Burton Island (AGB 1) - Naval Cruise Book

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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. .

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, .. , , g ig i V ww.-M MA - f H- -A---fi---3- -- e 4 iv:.i.::F::,'.::.g -i - L M---1:f,1L5,,g,37lT!T:!r. .'fr.t:':'f-f' --'- -v-f-- - ' N l lil il tl il: i I. si l il. , l 1 3 l. l!' 1 fl l .1 if is 'l il ,lv The icebreaker Eastwind is a formidable ship, butshe is dwarfed by one of the numerous smaller ice shelves along the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula. The helicopter about to land on her flight deck is the HH-52A, the first turbine-powered model to be used by any ice- breaker in Deep Freeze. Conventional choppers would have taken much longer in the re-supply of Palmer Sta- tion, on Anvers Island, which was Eastwind's principal mission this season. The ship also served as a floating laboratory for a party of biologists studying arthropods and fungi, and trapping airborne insects. At right, top: is a glimpse of the self-contained world of the nuclear reactor at McMurdo. These mentook a year's training course at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, and then spent from one to two years learning operations and mainte- nance in an operational, pressurized-water plant. Out- side this thin shed is the starkest environment in the world, where man has lived regularly for only ten years. Bottom: some of the water distillation equipment. These mechanical details are part of a chain thatmakes possible the scientific work far out on the ice. Eastwind made a unique contribution to Deep Freeze this season. On january 4 she arrived at Palmer Station, the only U. S. station to be supplied entirely by sea. After taking the pre- vious wintering-over party to Punta Arenas, Chile, where she pick- ed up some scientists, she met the freighter Wyandot at sea and escorted her to Anvers Island. Wyandot was to resupply Palmer for the winter, but the ice was so thick that she had to lie about a mile offshore. Eastzuind carried two turbine-powered helicopters -the first time they had been used in the Antarctic by an icebreaker. They are much larger than the choppers that usually search out Hleadsn or open water in the pack ice, and in two days they carried Wyandotis' cargo ashore. One of Eastzutndk officers said, It would have taken ordinary helos a weekfi This saved so much time that they were able to go around into the Weddell Sea on an oceanographic cruise, and to allow the fourteen scientists aboard more time for their observations. In the Weddell Sea they encountered heavier ice, trapped there by the long arm of the peninsula. The new turbine-powered helicopters are good for garbage, too. When the scientists asked that the shipis garbage not be dumped overboard, lest it affect the delicate balance of life in the waters where they were taking measurements, the choppers oblig- ingly carried it far out to sea. U. S. Cool! Guard 1: it if