Within five minutes we were looking down upon areas never seen before by man. The rolling slopes of the Barrier had hidden them from the eyes of Amundsen and his men.
We sighted a new harbor, about three miles deep, on the west side of the Bay, not far from Floyd Bennett Harbor. Our compasses then, owing to our nearness to the magnetic Pole, began to swing badly. This started a flow of recollections. It recalled the difficulties that Clarence Chamberlin had had with his compasses at the beginning of his flight to Germany, and nothing seemed more fitting than to name this harbor after him—Chamberlin Harbor.
We struck out due south, the Barrier below and stretching endlessly to the south. Some miles to the left—I hesitate to state the distance exactly, owing to the difficulty of judging distances from the air—we made out an extensive pressure ridge trending across the Barrier. It seemed to be twenty miles long, at least. More evidence, then, of the submerged land that impedes the northward movement of the Barrier.
A glance about the cabin showed how crowded we were. Smith’s huge frame seemed to fill half the forward part of the ship. June sat at the radio, bulking large in his fur suit, communicating with the operators on the City. The floor was piled high with gear—a hand sledge, sleeping bags, enough food to sustain three men for one month, a small primus cooker, an emergency, hand-operated radio set. All essential precautions in case of a forced landing. But they made it deucedly cramped in the cabin for an explorer who was trying to take in everything.
After flying south for a few miles, we turned to the westward and flew approximately i 5 miles parallel to and south of the Barrier’s edge. Perhaps 30 miles west of Little America we observed an inlet running north and south. We flew over it and found a beautiful formation in the Barrier. The cliffs to the east and west of it at its mouth rose, we saw, in vertical whiteness to a height of at least 100 feet from the water. Here, the inlet appeared to be about 1,500 feet wide. A mile beyond the entrance the bay ice began, and from our altitude seemed to be as smooth as a billiard table.
A few miles beyond the edge of the bay ice the inlet narrowed a trifle and bent to the southwest. As we banked, the more closely to study the formation, we caught sight of hundreds of seals lying alongside a pressure ridge. Our engine must have made a fearful racket, for we saw them tilt their heads, as if by unanimous agreement, and stare up at us. For a moment the bay was alive with black shapes scattering and hurrying in every direction, many of which rolled off the edge of a black lead of open water and disappeared. But the rest, after seeing that nothing untoward happened, lay still and no doubt returned to sleep. At least they no longer gave us as much as a glance.
The inlet curved again to the south and terminated in a wedge-shaped formation a few miles farther on. The inlet here was filled with great blocks of ice, cracked and broken as if some mighty hand had used them as missiles. Far to the south the Barrier rose higher and higher, until it appeared to reach a height of 200 to 300 feet.
Just then we made out an unusual cloud formation which was so similar to a cloud we had seen on the trans-Atlantic flight that I was astonished. At first glance this cloud appeared to be high land; and on the Atlantic flight yve had had a moment of panic when we saw a similar formation, for navigational reckoning supposedly placed us in the middle of the ocean.
It was impossible to recall the flights of 1927 without thinking of the man who was the first to cross the ocean alone. I marked the position of the inlet on the chart, and named it Lindbergh Inlet.
There was a great temptation on this flight to continue on and on, seeking new things. The real joy in exploration by flights comes from the speed with which discoveries come—a new, perhaps greater finding seems always to be impending in the advancing horizon.
But the polar regions are won only by patience. Disturbed somewhat by the violent oscillations of the compasses and deciding that it would be well for the pilots to have more experience in dealing with the eerie conditions of visibility before undertaking a longer flight, I suggested to Smith that we turn back.
Halfway back to the base, the engine stopped dead. Smith worked the throttle without effect, and then headed the plane in a long glide toward the Barrier. None of us, to say the least, anticipated the landing with pleasure. The surface was quite rough, and if we cracked up the walk home would be a dreary affair. And what a stupid thing, I thought, to jeopardize the unloading at this critical period by necessitating a rescue.
Smith decided one of the wing tanks had run dry, and quickly turned the proper valve. The velocity of the dive was sufficient to turn the propeller over, and the motor took up its steady, reassuring hum.
As we approached the bay, I saw that conditions of visibility were much worse. A drifting haze—sea smoke—obscured the surface of the bay, and the shifting light playing on the snow made it very difficult to judge our altitude.
Smith, however, very neatly measured his glide with respect to the water lapping the edge of the bay ice, levelled off at just the right moment and landed with scarcely a jar.
All told, it has been a fairly good day’s work. An airplane has been taken from temperate regions on a long voyage through the tropics, assembled, tested and flown in the polar region without accident. Twelve hundred square miles of unknown areas surveyed within a few hours—it would have taken foot travellers weeks to learn the same things.
I do not altogether agree with some of the authors who say that aviation can accomplish nothing in the Antarctic. I am more than ever encouraged in my belief that it can accomplish a great deal.
Eastward lay a greater, solid reality of discovery. Beyond the rocky outposts of King Edward VII Land and the dim shapes of the small Alexandra Mountains which Scott had seen from the deck of the Discovery, in 1902, before the onrush of the ice pack had driven him back, lay thousands upon thousands of square miles that no man had ever seen, much less trodden. What lay there was perhaps the most fascinating geographical enigma yet left unsolved. It held the answer to at least half a dozen of the unanswered major mysteries of Antarctica. Here was the thing we had come to the Antarctic to find—a sight of things denied to man since the beginning of time. Both Shackleton and Amundsen had later hurled their ships into the massive ice fields guarding the coast, only to be driven back before the blows of the pack. “The forces of these uncontrollable packs are stronger than human resolution,”1 Shackleton said, and that admission coming from one of the most resolute men who ever accepted Nature’s challenge, is indicative of how fiercely East Antarctica guarded its secret. Now we were eager to try our luck against it, and were emboldened by the faith we had in our vehicle. In the heavens, we were sure, lay the road to discovery. I was impatient to show that aircraft could succeed where surface craft had failed.
The next day, Wednesday, January 16th, we flew the Fairchild to Little America. I was reluctant to risk its presence any longer on the shifting bay ice, which, under the warmth of the sun, was beginning to break up. Affairs were humming at the base. Two houses were up, a third was started and about the place was a suggestion of security and coziness. Gould and McKinley had the job well in hand. The boxes of supplies were neatly assembled in orderly piles, and the exact whereabouts of every item was recorded. Haste had not been allowed to destroy efficiency. The dog teams were then averaging two round trips per day, carrying from 700 pounds to 1000 pounds per load. Only a person who knows dogs can appreciate what that means. Knud Rasmussen once said, “I bless the fate which allowed me to be born in an age when the Arctic dog sledge was not yet out of date.” And after seeing them race into Little America, team after team, while the drivers fought top-heavy loads which threatened constantly to tip over into the snow, I could exclaim with him. Had it not been for the dogs, our attempts to conquer the Antarctic by air must have ended in failure. On January 17th, Walden’s single team of thirteen dogs moved 3,500 pounds of supplies from ship to base, a distance of 16 miles each trip, in two journeys. Walden’s team was the backbone of our transport. Seeing him rush his heavy loads along
the trail, outstripping the younger men, it was difficult to believe that he was an old man. He was 58 years old, but he had the determination and strength of youth.
Our sledge transport was not at all uniform. In size the teams ranged from Walden’s, which was the largest, with thirteen dogs, down to four. The weight of the load hauled in each sledge varied according to the number of dogs in the team. As a rule the load averaged approximately I 50 pounds per dog. The following teams, with the following leaders, provided the surface transportation during the operation of unloading:
Arthur Berlin alternated with Blackburn and Siple. Of these men, Blackburn, Braathen, de Ganahl, Siple, Berlin and Thorne had never before driven a dog team. The dogs were scarcely more seasoned. Three of the leaders mentioned above had never led a team before.
The strain of loading was so great that I had feared the dogs could not continue to stand up under it, and therefore requested the New York office to send 20 additional dogs. These, we were told, would be sent from Alaska under the care of Mr. Alan Innes-Taylor, a veteran driver. They were expected to arrive at Dunedin in time to catch the Bolling before she started her second trip south.
Because the arrival of the Bolling would compel us to throw all efforts into unloading her, I decided to try to squeeze in the eastern flight before she appeared. Thursday, Balchen and June went over the Fairchild from stem to stern, checking structure, engine and radio in preparation for the flight. Weather permitting, I intended to take off within 48 hours. Haines, our weather man, shook his head. “You’ll be up to your ears in snow,” he told us.
His prophecy was as good as his word. Friday, the 18th, it blew a gale all day long; but in spite of it, dog transport never slackened. The teams floundered through the smother of drift and deposited seven tons at the base. They had then moved more than 100 tons since December 31, without the loss of a single package.
This period was marked for us by two incidents.
Captain Brown reported by radio that the Boiling was laboring in very heavy seas, and taking much water over the decks. The night before the sea ran so high he feared he would lose his whole deck load. He requested an emergency 3 A.M. radio schedule with us. Before the hour arrived, however, the weather moderated slightly, and he reported that the immediate danger was past.
The second incident, perhaps the saddest during our whole stay in the Antarctic, was the loss of Walden’s famous lead dog, Chinook. Chinook was Walden’s pride, and there was no doubting the fact that he was a great dog. He was old when brought to the Antarctic, too old for hard, continuous labor, and Walden used him as a kind of “shock troop,” throwing him into a team when the going turned very hard. Then the gallant heart of the old dog would rise above the years and pull with the glorious strength of a three-year-old. The affection between him and Walden was a beautiful thing to see: one sensed that each knew and understood the other perfectly, and it was Walden’s rare boast that he never needed to give Chinook an order: the dog knew exactly what had to be done. A few days after his twelfth birthday, Chinook disappeared. We searched the camp for him, without success; in the trampled snow about the ship, it was impossible to find his tracks. No doubt he made his way alone. Whether he walked out alone to die, because his days of service were done, is something I cannot vouch for: this was the romantic theory advanced by several of the men. At any rate, his body was never found. A clue to his disappearance was suggested in the following spring when Davies, during the course of a scientific investigation of the crevasses in the vicinity of Little America came across the marks of a dog’s feet on the shelf of a crevasse, some thirty feet below the Barrier surface, about half a mile to the eastward. The traces were half covered by falling crystals, but Davies believed that the dog had lived there for several days. The walls of the crevasse were scored by small furrows, such as might have been made by a dog scratching, and some of these reached as high as a man’s shoulder. Whether these were made by Chinook or another dog, we never learned. All this was a deep disappointment to Walden, who wanted to bury Chinook in his harness.
Saturday the storm continued with undiminished strength, whipping the snow into the face and numbing the hands. Nevertheless the dog drivers pluckily maintained their schedules. They carried 11½ tons of coal, in sacks, to the base, which is, I believe, a record of its kind. I watched the weather apprehensively, praying for sun. Really cold weather would not shut in before April. This fact had a definite bearing upon two “ifs” in the flight equation. If we could make the Eastern flight within the next few days, and if we should have a forced landing not more than 200 miles from base, we might still be able to walk home without suffering undue hardships.
The impending arrival of the Boiling brought up bothersome planning. One thing was certain: We could not unload her by the same process by which we were unloading the City, and still expect to have her to complete a second round trip between Dunedin and Little America. Even ignoring the time limits set for her stay, it was doubtful whether the dogs and men could continue to stand up under the strain of 32 miles per day with very heavy loads.
The alternative was to force the Boiling to the Barrier’s edge, by some determined action, and unload her there. This I hoped to do, if the operation could be accomplished without too great a risk.
Sunday night, shortly after 10:30 o’clock, the weather clearing somewhat, we decided to make an investigation of the low edge of the Barrier. Some distance south of the northern edge of the bay ice, the Barrier sloped to within a few feet of the bay level, and a lead, perhaps a mile long, had opened between. The ice, however, was still much too thick to risk the City in it, so we reconnoitered in a small motor boat. With me came Owen, Strom, Paul Siple, the Boy Scout, and John Sutton.
It was still snowing a bit, and the atmosphere was quite thick. With the outboard motor arousing a medley of echoes in the Barrier cliffs, we cruised along the edge of the bay ice, making to the east. Submerged tongues of blue ice licked out at the hull and large floes of loose ice floated on the wind and tide, making navigation quite exciting. Carefully we steered between them and presently were able to make out the Barrier cliffs, smoking in the haze, and the stratification lines of scores of snows which ran through them like darker levels. The hacked surface showed where large pieces had broken away; and in places undershot cornices hung out at dangerous angles, suggesting impermanence. I was reluctant to approach nearer, not knowing when the Barrier might greet us with a shower of ice brickbats, and turned the boat to the south. We followed a lead for about a mile until we were stopped by the wall of thick bay ice. Half a mile away the Barrier sloped almost to the level of the bay ice. Here it could be approached by an incline formed by drifted snow, which had packed hard and rose in a gentle slope to the edge of the Barrier. If we could get the Boiling in that far, here would be an excellent place to discharge cargo. But how to get her in? A cursory examination showed conclusively that the ice which lay between us was much too hard and firmly set to be broken by the charge of either ship. We must wait until nature saw fit to move it.
Just then the motor, which had been kicking up wickedly, gave a final splutter and died. Siple and Sutton worked over it for some time, without success, and, there being nothing else to do, we unlashed the oars and began to row back to the ship. This proved so tiresome that we were soon persuaded to give it up, in favor of making further experiments. with the engine. This time we were successful, and with the motor humming attractively, we made for the mouth of the lead.
About the time we gained it some one saw a whale sound about a quarter of a mile ahead. I turned in time to see half a dozen waterspouts rise in grayish vapor above the water, and fall hissing; then a long, white and ebony body lunged out of the water and sank in a curving movement. Then another, and another, and still another, until I had counted about ten.
There was no mistaking the identity of the ominous, black triangular fin; the ugly heads and the sickly yellow patch under the jaws. They were Killers. I do not consider myse
lf a particularly imaginative man, nor am I impressed as a rule by the legends that accumulate about the habits of certain animals. Yet I confess candidly that the sudden appearance of these ill-reputed creatures had a disturbing effect: and we became most sensitively aware of the flimsy character of our boat.
The others, I am quite sure, drew no enjoyment from the situation.
I was at the tiller at the time, and deciding that discretion was the better part of valor, edged the boat toward the bay ice, looking for a protruding shelf of firm ice where we might land. Meanwhile I kept one eye on the approaching whales, whose slow deliberate movements fascinated one as a serpent is said to fascinate its victim. Always they drew nearer, with a showing of glistening, oily backs. The measured progress was intimidating but I was reassured when I saw that if they remained on their course they would pass astern; but, when fairly close aboard they rapidly changed course and headed directly for the motor boat. I sincerely believed that they had seen us and doubted very much if their intentions were good.
Having no desire to make their acquaintance, in scientific observations or otherwise, I hastily looked about for a place we might land the ship. The nearest ice edge was 300 yards away, and very ragged. At that moment, however, any kind of firm ice looked good. It was not necessary to order Sutton to open the engine at full speed. We raced for the ice, and the Killers, which seemed to be travelling twice as fast as the boat, gained rapidly. The thought was in my mind that one of them, coming up after a long dive, might capsize the tiny boat. Each porpoising lunge brought them nearer, and the short dash to the edge of the bay ice took a long time. The hull scraped over an undershot tongue of ice and banged violently against the edge. I am sure that no boat was ever so quickly abandoned as this was. As we faced around the Killers came up not more than I 5 feet from where we stood. Another dive would have brought them up with us. We had drawn our revolvers—a foolish gesture, I concluded later, for a battery of 75’s would not have stopped them if they had meant business. They dived underneath the bay ice and we did not see them again. We waited quite a while after they disappeared before we put out again, and the journey to the ship was completed without incident. Serious as it was at the moment, the episode presently yielded its lighter side, and by supper time was subject for many a good laugh. It was Siple’s unfortunate fate to have been appointed assistant to the scientific staff a few days before, with the duty of studying animal life in the bay, and his introduction to this particular department was the cause of much jesting.
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