ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION

Taranaki Daily News, 29 March 1933, Page 5

ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION

ELLSWORTH AND WILKINS PLANS NEARLY COMPLETE. STARTING IN SEPTEMBER. New York, March 2. Mr. Lincoln Ellsworth and Sir Hubert Wilkins have practically completed their plans for their Antarctic expedition, states the New Zealand Herald correspondent The Fanefjord, a 500-ton Norwegian motor-ship, with a crew of nine, will leave New York on August 1 for New Zealand, via Capetown. Ellsworth, Wilkins and the pilot, Berni Balchen, who flew Admiral Byrd across the South Pole, will travel from San Francisco on August 22 by the Monterey. They will be accompanied by a radio operator, mechanic and perhaps a meteorologist. With Sir Hubert’s advice, Mr. Ellsworth has chosen a 600 horse-power sin-gle-engined monoplane, which has already flown 210 miles an hour in tests. The snow-landing gear is now being tested in North-west Canada. The intention is to make a base at the Ross Sea and fly across the entire land mass of the continent to the Weddell Sea and back—a distance of 2900 miles. Mr. Ellsworth will act as navigator during the flight, Sir Hubert remaining at the base as recorder. Subject to ice conditions, the flight will be made between December 15 and December 31. On the other side of the Antarctic continent, in Coates Land, near the Weddell Sea, the Norwegian explorer Captain Riiser-Larsen will have established his base for his land exploration in that sector. Both leaders will establish radio communication as soon as Mr. Ellsworth reaches New Zealand, and arrange a code by which weather reports will be supplied from the Weddell Sea. LAND NO MAN HAS SEEN. “We shall not try to cross the Pole,” Mr. Ellsworth said. “We will point easterly for the Filchner shelf ice and Luitpold Land, 1450 miles, over a part of the globe that no man’s eyes have seen. I should prefer to make a one-way flight of it, starting on the Weddell Sea side, because the great terra incognita is the region lying between the Weddell Sea and the Pole. But conditions seem to preclude such a possibility. Only two expeditions have ever succeeded in penetrating to the head of the ice-choked waters of this treacherous sea—Weddell, who readied it in 1823, and Filchner, in 1912.

“Shackleton, whose objective was a trans-continental sledge crossing from the Weddell Sea to the Ross Sea, in 1915, saw his ship, the Endurance, crushed by the driving pack-ice, and, after an open-boat journey of ‘supreme strife amid heaving waters,’ succeeded, with five companions, in traversing the' 800 miles to South Georgia for assistance.” CAMP EQUIPMENT. Camp equipment, weighing 1001 b, will be carried on the plane, in the event of a forced landing. It will include hand sledge, tent, primus stove, cooking utensils, snow shovel, snow knife, saw for cutting snow blocks, ice axe, man harness for hauling sledge, alpine rope, alpine axes, two pairs of skis, medical equipment, and two sleeping bags. Emergency rations, for three months, .will be pemmican, chocolate, biscuits, nuts, raisins and malted milk, all weighing 1751 b. Fully loaded, the plane will-weigh 3 tons 7cwt. “To Sir Herbert Wilkins I am indebted for much advice and assistance in forming my plans,” said Mr. Ellsworth; “In view of the delay in his proposed submarine venture in the Arctic, due to world conditions, he has unselfishly offered to continue this service down to the base in Antarctica.”