THE SECRET LAND 🏔 WHAT ADMIRAL BYRD DISCOVERED

Frankie Stockes - THE SECRET LAND: Admiral Byrd’s men discovered a ‘warm oasis’ in Antarctica, with ‘warm water lakes’ and shores that ‘are free of ice and snow.’ The hills are full of ‘vast deposits’ of coal and ‘important minerals.’ What else did they find?

Source: https://twitter.com/realStockes/status/1788545708238258617

Thumbnail: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/09/insider/1929-byrd-plants-a-times-flag-in-antarctica.html

Not those Sulzbergers, you may have thought on May 20 when perusing a two-page map of Antarctica in The Times. There, just to the left of the enormous Ross Ice Shelf, was “Sulzberger Bay.” What were the Sulzbergers doing down near the South Pole? Wasn’t their family estate in Westchester County? Could this be a misprint? Or an in-joke?

It was neither. Sulzberger Bay does indeed take its name from Arthur Hays Sulzberger, the publisher of The New York Times from 1935 to 1961, who not only supported two Antarctic expeditions by Rear Adm. Richard E. Byrd (Commander Byrd at the time), but counted the admiral among his friends. In the 1920s, before taking over as publisher from his father-in-law, Mr. Sulzberger helped make The Times an advocate of aviation and exploration.

Admiral Byrd was so indebted to the Ochs-Sulzberger family and The Times that he went on a naming spree in December 1929 — summer in Antarctica — as he charted newly found features in Marie Byrd Land. (That would be Mrs. Byrd.) Besides Sulzberger Bay, he also designated:

• Adolph S. Ochs Glacier, since shortened to Ochs Glacier, at the foot of Block Bay. Mr. Ochs was the publisher of The Times at the time of the expedition.
• Mount Iphigene, a 4,200-foot peak west of Ochs Glacier, named for Mr. Ochs’s daughter, who was married to Mr. Sulzberger.
• Marujupu Peak, a 3,000-foot-high nunatak emerging from the Ochs Glacier. Marujupu (ma-ROO-joo-poo) is an acronym using the first two letters of the names of each of Iphigene and Arthur Sulzberger’s children, in birth order: Marian, Ruth, Judith and Punch, as Arthur Ochs Sulzberger was called.
• Birchall Peaks, a small group west of Mount Iphigene. Frederick T. Birchall was the managing editor of The Times when Byrd was exploring Antarctica. Besides helping finance Admiral Byrd’s first expedition, the Times dispatched its own correspondent, Russell Owen, to cover the trek. He spent a year on the assignment and was immortalized at Owen Peak, originally Mount Russell Owen.

A stirring memento of the Byrd-Sulzberger friendship is a 1921 Morgan silver dollar. It is framed together with a short narrative written by Arthur Hays Sulzberger, describing how the coin was passed back and forth between the men, beginning with Admiral Byrd’s Arctic expedition of 1926 and trans-Atlantic flight of 1927.

“Before leaving on his first South Pole adventure, Byrd asked me for the dollar,” Mr. Sulzberger wrote. “I put it in this plain blue envelope with a simple notation. It was never removed from the envelope and was taken across the South Pole in it.”

“Again on his second South Polar trip [1934] the Admiral asked me for the dollar. It accompanied him on all of his flights and was with him at the advance base. In turn it was duly brought back to me. “

“Finally on this third trip to Antarctica [1939-40] — this time for the United States Government — Admiral Byrd once again claimed his dollar and, as usual, returned it.”

“A dollar can go very far in the proper hands.”

Very far — as Admiral Byrd told Mr. Sulzberger by letter after returning the coin in October 1940. During the third expedition, the admiral’s ship had become icebound in Sulzberger Bay.

“There did not seem to be any chance of getting out,” Admiral Byrd wrote, “but with this luck piece and a seaplane, we managed, by zigzagging and pounding the ice, to break our way through to open water. Perhaps without this luck piece we would still be in your inhospitable Bay.

“You must take good care of this silver piece,” the admiral continued. “If you should lose it I would be sunk, for I would not dare to go on a hazardous undertaking without it. Devotedly, Dick.”

Wherever Admiral Byrd’s soul may be these days, he need not worry. The silver dollar is safely in the hands of Arthur Sulzberger Jr. You know. Of the Antarctic Sulzbergers.