Mr. Ellsworth's Antarctic Flight

Abstract

IT was on November 23 last year that Mr. Lincoln Ellsworth and his pilot, Mr. H. H. Kenyon, left Dundee Island off Graham Land in their attempt to reach the Bay of Whales in the Ross Sea in a transantarctic flight of more than two thousand miles. Their last radio message was received eight hours after their departure. In the hope that the fliers had succeeded in reaching their destination, the R.R.S. Discovery II was diverted from her work to make her way to the Bay of Whales, where she arrived on January 16 and found the two airmen alive and well at the camp known as Little America, where Admiral Byrd had left petrol, stores and huts two years ago. Mr. Ellsworth's own ship Wyatt Earp was also making for the Bay of Whales after visiting Charcot Land and other places according to prearranged orders. It appears that the American aeroplane descended twenty miles short of Little America owing to lack of fuel. The men sledged to safety, for the plane carried a small sledge. Their wireless set failed, and hence the many weeks of anxiety as to their fate. Details of the flight are awaited with interest, since the route was across the unexplored Hearst Land and presumably over the unknown extension of the Queen Maud Ranges.