On to the South Pole

While whistles, bells and yells made farewell din in the narrow harbor of Dunedin, New Zealand, last week, Commander Richard Evelyn Byrd's South Pole Expedition started from that port for a year and a half in Antarctica. He, his scientists and able seamen were aboard the bark City of New York. There was no breeze flirting down Dunedin's forested mountains to tap-tap her sails; so her mateship the steamer Eleanor Boiling hauled her down the narrow Otago Inlet like a puffing rustic leading his wench through a lane.

Behind her at Dunedin she left another Byrd ship, the Eleanor Boiling. She is to follow the City of New York about Christmas time, when the Antarctic ice is mushy from its summer's heat.

The City of New York is carrying airplanes, two portable houses, scientific baggage, and a season's supply of provender. Commander Byrd will set up his base on the Bay of Wales, across the Antarctic Continent from Deception Island (among the South Shetlands), where Explorer Sir George Hubert Wilkins, a fortnight ago, made tests for his South Polar flight (TIME, Dec. 3). The Wilkins Expedition is rather a tour de force, another example of intrepidity. Of necessity a swift affair, its scientific observations can be only bird's-eye.

The Byrd Expedition during its 18 months on the continent will make thorough explorations within the range of its two planes and of its several dog teams.

Reaching the two-mile high elevation of the South Pole is only an incidental goal. Amundsen was there in December 1911; Scott in January 1912. Shackleton almost got there in January 1909. All three, like Commander Byrd, approached through the Ross Sea, the deep bite into the Asiatic side of Antarctica. Explorer Wilkins is trying from the American side. His distance, from Deception Island, to the Pole is approximately 1,900 miles (air way). That is about the same as the distance ships must go between Galveston and Manhattan, Baltimore and the Barbados.

Explorer Byrd, at Dunedin, last week,, was 3,000 miles from the South Pole. That does not seem far. Yet Portland, Ore., and Millinocket, Me., are 3,000 miles from the North Pole; so too Lyons, France, and Venice, Italy.

Three thousand miles is the ship or train distance between San Diego, Calif., and Guayaquil, Ecuador (where President-Elect Hoover was last week, see p. 10), between Manhattan and Queenstown, Ireland, between Washington and San Francisco. Trains or ships join those traveled places in a few days. Getting to the trackless Poles takes months.

Commander Byrd's aim is to explore the South Polar continent. It contains 5,000,000 square miles; is covered, except for its margins during its summer, with thick ice. There may be a water channel all the way across it, joining the Ross and Weddell Seas. There are mountain ranges. They may be extensions of the Andes; they may be related to the formations of the East Indies, Australia and New Zealand. Those Antarctica mountains and the tremendous ice cap help make the South Pole regions the heaviest part of the Earth. In comparison, the North Pole is light. Melting of South Polar ice may account for the axial wobbling that the Earth goes through during its revolution. Commander Byrd will try to find out. He will also study the minute plant and vegetable life that lives in the local ice; and, very importantly, the Antarctic weather. Tremendous winds blow there, influencing the weather of the entire Earth. Cold ocean currents start there, crawl along the ocean floors to the North Pole where they curve upward to cool the relatively warm North Polar waters. Whatever in the Antarctic regions can be seen, measured and studied by the expedition's staff, that will be done.

Dunedin, Fla., city of 1,500 on the sandy Gulf coast, last week made itself memorable among advertising communities. It lacks the industrial opportunities of Dallas, Oakland and similar growing cities. Nonetheless it wants business builders to settle there and for that purpose hired a smart secretary for its Chamber of Commerce--Milton M. Murray. When Bernt Balchen (who is with Commander Byrd now) and the late Floyd Bennett were testing the Josephine Ford plane for the Byrd North Pole flight two years ago, Secretary Murray was a Detroit newspaperman and flew with them on some of their experimental flights. That experience gave him a personal interest in the present Byrd expedition; his job gave him a practical interest. Hence his cablegram to Commander Byrd last week: "Dunedin, Florida, joins Dunedin, New Zealand, in hailing your expedition and extending best wishes for your courageous venture--Dunedin (Florida) Chamber of Commerce." The message -was shrewdly repeated to U. S. newspapers and brought valuable attention to Dunedin (Florida). It cost the Chamber $7.80.