The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1922-06-02
DeckIOad of Lumber Taken to
Build Home for Crew.
House Will Drift Four or Five
Years Around North Pole.
JOURNEY STARTS SATURDAY
Tho Scientific Measures Are Be-
hind Journey, Myth Lures.
Possibility That Story of Ships
Caught in FIOe Is True.
fBv the Assoclated Press.l


Seattle, June Capt. Roald
Amundsen's exploration ship Maud
crammed to the last inch of her cargo
holds with equipment and supplies. is
ready to set sail tomorrow on the first
lap of the long voyage thru the ice
fIoes about the North Pole, Captain
Amundsen said today.
Two airpIanes, to be used in me-
neurological and typographical investi-
cation in the uncharted Polar basins
were loaded aboard the vessel. Captain
Amundsen will not sail with the
Maud, but will join his ship at Nome,
Alaska. leaving Seattle Sunday.
A deckload of lumber forms an inn
portant item in the Maud's cargo. The
explorer explained that after the ship 3
frozen into the Arctic ice pack-with
which he expects to drift past the
north pole-living quarters for the
dogs of the expedition and huts for
scientific observation will be con-
structed on the ice.
The ship, by means of lumber. will
be converted into a 'house" where.
for the five or more years the vessel
will drift. the crew will live.
But He Expects to Return.
AS Captain Amundsen drifts slowly
across the cherries eXpanse of the
Polar basin, from which no white man
ever emerged alive, he will search the
white waste about him for signs or
the phantom fleet-the frozen COM
pany of lost ships that the Eskimos
claim swings around the north pole
year in and year out, gripped in the
inexorable clutch of the great Ice
noes.
Scouting over a wide area on each
side of the auxiliary powered schooner
Maud, the famous explorer will have
an extra aordinary opportunity to inves-
tigate the report of the eerie fleet
brought out from the farthest reaches
of the north by the natives.
Whether the fleet is legendary or
really exists is one of the problems
that puzzled Arctic explorers many
years While Captain Amundsen's ex-
pedition is primarily scientific in it's
scope and purpose, any clue to the ex-
istence of the phantom fleet will be
Investigated.
Strange Tales Are Told.
Vessels have disappeared strangely
in the unexplored Polar Basin since
the beginning of Arctic navigation
The hungry ice pack in 1876 carried
off thirty whaling ships from the wa
ters north of the American continent.
Most of the men fled to the ice and
escaped to Point Barrow and other
points on the Arctic coast but sew
enty refused to desert the ships. The
slow but cease1ess movement Of the
ice carried them into the mysterious
uncharted north region that COM
prlsed 100000 square miles.
Eskimos who have escaped from
the ice pack after being carried into
unknown wastes have returned with
stories of ghostly ships frozen in rhe
lee, white with frost and manned by
frozen crews.
Old time Arctic navigators have all
ways placed a certain amount OF Gre
dence in the reports
They hold that once withir the fee
pack the ships would rest secure in
their foundation and that from then
the Phfaf
wrought by the great billiards. that
sweep the Arctic seas.