Burton Island (AGB 1) - Naval Cruise Book

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T Cdr Frank P. Faughman, skipper of the icebreaker Glacier. Toward the end of the season, the Glacier damaged her rudder and on February 20, 1966, left Antarctica for Wellington, New Zealand. ln June She WGS transferred to the U. S. Coast Guard. She is expected to continue her annual Deep Freeze support. Right: Glacier breaking ice. l I , ,Msg Breaking Ice Glacier sends a i'horse ashore to pick up Cdr jim Newman, the ship operations officer at McMurdo. The helicopter takes its name from the letters HO4S, as it used to be called, and when Lt Bill Lucas sets it down on the helo pad the large window in the port side of the cockpit is missing. It blew out as they were com- ing from the ship, they dropped a smoke flare to mark its posi- tion and landed on the ice to pick it up. 'cWe only have one spare on the ship,H says Lucas. There is a raw wind in a blue sky. The horse hovers, slides off across the VX-6 warehouses, and sets a course for Glacier which is out of sight to the north. In a few minutes, Lucas spots some seals and begins banking and circling while a grizzled Navy photographer in his fifties named Gallagher shoots them through the half-open door with a heavily-shielded camera. Lucas lands on the ice, and the man in the cabin opens the door wide. Gallagher sits clumsily on the sill and gets his pictures, as one seal flings its tail in the air and another slithers across the ice. He is so congealed by the cold that he has to be helped back to his seat. In less than a minute, the helicopter is off, with Erebus smoking to starboard. The horse is exhilarating, since it can stop indefinitely to look at something, and then dart off in any direction. Glacier appears lifeless, as the plane captain puts a heavy strap on Gallagher, which is hooked into the opposite side of the cabin so that he wonlt fall through the open door. He shoots at a dizzy- ing angle of bank, while Glacier backs down and waits for the chopper to land. On the flight deck, joe Strano, another pilot, reports that one of Barton Islanclfs helicopters blew out a window this morning, in the same manner. The ship lives and breathes, with 280 officers and men going about their duties. Their combined skills are necessary so that she can go on making these same motions end- lessly. She is the key that unlocks one of the doors of the Antarc- tic. Cdr Newman is quite at home, since he was the executive officer on the icebreaker Siaien Island last year. He is greeted by the skipper, Cdr Frank Faughman, and taken up to lunch. After the bitter cold, the captainls quarters are warm and luxurious. There are rugs and armchairs, and a steward brings plates of hot soup to a table set with silver on a white cloth. A book was written about a steward's mate named Amos Brown, who figured he ran the ship. UI give the captain a good break- fast, and when the captain's happy the ship's happyf, These amenities are almost essential, since Glacier is sometimes at sea for seven months. She is the only icebreaker never to miss a season in Deep Freeze and was the first one to penetrate McMurdo Sound where she helped establish the present station. She is a great pulsing brain that monitors almost everything in the Antarctic, besides being available for rescue and weather reporting, she can accom- modate a scientific program or the commander of a task group. 82 gi-i

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Burton Island, shoving the brash or loose ice in the chan- nel. The huge iceberg that blocked the entrance to the channel can be seen here. Even after ten days of being worn away by the wind and the sun, it was still estimated to cover an area of nine square miles. ...-.-,.. Cdr Faughman was sent to M.I.T. bythe Navy after World Way II to study electrical engineering and is expert in command and control systems. In spite of the demanding nature of his technical duties, he is extremely well read, and he has the philosophical turn of mind that in Conrad is stories used to belong to the Chief Engi- neer. On the bulkhead, over the table, is a framed icepick. Lcdr Irving Voyer, Glacier? executive officer, comes in, wear- ing suntans and Nstreetl' shoes. Except for the four pilots and the eight men who maintain the horses, the ship is too warm for the heavy clothes worn on shore. He leads the way up the mast, which these days is climbed z'nsz'de on 50 or so icy iron rungs. If he has had an extra piece of celery at lunch, he can't make it. At the top is 4'Loft-Conn, a sunny, enclosed space where two officers are breaking ice. One handles the throttles and the other the helm, which is a small brass tube the size of an inverted dice cup. It is hard to imagine the fishermen 's monument at Gloucester - with a man at the 4'tube of aschooner. By turning this cursed thing, Mike McDonald controls upward of 8,500 tons, a 310-ft. vessel with hundreds of men in it, and the second largest Diesel electric propulsion plant afloat, crushing 26 miles of six-foot ice - which would take a long time with an icepick. The tube flips some switches that transmit hydraulic power to acouple of 'cramsn that push the rudder. Lt McDonald has to keep the rudder pre- cisely amidships when backing down, or it will be caught in the loose ice and jammed over, breaking a i'pin or preventer. Even here, where the whipping effect of the mast would be noticed most, they are not knocked down when Glacier hits the ice. The vibration increases as she reaches full power, but ramming doesnit disturb the glasses on the table in the wardroom. Below the waterline, the bow slants aft at such an angle that the ship rides up on the ice and crushes it with her weight. Art Morison cuts the throttles just before she loses way, to avoid being hung-up and having to c'sally the ship. In the old days, this was done by men rushing back and forth across the deck, but Glacier can be rolled ten degrees by pumping 140,000 gallons of water from side to side. c'We got hung-up seven timesfl says the XO. HThe same as last yearf, But that was an unusually light ice-year, with only 17 miles to break. as -- !