Little America

by Richard Evelyn Byrd Jr.

  Each day seemed to develop its particular excitement. Monday, about noon, a swell came from the north and before long had hammered to pieces the ice about the ship. At the time seven dog teams, several of them heavily loaded, were grouped on the ice near the ship. So rapidly did the ice begin to break up it appeared doubtful whether they could be driven away in time. Meanwhile the ice on which the dog crates were placed began to crack. Several empty teams were dispatched to retrieve them, the loaded sledges were ordered to race for Little America, a radio message was sent to Little America to hold up the departure of all teams until the danger passed, and a group of men were sent ashore to take up our ice anchors, of which we had four out on the ice. These operations were directed from deck by megaphone, and were executed, it appeared, none too quickly. For the City was in the grip of a very powerful swell, and pounding violently on sharp ice. The strongest vessel ever made could not endure that kind of thing for very long.

  With the ice anchors aboard we steamed to the west, hoping to take on the dog crates, only to find the water much too rough to risk coming alongside. We then turned east, to find that two sledge teams, which had started before our message reached the base, were waiting for us near the berth we had quit an hour before. By this time, a considerable amount of ice had gone out, and finding comparatively smooth water to the leeward, we edged in and anchored to the ice again. The teams were loaded and hustled off to the base, but before the other teams returned, the ice began to drift out anew, the City shivered under several nasty wallops, and we hastily stood out to sea.

  This time we steamed to the east, entering the lead we had explored by small boat the night before, and found haven there. The ice was none too thick nearby to suit me, but as the position brought us half a mile nearer the base, we prepared to make the best of it.

  Bay of Whales

  Wednesday

  January 23

  A dull day. Nothing except the usual unloading operations. The City is now practically discharged, and the men are allowed to let up a bit, pending the arrival of the Bolling, which will mean very hard work for every one. The Bolling entered the pack Monday, and is apparently getting through without trouble. Splendid.

  Bay of Whales

  Thursday

  January 24

  Captain Brown radioed today that there is a possibility the Boiling will arrive here the day after tomorrow. We simply must find a place where she can unload on low Barrier.

  The ice has turned quite soft, and we have had to seek a new berth. The drivers frequently went up to their waists in soft snow, and several sledges sank on settling cakes until nearly submerged. They were saved after some difficulty. A suddenly tilting cake flung Vaughan into the freezing water. He clung to a piece of ice until his chum, Goodale, could get him out.

  Altogether, I think we have been fortunate in getting through this day without loss of personnel or supplies.

  Melville and Strom made a gallant attempt to force a way to the ice foot at the edge of the low Barrier. Our position this morning was about a quarter of a mile from its edge, and the lead in which we lay having widened slightly, to within a few hundred yards of the low Barrier, we determined to smash aside what ice lay between. We steamed south down the lead, parallel to the Barrier, and from the rigging the bay ice at the end was seen to be traversed by a number of radiating minor openings, several of which appeared to lead directly to our objective.

  We directed the City at the most likely looking of them, and let her crash into the ice with her utmost force. The ice gave only slightly. We backed up the old ship, gave her the gun and rammed the ice again, still again, and yet once more. We kept at this pounding all day, and with each blow the City seemed to roll more wildly, and there was real danger of unseating her masts. The man in the crow’s nest, who acted as lookout and directed the attack, bore the brunt of it; for in his lofty perch each shock was intensified and every roll of the ship was lengthened.

  On one occasion we were very nearly caught. An immense floe of old ice simply refused to break when we came crashing down on it: it folded up well aft of the bow, and so impetuous was the City’s charge, she rode well into the floe, and could not get clear on the recoil, even with the screw turning full speed astern. We put a number of men on the ice, and by prodigious work with axes, saws and poles managed to set the ship free.

  In the midst of this assault, the dog teams returned from Little America. We paused long enough to reload them and send them back. Bursey’s team fell through an unseen hole in loose ice. He saved his sledge, with its precious load of coal, by throwing his body in front of the runners, bracing himself precariously between the sledge and the edge of the hole. If the weight of the sledge had been greater, Jack, dogs and load would probably have been pulled under. Jack hung there for some time, nearly exhausted, and his companion driver, who for some reason believed that he was joking, continued on. Fortunately, the lookout stationed on the City saw the team go in and sent out a rescue team. Bursey was shivering with the cold and could not have held on for much longer. For failure to observe the order requiring that the dog teams remain together on the trail, his companion driver was removed from dog duty.

  The end of the day’s push found us within a hundred feet of low Barrier. A ridge of ice, lifted and distorted by pressure, at least 2 5 feet thick, with 15 feet of blue ice below water, lay between. We hit this fortress a dozen terrific wallops and then gave up. I don’t believe we gained two feet at each stroke, although we opened a crack to the pressure ridge which might allow it to go out with the tide. It was a difficult task trying to wriggle from this position. We dared not back out, lest we ruin the propeller on heavy pieces of ice, with which the water abounded. We charged, and smashed and bore away, over and over again, nibbling a widening circle to starboard until at last we had room in which to turn.

  Measured in terms of coal, it has been a costly day. But I do not think we have erred. The ice is so cracked, now, that a strong blow from the south should very nicely clear out what remains.

  Bay of Whales

  Friday

  January 25

  I am anxious to undertake the flight to King Edward VII Land. The Fairchild is ready, but it would be silly to attempt it until the weather man gives the word.

  We further tested the radio today, and Hanson managed to “speak” with Fred Meinholtz, chief of the radio staff of the New York Times, and the operator at the Mussel Rock Radio Station of the Robert Dollar Company, San Francisco. Signals were sent out on a wave length of 34 meters.

  Few things are more vexing than waiting on weather. Everything for the flight is ready, men, equipment and planes. Only good weather is lacking. The Boiling will be here soon; and if we don’t get off within the next 48 hours, we shall not have another chance to make the flight for some time. Anxious as I am to start, I cannot overturn the convictions of a life-time. Good weather and visibility are absolutely necessary. The decision is in the hands of Haines, who has never failed me.

  Bay of Whales

  Saturday

  January 26

  Boiling due tomorrow.

  Haines is optimistic—believes we may undertake the flight tomorrow. This is good news.

  Footnote

  1 Shackleton, “The Heart of the Antarctic,” i, p. 81.

  CHAPTER VI

  DISCOVERY BY FLIGHT

  Bay of Whales

  Saturday

  January 26, 1929

  IT has been a real experience, lying here alongside the bay ice week after week, with the opportunity of watching the changes and caprices of this frozen world. It is not the rigid and immobile world that we imagined. All is movement and change. Day after day, hour after hour, the contours of the Barrier and bay ice change as fragments break off and float northward. The wind, the sea, the sky and the visibility change with bewildering swiftness; the penguins and the seals are here in large numbers one moment and gone the next. I fancy that in Little America it will be the lack of change that will
be striking.

  But what take my imagination are the regiments of ice fields and icebergs that drift past the mouth of the Bay of Whales. They come from the mysterious unknown area to the eastward. Sometimes these regiments pause at the mouth of the Barrier until a northerly wind starts the invincible mass in the direction of the City. We watch it carefully, for if it should catch and grind us between it and the bay ice, the good old City might be crushed into pulp. Several times we have had to fight our way through these moving fields to the open sea beyond. But these scrimmages have given us a chance to observe how varied are the forms of the bergs and the pack that come from the land we are so impatient to enter.

  Eastward was mystery, and at 2:53 o’clock, on Sunday afternoon, January 27th, we took off in the Fairchild to try to see with our own eyes what lay there. We had planned originally to carry a gross load of 6,000 pounds, but shortly before departure reduced this by 300 pounds, to lessen the strain on the skis. Balchen was pilot, June the radioman. The sky was a cloudless, pervading blue, and the temperature a few degrees below freezing. Exactly the kind of a day we had wished for. Haines looked up from his charts and with one of his rare smiles said, “We ought to have good weather here for at least twelve hours.” What was brewing in the vast unknown reaches of ice to the east no magic could fathom; for Antarctic weather is a thing of sudden, violent and unpredictable changes, which appear to occur contrary to all known laws and systems, and more than one meteorologist has thrown up his hands in disgust before its caprices. But if there is anything in which I have abiding faith, it is in a weather prediction by Bill Haines. When he said you may go, I knew then that we could go.

  A run of 30 seconds lifted us clear of the snow, and a few minutes later Little America had fallen from view astern.

  Almost immediately we were gazing down upon untrodden areas. To the left we had the curving coastline of the Barrier trending north of east: on the right we had the inner spaces of the Barrier rolling unbrokenly to the horizon. Visibility was about 40 miles.

  Let us pause a moment to glance about the cabin. In the after part of our small cabin crouched June, using a sleeping bag as a seat, tinkering with his radio. Balchen was forward, at the controls, gradually putting the ship on its course as the compass sluggishly settled down. The cabin was so crowded with gear I could not stand up. I found myself sitting on a primus cooker, in lieu of a seat, while working at my charts.

  On the instrument board were the usual instruments—bank and turn indicator, altimeter, tachometer, pressure gauges, etc. At Balchen’s right was a radio key: in an emergency, he could also communicate with the base. Fixed on the back of his seat was another compass: we had found this to be the only position on the plane comparatively free from local deviation.

  In all, we carried 700 pounds of emergency equipment, for use in the event of a forced landing. These impedimenta fairly filled the cabin to overflowing. There were two hand sledges, two sets of man harness, one primus cooker, three sleeping bags, 1 pair of snow shoes, three pairs of skis, 2 pairs of crampons, feet of alpine rope, an ice axe, spade and snow knife, bamboo poles, a tent, a portable emergency radio set, an engine repair outfit, two medical kits, a funnel for draining oil from the engine, a blow torch and funnel for heating the engine, as well as enough food to sustain three men over a period of three months.

  A liberal supply of cold weather clothing was provided. This included mukluks, with sennagrass, fur mittens, underwear, socks, windproofs and the parkas which we wore.

  There was also my navigational equipment. This included several charts (which could be of little value, owing to unknown character of the area we proposed to investigate) a sextant, drift indicator, a sun compass, earth inductor compass and a large magnetic compass. It is my practice to leave as little as possible to chance. Each of these instruments could be used the one to check the other. As long as the bright sun held, the problem of navigation would be comparatively simple: for I could then check the magnetic compass with the sun compass and be certain as to my course.

  I laid my course directly for Scott’s Nunatak, which was, as we flew, nearly 200 miles away.

  Just before the Bay of Whales disappeared in the lengthening perspective, I glanced back, hoping to make out the masts of the Bolting against the horizon. But nothing moved on the blue waters of the Ross Sea, which glittered like a vast tray of diamonds tilted in the sun, except a column of ice bergs, deployed like a regiment on the march.

  Twenty minutes out, we sighted a bay in the Barrier to the left, and to the right ran a long deep fissure and pressure ridge. An interesting discovery. No doubt the Barrier here had grounded on land, which opposed the thrust of the ice to the sea and maintained the formation of the bay.

  The Barrier edge constantly enticed our eyes from the hinterland. Its high, steep cliffs (from our altitude, however, they seemed relatively a few inches of beautifully carved alabaster showing above gray-green water, which lay as softly as velvet about their foot) trended to the northeastward with few variations in structure; but here and there a large floe on the open sea, with edges neatly matching an indentation on the Barrier, explained the manner in which the Barrier disintegrated and, in a measure, the source of supply of some of the bergs that had marched steadily past our berths in the Bay of Whales.

  We were flying at feet, and visibility was excellent. Oddly enough, the packs that had beset the ships of Amundsen, Scott and Shackleton, when they attempted to push eastward, were not to be seen. Except for a few scattered fragments and an occasional iceberg standing in solitary grandeur on a blue-green carpet, the Ross Sea was clear and open as far as the eye could see. A southern wind had blown the ice temporarily to the northward.

  At our altitude a hustling tail wind gave us a splendid boost. We averaged well over 120 miles per hour at cruising revolutions.

  About an hour after the start of the flight we passed over a beautiful bay1 in the Barrier, the mouth of which was several miles wide. A long, curving tongue of ice formed its westward side. The bay appeared to be four or five miles deep. From our great height it was no more than a modest, rather exquisitely carved indentation in the Barrier. But actually it was a stern and rugged thing, with 150-foot ice cliffs, sheer and perfect as if cut out by knife, as its walls. Flying does deprive an observer of much of the awe that seizes the surface traveller. I could not help but feel, as we flew over this bay, that had we come upon it suddenly from the deck of the City, we must have marvelled at its dimensions. But the vastly lengthened perspective that the airplane provides substitutes a different measurement. With so much to see, the things on the earth tend to diminish to their true cosmical proportions: and that which lifts itself above the rest and impresses must, of necessity, be truly striking.

  Not long after passing the bay, I saw many miles to the right a few black peaks protruding from the snow, and beyond them a single peak which invited speculation. On consulting the charts used on this flight, I find that I wrote in the corner of one of them: “Small peak to the right—land may show—looks like it.” I decided to investigate this peak later on.

  By this time the Barrier surface on the right had begun to rise in a rolling movement of grand dimensions. There was land underneath, beyond a doubt. Between our position and the coastline the Barrier, on its march down to the sea, was riven and cracked until an area at least 20 miles in length became a mass of crevasses. These were of a character so fearful as to suggest no foot traveller, however stubborn, could long exist in them.

  Presently a snow peak lifted its white head dead ahead—an inconspicuous mound dancing slightly over the head of one of the cylinders. A patch of bare rock showed on the northern side. It was Scott’s Nunatak. Since he first saw it in 1902, three men, Lieutenant Prestrud, Johansen and Stebberud of Amundsen’s Expedition, had fought their way to this lonely spur, in December, 1911. It gave one an odd sensation to rush at a rate of two miles per minute toward the spot which he and his companions had struggled weeks to gain; to be over it
and gone in a very few minutes, whereas they had lain, shivering and wet, in a tent, beset by snow storms, while Prestrud, to pass away the time, conjugated Russian verbs.

  From a point a little beyond the Nunatak, we flew over land never before seen: and at the given speed of the plane, we were exploring snow-covered land to the right at the rate of 4,000 square miles per hour.

  To the south of the Nunatak a chain of rather small mountains, trending to the southeast, lifted snow-capped peaks from the surface. This was the range which Scott named Alexandra Mountains. It is doubtful whether any of them exceeded 1500 feet in height. I was surprised to observe that several of them exposed bare rock on the northern slopes. Prestrud, when he observed them from the more modest eminence of the Nunatak, reported that “only on the most easterly spur was the rock just visible.”1

  These few bleak crags were, then, the first real land we had seen since we re-discovered Scott Island.

  From the Alexandra Mountains the snow-covered land (for land undeniably lay underneath) descended quite rapidly to the sea. The slopes were distinguished by well-marked terraces, and these in turn were traversed by large numbers of crevasses.

  These terraces fell into a slope which met the sea. The Ross Sea was solidly frozen over here, for miles to the north, and in the pancake smoothness we noted a number of odd-looking ice islands, the rounded domes of which were mostly split and broken, like tarts which had been toyed with. These domes, however, stood at least 100 feet above the general level of the sea ice, and their bottoms must have been well grounded. We also made out a lone glacier discharging its stream of pale blue ice into the sea, and around it, oddly enough in this hard frozen waste, lay a pool of open water. There were many indications, such as the lack of pressure ridges and the smoothness of surface, to show that the sea ice here rarely breaks up: and the theory suggested the possibility of land to the northward which held it anchored in this place.