thick, she was made to withstand much of the pressure of shifting ice. Roald Amundsen, as a young man, had sailed on her during one of her first voyages. Byrd's other ship was the Eleanor Bolling, a steam vessel. On it were the parts of the plane the Floyd Bennett which, when assembled, was to carry Byrd over the pole. Bursey was on the barque when it left New York August 25, traveling through the Panama Canal and across the Pacific Ocean, reaching New Zealand in 91 days. The Bolling, a faster ship, had left a month later. With the Antarctic spring approaching, the two ships left New Zealand December 2 on the final lap to the frozen continent. The Bolling took the City of New York in tow to save coal. According to Bursey, a whaler, the C. A. Larsen, which worked the area every summer, met the City of New York and towed it through the pack ice while the Bolling returned to New Zealand for more supplies. On Christmas Day the Great Ice Barrier was sighted, and two days later, the City of New York was tied to ice in the Bay of Whales. A base camp, Little America, was set up away. Each day the dog teams hauled the supplies to camp. After the Bolling arrived from New Zealand with more cargo, the bay ice became unsafe and the two ships tied up to the towering ice barrier. On one trip to camp with supplies, Bursey heard the ships' whistles blowing in alarm. The ice barrier had suddenly cracked, plunging tons of ice on the decks, partly capsizing the Bolling and throwing one man in the water. "This all but ended the expedition right there," he remembered. "The success of this million-dollar expedition depended on the polar flight. The fuselage of the Ford plane had been landed on top of the barrier, but the wings were on large pieces of ice floating by the ships. Through the quick action of the crew, everything was rescued." The men worked hard in the weeks ahead and before the sun went down and the long winter night set in, the camp was ready. In his diary Bursey wrote, "The temperature has dropped to 172 degrees below, our record for the year so far." Finally on August 20, 1929, he wrote: "Today is the day of the beautiful morning ...