Albuquerque morning journal. [volume] (Albuquerque, N.M.) 1903-1926, 1921-08-01
SCHOONER MAUD
To Be EQUIPPED
WITH WIRELESS
AmundSen Will Install a Plant
on the Vessel So He May
Keep in Touch With
Civilization.

Seattle, Wash, July 31.-From
the remotest, most inaccessible spot
on earth-the north pole-a wire
less message will be flashed to the
civilized world, If the plans of
Captain Roald Amundsen, discoy-
erer of the south pole and famous
Arctic explorer, are carried out,
captain Amundsen's schooner
Maud, on which he hoped to drift
past the pole with the ice floes,
was disabled by broken propeller
off Cape Serdze, Siberia, after he
had spent two years in pushing
around the eastward Artic passage
from Norway. The explorer left
his vessel and her crew to await a
break in the ice and proceeded to
Nome. later coming to Seattle on a
recent ship.
Isolated For Two Years.
The Maud has no wireless ap-
paratus, but Captain Amundsen
expects to install one when the
craft is brought here, some time
this summer, to be repaired and
refitted. Captain Amundsen ex-
planned that his party had been cut
off from communication with other
human beings for two years, with
but one break-his trip out TO
Nome last year-two years of ice
bound horizons, of bitter cold, of
almost endless night.
The war was raging In its most
critical period when we left the
world most OF you know" he re-
called, and for many months we
speculated in vain on the course of
events. 1t was in December, 1919.
more than year after the signing
or the armistice, that we finally
met a Russian trader who told JUS
what had happened. Then I de-
termfned we would carry wireless"
To Sail Next Summer.
Captain Amundsen told the AS
ISOLATED Press he would spend the
next year in the United States,
PROBABLY most of 1t around Seattle,
and would sail from this port next
summer, He will strike back for
cape Serdze, he said, trusting to
meet with better luck than the
furious Arctic storm which last
year hurled the Maud into an ice
bank on the Siberian coast.
The explorer affirmed that his
voyage had tended only to confirm
his previous theories about mag
netic properties of the polar basin,
He expressed faith in his belief
that an ocean current running
northeasterly from Cape Serdze
would carry him past the pole and
eventually into the Atlantic ocean.
when we reached Nome a year
ago, and started back" he said,
the trouble was that an unprece-
denied Jam of ice prevented us
from pushing far enough north.
we drifted too much to the east
and the currents eastward from
Siberia are extraordinary-it is a
sort of whirlpool, where one wan
ders around in circles instead Of
following any course"
1t will take three years-per-
haps longer" he predicted.
captain Amundsen said that an
important part of his equipment
consisted Of books, hundreds of
them.
Reads Mostly Fiction.
II read mostly fiction" he said.
Under such circumstances a mans
mind needs diversion. want
something light-but not too light,
1t must be plausible"
The party experienced no serious
illness the entire trip. Nor did the
cold cause suffering. the explorer
said, for all were we'll equipped.
On the tortuous voyage from Nor
way to eastern Siberia they en-
countered few natives,
1T is a desolate shore on the
north Of Siberia he pointed out.
I'VE saw few signs of life, except
occasional polar bears. At one
point we shot forty, skinned them
and used the meat for steaks. II
we had been trapping for skins we
could have made a small fortune"
The Maud's crew includes DR.. H.
V. Sverdrup, q scientist: Oscar
Visiting, G. Olonikin and seven
natives. They left Norway in 1918
and remained buried in the Ice
nineteen months.