NEW POLAR VENTURE

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 366, 7 March 1932, Page 4

NEW POLAR VENTURE

Expedition to the Antarctic.

TO SAIL THIS YEAR. (Special to the “ Star.”) LONDON, January 11. Mr IT. G. Watkins, leader of the British Air Route Expedition to Greenland (1930-1931), will lead an expedition to the Antarctic, this year. In an interview he told the “ NewsChronicle ” that he hopes to leave England next October. Mr R. Courtauld, one of his colleagues in Greenland, would not, he added, accompany him. One in close contact with Antarctic? exploration work said : “ Mr Watkins will probably not sail before October, because it is best to go during the Antarctic summer. “He will go to the Weddell Sea region, where Shackleton lost his ship the Endurance, to arrange his base for operations.” The Voice of Shackleton. At the annual reunion dinner of the Antarctic Club in London—at which Mr Watkins and Dr Hugh Robert Mill were the guests—Commander L. C. Bernacchi (Southern Cross, 1898, and Discover)', 1901-4) said it was hoped that Mr V atkins would do fine work during his new expedition. Professor Frank Debenham (Terra Nova, 1910-13), said that good work would be done in the Antarctic next year, and either in that year or the fob lowing “ something very big ” would result from explorations there. The dinner followed the unveiling at the Royal Geographical Society’s building, Kensington Gore, London, of a 9ft high bronze statue of Sir Ernest Shackletoa, who died ten years ago. When the gathering of explorers were standing in silence as a tribute “To those who have voyaged to explore the Polar regions and have not returned,” they heard the voice of Shackleton ring through the room in clear tones. It was a gramophone record which the explorer had made after the Nimrod expedition of 1907-1909, and the moment was a dramatic one for three survivors of that expedition who were present. They heard their names mentioned as Shackleton described the work of his colleagues.