What was the trip down to Antarctica like?
ER: The trip down to Antarctica from the United States took much longer than it does today. Nowadays, Antarctic explorers get on an airplane and they’re down there in relatively few hours. Back then Byrd had to take ships from New York through the Panama Canal to the South Pacific and then to New Zealand, it took months. One of Byrd’s ships was an old sailing ship. So the transportation is quite a bit different than it is today. Q: So once they got to the ice pack and he had these two ships, right, what kind of tension was there? ER: In order to get to Antarctica, Byrd had to travel from New Zealand halfway down, and then he would meet an, what’s called the Antarctic Ice Pack. And this is a rim of ice that entirely circles the Antarctic continent. There are ice floes, which is frozen sea ice, and icebergs which are big masses of, of fresh water ice that break off the Antarctic ice shells which is around the continent. This is very dangerous for a ship to go through. Because while you’r
