first cruise to Antarctica, by way of the South Seas. The, count, whose'sensational escape from internment on Motuihi Island during the war will be well remembered, wlil take a small party of guests desirous of sharing the adventures of a five months' voyage aboard his yacht, the Mopelia, , Leaving New York early m November, the Mopelia, a four-masted auxiliary vessel of 2,500 tons, will sail to Cristobal, and proceed through the Panama Canal to Balboa. From there a course will be laid to the Marquesas Islands, in former times the base of the New Bedford whaling fleets, and now one of the richest pearling grounds in the world After a visit to Disappointment Island the yacht will sail to Papeete, in the Society Islands. Here the guests will have the opportunitv to tak> part in the first flights ever made over some of the verdant isles of the South Seas. The vacht will carry a special Fokker amphibian plane, which Captain Alton Parker, who accompanied Admiral Byrd on his flight over the Pole, will pilot. .„ . ! The trip to Antarctica will he so timed that the vessel will reach the pack ice when it is broken and scattered—namely, between the latter part of January and the beginning of March. Captain Charles J. McGmnness who was chief officer of the Byrd Antarctic Expedition supply ship Eleanor Boiling, and who has twice been through the pack ice, will be ice pilot on the passage south to the Bay of Whales. At Little America the yacht will make fast to the barrier, where the women guests will disembark first, as the pioneer representatives of their sex in Antarctica. With the assistance of the guests, the members of the Bvrd expedition plan to salvage the two planes left on the barrier by Admiral Byrd early last year. All on board the yacht will share equally in the honour of bringing these planes back to America. ♦„„.«„» To help to defray the costs of the expedition, Count and Countess von Luckner have asked that each guest should contribute the sum of 5,000 dollars.