Ballyhoo Explorer
Antarctic Discovery. By Rear _AdmiralRichard E. Byrd. (Putnam. 18s.) As the official account by its leader of the most. compre- hensive expedition that has ever explored that little-known continent, Antarctic Discovery is an extremely important book in its class. And as the expedition was a national one, criticism, however well-founded, is certain to give offence. It is especially repugnant for a reviewer to have to disparage a man with the author's record, for everything other than strictly exploration which Admiral Byrd has undertaken (e.g., his flights over both the Poles and across the Atlantic) has been executed with conspicuous success. And in his leadership of two Antarctic expeditions, with a total comple- ment of ninety-eight men, not counting ships' crews, he has proved himself to possess ninny immensely fine qualities. It is • transparent both in Antarctic Adventure and Little America, the record of the first expedition, that the leader was worshipped by his men in a hard school.
However, there is a standard of achievement expected from Antarctic expeditions—a standard set high by men like Amundsen and Shackleton. The main object of all such exploration being geographical discovery, one expects, as it were, so many miles of new land to the £ or the $ expended. It is thus that historians will assess Admiral Byrd's place among explorers, and this rather pretentiouS narrative—in which every journey is a " thrust into the unknown " and nearly every flight an " attack "—should, be examined on these lines.
With hundreds of miles of the Antarctic coastline uncle . li‘ neAted and hundreds of thousands of square miles of the ipterior unseen, it is an extremely obvious criticism that Admiral Byrd should not have established the base for his first expedition in the Bay of Whales, where Amundsen had his headquarters in 1910-11. The main feat of the expedition, the flight to the South Pole, may have been good news value, but it certainly was not exploration, since the Pole had already been discovered by Amundsen and Scott and its vicinity reached in addition by Shackleton.
The expedition cost nearly £250,000, but the publicity accorded to the flight no doubt justified the wasted oppor- tunities of visiting a known area while so much remained unknown. Judge the astonishment of explorers on this side of the Atlantic when it was learned that Admiral Byrd's second expedition was also to operate from the lEtay of Whales! How Antarctic veterans must laugh at the statement' on p. 9—" We thus escaped the enormous risk- of having to locate and found a new base on an unknown coast "—a risk that has been accepted without comment by every single other leader since Borchgrevink's party first wintered in the Antarctic in 1899.
So the team of 56 men with 153 dogs, 100 sledges, 6 aero- planes (one of which could carry a load of 9 tons) and 6 motor- sledges (to say nothing of 3 cows and a calf) spent the year of 1933-4 working on the site of Admiral Byrd's previous expedition. Of the personnel the author writes : " We had scientists, aviators, mechanics, and artisans of all sorts, engineers, jacks-of-all-trades, an ex-insurance salesman, millionaires' sons, even a deep-sea diver, an archaeologist, an artist, a parachute jumper, a tree surgeon, a song-writer who wanted a task of adventure, and one man who was, I dis- covered later, a fugitive from justice." It is claimed that the scientific programme was the most complete that has ever been undertaken by a polar expedition ; this is probably true, and even the criticism that such work was too intensive whilst vast realms of the continent are totally unknown will not rob it of its value. Two good sledging journeys have increased our knowledge of the Queen Maud and Edsel Ford Ranges, and some valuable seismic soundings have estab- lished the thickness of the ice in certain places. The most important achievement was the long flight to the south-east. Until that time, it was not known whether an ice strait ran two thousand miles across from the Ross Sea to the Weddell Sea, whether in fact Antarctica was one huge mainland, or two sub-continents artificially joined by glaciation. With the discovery by the flight's crew of a high plateau in the position of the hypothetical strait, the last great geographical problem of the world appears to have been solved, and it is perhaps ungenerous to remark that Admiral Byrd could have settled this important question four years earlier had he not then chosen to fly to the South Pole.
The most extraordinary (and much advertised) episode in the course of the expedition was that its leader spent the winter alone at a small camp more than a hundred miles from the Base. On p. 169 Admiral Byrd writes: " We were not able to advance sufficient supplies to staff this meteoro- logical outpost with three men." The author cannot seriously expect us to believe this bare statement, in view of the immense amount of transport that was active and available. A little later he says that he was " determined not to assume the responsibility for . . . leaving two men jammed together' at arm's length in a tiny shack in this strange environment . . . "—and continues that " it was definitely up to me to go." Then, as if realising that he has hardly made out a case, he somewhat inconsistently adds : " The truth of the matter is that I really wanted to go and keenly looked forward to the experience." At any rate he stayed there alone, and although towards the end of his vigil he was " dying from the effects of the poisonous fumes cast off from the stove and gasoline generator, scarcely able to walk, existing on half-frozen foods he was too ill and too weak to prepare properly," he was too proud to use his wireless to summon assistance. Though there is once more a strong savour of " stunt,- one gladly admires the resolution with which the affair was carried through.
Many of the features mentioned in the narrative (e.g., Amundsen Arm) are not shown on either of the two Tether inadequate maps. The proofs have been very carelessly read—there are at least a dozen misprints. And as for the photographs, they compare unfavourably with the standards of thirty years ago, in spite of the presence on the expedition of at least one professional photographer, armed doubtlessly with the best cameras on the market... HAFLcinsa, '
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