Burton Island (AGB 1) - Naval Cruise Book

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On a window near the ladder, each four hour watch uses a l Below: The real villain of Antarctic waters is the killer whale. lts length is about thirty feet. It will come up under an ice floe and fling it in the air, in order to make a meal out of a bunch of penguins, a dog, a seal- or a man. This could have been the last photograph that Warren Krupsaw ever took. Top right: A group of men is silhouetted against the sky. They are boarding the ship after a party on the ice. McMurdo Station is in the background, at the foot of Observation Hill. Bottom: Men playing touch football on the ice. Glacier continues to break ice, around the clock. Because the work they do is so perilous, the men in Deep Freeze are given frequent opportunities to relax. Yet the tempo quickens as the date approaches when the summer sup- port torces must leave, since everybody is trying to com- plete a iob. Near the end ofthe season, if you get in some guy's way - watch out. grease pencil to boast of its progress and to disparage the dis- tance gained by competing watches. It takes the tension out of a painstaking job, the score is being analyzed more profoundly than a ball game by the people on shore. The first supply ship has on board a number of vans that are urgently needed to set up Plateau Station, and fuel everywhere is running low. Accord- ing to Cdr Mel Scott of ASA, HWe're measuring fuel at McMurdo with an eyedropperf' The timing of everything down the line may rest on Glacierlv arrival one day early, so the season can be completed, and the aircraft fly out one day before a blizzard. Lt McDonald makes a cut to starboard, another 40 degrees to port, and one in the center, about40 cuts per watch. It is hard to achieve what he intends, since he can't tell how the ice is going to split, and the bow may be forced one way or the other. Lcdr Voyer says, 'fNear Beaufort Island it was so bad we had to go around, between there and Cape Bird. You can't force your way . . . Nature decides your channelf' Glacier is making about a mile and a half every 24 hours, and the channel is being widened by Barton Islancl astern, so the loose ice can escape. Loft-Conn is a peaceful place, with a stunning view of Erebus and Cape Royds abeam, where Shackleton wintered before his try for the Pole. The early ships frequently were frozen in for a year at a time, but Glacier creates her own harbor. She will roll fear- fully, however, in the open sea all the way home to Boston. It is fascinating to watch the infinite variety of the splintering ice. The bottoms of the fragments are brownish from microscopic plant life, since the Antarctic Ocean is richer in food than any other body of water in the world. HWe saw some Adelies and Emperors at the edge of the ice,', says Voyer, Hand killer whales waiting for themf' Yet the most important part of Glacier is her engines, because they turn the two 17-foot propellers. An American Indian named Doran is in charge of the engine room, which actually is a series of compartments reached by ladders as slippery as a fire escape. HI can run down here quicker than a voice can get here from the bridge,'9 he says proudly and half seriously. He puts his hand on I ,iz,4w.-,M-f M4-f 7 I, . .,,7zfaf4r., .W . . , .w',,fff4., ,I ,g.g,, ' . , 3, X -W , ra MW, W! fr.. f to xl,

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This photograph shows the beauty of brash, a mosaic that is first noticed when approaching the Antarctic in an aircraft, over pack ice. Atka, Burton Island, and Glacier are near the entrance to the channel, which is blocked by the giant berg at right. The open water here is in the vicinity of Cape Royds. The nearest ship is not breaking ice, but moored so that work can be done on the hull. A shore party is barely visible. one of the ten Diesel generators that supply power to two 10,500 horsepower electric motors driving the shafts. 'cThis one is sand- baggingf he says, meaning it's resting. The evaporators can distill 16,000 gallons of fresh water a day, and last year they supplied lVlcMurdo with water for ten days, when the last snow had been scraped off the brown hillsides. There is no resemblance between this scene and the old time cursing and coal-heaving. Several 'isnipesf' as the enginemen are called, stand attentively in front of a bank of relays that control the governors which prevent the rams from oversteering. Others follow each change in revolutions as the ship charges the ice, idles, and backs down. They seem dignified, because of their absorption, and because they are astute enough to see how their own machinery affects the functioning of the whole ship. Suddenly a man comes up to Ens Doran and tells him that one of the pins has let go in the steering mechanism. A snipe in the control room says it was the same watch that let it happen before, but later they find out that a remote telltale in Loft-Conn didn't show the rudder's position accurately. The ship must stop breaking ice while the pin is replaced. The Exec sits at the head of the long table in the wardroom, which offers excellent food served by a pair of stewards. The drink is sometimes iced tea, and sometimes an ersatz liquid that appears each day in a new color. Lcdr Voyer, a Naval Academy graduate with submarine experience, is basically a merry man, considering that he has an entire ship on his mind. Yet he thinks nothing of stopping so1neone in a passageway, reminding him of a hairline breach of discipline, answering a technical question, and heading off a morale problem - at one stroke. An AC2 waits at the XO,s elbow until he has finished a joke, then hands him the evening weather report. 'iBallard takes pride in working up the weather like a professional, Voyer confides later. i'He is becoming a bit of an analyst himself. At breakfast the XO receives a message: ATKA' AT 52 . This odd little fact means something to someone everywhere on the ice. The third breaker has remained behind to escort the tanker Alatna through the pack, but even though she has scarcelyleft New Zealand there begins a sensitive listening-process which, much later, picks up the routine remark that she is having trouble with one of her main propulsion generators. Eastwinal under the Coast Guard, takes a wintering-over party in january to Palmer Station on Anvers Island, near the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, and while she is there she serves as another weather-reporting station. She may be called to free one of the thin-skinned cargo ships or pick a few men off an untenable place on the coast. The big difference between Deep Freeze and the early Antarc- tic expeditions is that the smallest party in the most remote part of the Continent is in radio contact with someone. VX-6 once flew a Herc from Rhode Island to Byrd, in April, after the station had been buttoned-up for the winter, to bring out a Russian exchange scientist who became ill. The isolation experienced by Cherry- Garrard, only 50 miles from McMurdo, is a thing of the past. .