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Chapter 11 - Jeopardy
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Chapter 11 Jeopardy y the late summer of 1933, as the country strove to grasp the audacious dimensions of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, the Second Byrd Antarctic Expedition rapidly took shape. Amid the usual uproar and uncertainty of trying to get another large polar expedition under way with the “shouting confusion of telephones and telegrams, hammers banging, hand trucks rumbling, orders and counter-orders, wild goose chases,” Richard received an invitation from Eleanor Roosevelt. Could he and Marie have dinner at the White House and spend the night of September 6? The day after their gathering, FDR sent a long note to “my dear Dick.” The president was “delighted that you have had the faith to go ahead with this scientific expedition to the antarctic continent and that you have definitely set the date of departure for September 25. It is because you and I are such old friends,” Roosevelt continued, “and because I have followed so closely your three previous expeditions, that I expect to keep in close touch with your new expedition .” The president was “especially interested in the exhaustive study of weather on the antarctic,” that “weather maker for the greater part of the South American continent.” Byrd should know that he and his colleagues had the “full support of the United States Government and that you can call on the Government in case of need or emergency,” a welcome pledge in view of Byrd’s problems getting out of the Bay of Whales three years before.1 There may have been more to the dinner gathering. Years later, in the midst of an unsuccessful attempt to rescue Operation Highjump II from presidential cancellation , Richard told PresidentTruman’s secretary of defense, Louis Johnson, that “in 1933, preceding the 1933–35 expedition,” a comprehensive aerial mapping and claims project for Antarctica “was discussed with President Roosevelt, and ap313 proved by him.” Only the lack of suitable aircraft at that early date made such a mission impossible. If Richard remembered matters correctly, it was the first time—though far from the last—that anyone of importance in Washington openly raised the notion of making U.S. territorial claims in the Antarctic based largely on Byrd’s own extensive explorations.2 Whatever was discussed that September evening in 1933, FDR’s relief was palpable . His friend and possible rival was going into a deep freeze for at least eighteen months, and the president hurried him on his way by applauding the explorer ’s decision to leave early. That proved impossible. Bear of Oakland was able to clear Boston Harbor on time, but the main supply vessel, Jacob Ruppert, did not depart until October 11. Still, Byrd could be of use to the New Deal before he sailed. On October 2 the admiral signed a reemployment agreement as part of the National Recovery Act’s industrial codes of conduct, thus carrying “the blue eagle of recovery to the southernmost limits of the earth.”3 With that act his career as a public political figure came to a temporary close. No excursion ever headed south to the ice burdened with more goals, objectives , and agendas—open and hidden—than did Richard Byrd’s second Antarctic expedition of 1933–1935 (BAE II). Byrd told people the white continent lured him back by its “intangible attraction,” then proceeded to enumerate several tangibles , including “the pull of discovery, of seeing new lands, and fitting into the jig-saw of geography the missing pieces beyond the horizon.”4 Indeed, he planned to pull off the greatest polar coup of all, placing in eclipse any and every one of the comparative handful of people who had ever been to Antarctica. Who had ever lived alone, or even with a companion or two, amid the dark, howling, frigid South Polar wasteland, hundreds of miles beyond the barrier , for the four to six months of its dreadful winter? No one. But Dick Byrd would. Should he survive, he would have a tale to tell greater than any yet told. An Antarctic winter hermitage would solidify beyond all question his status as one of the greatest polar explorers, if not the preeminent. Exactly when and how Byrd hit upon and matured his plan for an advance base is nearly impossible to determine. According to Charles Murphy, Byrd first mentioned the project as early as 1930, immediately upon the return of BAE I.5 “He remarked, then, that he had been thinking it over for some time.” Murphy remained close...