On December 15, 1935, the day Ellsworth and Hollick-Kenyon lowered themselves into the sanctuary of the radio shack at Little America, the Wyatt Earp was still in Magallanes, Chile. Wilkins was waiting to get the plane promised by Charles McVeigh and Bernon Prentice. He was also still planning to search Charcot Island and the unmapped coast in the Pacific Quadrant, but he held little hope of finding the fliers there. If the Polar Star had landed, or crashed, when the radio contact was lost, the chances of the two men being alive were extremely remote. And if they did reach the coast somewhere farther west than Charcot Island, the likelihood of the Wyatt Earp negotiating the ice pack that had stopped Byrd in 1933 was equally remote. Nevertheless, Wilkins had to cross it off his list before he could proceed to the Ross Ice Shelf. “Expect to find Lincoln at Little America,” Wilkins wrote to his wife from Magallanes. “In any case we will have done all we can and be back [in New York] by the end of March.”1
Anxious to get on with it, Wilkins received word that the pilot bringing the relief plane from California refused to fly to Magallanes, where there was no landing field. The nearest airstrip was at Rio de Gallegos, Argentina. Frustrated, Wilkins and Joe Lymburner loaded the pontoons for the Polar Star, which were carried on the Wyatt Earp, onto a truck and drove 130 miles to the airfield, where they fitted the pontoons to the new plane before Lymburner flew it back to the Magallanes and landed in the harbor.
The relief plane was also a Northrop Gamma, with the exception that it was a single-seater. The Polar Star had been especially built with the twin cockpit to accommodate Ellsworth. On the sides of the relief plane was emblazoned the name Texaco 20, to acknowledge the generosity of the company that had loaned it. Once the Texaco 20 was securely lashed to the deck of the Wyatt Earp, Wilkins was ready to depart. Before leaving he wrote to his wife:
I suppose you have heard that the Australian Government will send two planes on the SS Discovery [II] to look for Ellsworth. I know there are two fellows [Mawson and Davis] out there who would jump at any chance to get to the Antarctic and no doubt they are working this opportunity. I suppose they are saying also that at last they have caught me napping and have to come to my rescue. However I have wired to the government out there saying that the sending of two planes is not necessary as yet and will not be unless something happens to the Wyatt Earp, which is not likely. Anyway, if they do get down and pick up Ellsworth it means that we will be home all the sooner and we can’t be home soon enough for me.2
In Melbourne, the Discovery II was ready to sail by December 23. Crowds lined the jetty at Williamstown to cheer its departure. A year earlier, Australian aviator Charles Ulm had disappeared on a flight from California to Hawaii and the U.S. Navy had mounted an extensive, yet unsuccessful, search. Now Australians felt they were repaying a debt by supporting a search for an American, and local papers reported people shouting to the crew, “Do it for Charlie! Find him for Charlie!” Women waved, or threw flowers and kisses.
On board the Discovery II were two planes; a Gipsy Moth 60X and a Westland Wapiti. Added to the crew were two Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) pilots, along with five Australians.
On December 25, 1935, Ellsworth wrote in his diary:
Christmas Day. We have already celebrated a day too early. Wouldn’t have known it except when walking down to Ver-Sur-Mer the clouds cleared and there was the sun with a great bight in it and we remembered that on the 25th there was a total eclipse. With the white snows beneath it was a unique sight to behold. Yesterday, our Christmas, we found a small home made plum pudding tucked away on the top shelf in our cabin and it made a real Christmas for us, what with the remains of the small bottle of cognac given me by my wife and carried for three years on the Wyatt Earp.
All yesterday morning I spent digging out the drifted snow from the shaft entrance to our home. We are on our last sack of coal and only light the stove in the evenings now. It is cosy with the stove even if it does melt the snow around the stove pipe and skylight with a continuous dripping of water on the floor. Every day I walk six miles down the bay to where the tractors are, where we have put up our tent with two yellow streamers and a note that we are at Little America so the Wyatt Earp will know where we are. The wait here is trying indeed, knowing nothing of the whereabouts of the ship. The Bay of Whales has not started to open yet, although the number of seals increases daily on the ice. I suppose it is a sign that open water is coming soon and I hope also the Wyatt Earp. Longingly I scan the horizon for her.
Our daily routine is as follows. Supper around 9:00 P.M. In our sleeping bags until 3:00 or perhaps 4:00 P.M., the next day. A light meal of perhaps oatmeal with raisins and tea. Clean up our cabin perhaps wash the dishes depending on how clean they are from the last meal. Melt snow for the evening meal. Then I take a walk on snow shoes to the tractors, look out to sea for the Wyatt Earp, and return home generally to find that Kenyon has broken in the skylight of another cabin and found another sack of coal or some more bottles of Worcestershire sauce, cans of tobacco, magazines, or marmalade. Kenyon makes bannocks [flat bread] of self raising flour we found and Maxwell House coffee, also rummaged, that can’t be beat for flavor and after a stew of bully beef rich with chilli sauce, we settle down in our bunks for a quiet smoke until bed time. Our routine saves both food and fuel for we don’t know how long we may have to stay here. Found two and a half more sacks of coal. We were down to our last half sack. Thank heavens there is half a drum of fuel left.3
On December 28, five days after the Discovery II had left Melbourne, the Wyatt Earp reached the heavy ice surrounding Charcot Island. The sea was rough, and Wilkins decided against trying to get the Texaco 20 airborne. After three days of waiting for calmer seas, which didn’t materialize, Wilkins headed straight for the Ross Sea. The Discovery II and the Wyatt Earp were now in a race to reach the Bay of Whales first.
For the following two weeks, Ellsworth’s diary entries are brief. (The entries in Hollick-Kenyon’s pilot’s log ceased when the plane landed north of Roosevelt Island.) Ellsworth’s jottings mainly noted changes in the weather. He did record, on January 11, that they had lost half a day somewhere, probably by sleeping through it, then took the time to record his frustration again on January 14:
Continuous foggy weather ever since the 6th. Today it is snowing again. Still warm. Will the Wyatt Earp never come for us? Wilkins said five or six weeks to come the 3,000 miles from Dundee Island and here it is almost seven. One can’t sleep all the time and it is awful not to be able to read. My glasses are in the plane, along with all my flags and souvenirs. The thing I care most about is the Wyatt Earp cartridge belt. Fear the plane is doomed to remain there forever, for though only sixteen miles away no one realizes how much sixteen miles is in this country.4
A day later Ellsworth made his final entry in his diary. “The first penguins this year in the Bay of Whales. One flopped on the skylight over my bunk as I lay writing. One month today since we arrived here.”5
After reaching the Ross Sea on January 8, the Discovery II spent a week trapped in the pack ice, unable to find clear water through which it could sail to the Bay of Whales. The Gipsy Moth plane was lowered over the side of the ship and, in a small lead of open water, pilot Eric Douglas managed to get it airborne to look for a route by which the ship could escape. He found none. Commander Hill received a radio message from Wilkins explaining that the Wyatt Earp had reached the Ross Sea and was also attempting to negotiate the pack. Ommanney, swept up in the spirit of the competition, recalled:
[Wyatt Earp] gained on us that day and we began to think that all our labor and the Captain’s anxiety had been in vain. Very early the next morning the floes thinned out and, in a little over seventy-three degrees south, we left them and came into another world . . . we had won.6
The Discovery II was through the pack ice on January 15, while the Wyatt Earp was still struggling to get free. The British ship, named to honor Scott’s original Discovery, cruised the edge of the shelf until, like Scott, it found the Bay of Whales.
At 8:20 P.M., the ship’s officer broadcast an excited message. He could distinguish two orange flags fluttering from poles at the top of the ice. Someone was at Little America. Or at least had been recently. The crew fired signal flares and waited for a response. None came. Assuming the transcontinental aviators were either dead or at Little America, the Gipsy Moth was lowered onto the water and Eric Douglas, along with Flying Officer Alister Murdoch, took off. They circled once, then followed the bay south. Eager to participate in the climax of the Discovery II’s Antarctic adventure, a ground party assembled their new sledging equipment, scrambled onto the ice, and hurried after them.
Shortly after getting airborne, Douglas and Murdoch recognized radio masts, and what appeared to be the roof of a hut. Douglas circled the biplane again and flew lower to notice orange-colored strips near the poles. Then a man crawled out of the roof, stood straight and waved his arms frantically at the plane. According to Douglas:
This caused great excitement between us as we realized it must be either Ellsworth or Kenyon. I continued to circle and after a few minutes we threw overboard a small bag attached to a letter from the Captain of the Discovery [II] congratulating Ellsworth and Kenyon on their achievement and asking them that, if they were well enough, to start out on the seven-mile hike to the Barrier face where they would be met by a land party from the Discovery [II]. We observed the figure pick up the parachute and wave.7
On the ice, it was Hollick-Kenyon who retrieved the parachute and package, read the note, then he scrambled back down and relayed the good news to Ellsworth, whose feet, by this time, had become so painful that he had difficulty walking. Hollick-Kenyon read the note to Ellsworth, who was still without his reading glasses. It was signed by Commander Hill and directed the men to start for the edge of the shelf to meet the ground party coming their way. Next the two men opened the accompanying package to discover chocolate, raisins, and sweetened concentrated orange syrup. Ellsworth’s foot was so painful he suggested that Hollick-Kenyon go and meet the ground party, then bring them back to collect him. The pilot didn’t need any further urging to escape the confines of the radio shack and, after grabbing his few personal possessions, he left Ellsworth with a promise he would be back in no more than three hours. Then Hollick-Kenyon climbed fifteen feet into an overcast night sky and never looked back.
Less than halfway to the coast, Hollick-Kenyon greeted the ground party and, rather than despatch them to collect Ellsworth, persuaded them the American was fine where he was and they should return to the ship.
Hollick-Kenyon arrived at the Discovery II a little after midnight. The onboard crew eagerly pressed against the railings to witness the rescue of the Antarctic adventurer. Would the heroic explorer be carried aboard, barely conscious after his ordeal? Would his emaciated face be covered with frost and his hoarse voice barely audible? Ommanney watched the ground party return:
. . . as he climbed aboard up the rope ladder we lined the rail and cheered him. He was shaved, washed and spruce and exuded an air of well-being which, we had to confess, was something of a disappointment to us. We had conjured up in our imaginations thin features, covered by a matted growth of beard and wasted by weeks of starvation diet in a twilight cell buried beneath the snow. But his cheeks shone from a recent shave and his stalwart frame in a check shirt showed no signs of anything but abundant health and vitality. He sat down, slowly filled and lighted a pipe and said:
“Well, well! The Discovery eh? This is an affair. But, I say, it’s awfully decent of you fellows to drop in on us like this. Thanks, I’ll have a whisky and soda.”8
Commander Hill explained that he was, “prepared to go out then and bring Mr. Ellsworth in, but Mr. Kenyon assured me that there was really no need for such haste.” Ellsworth was fine and had plenty of food, Hollick-Kenyon, told them. He would be happy to wait another day in the radio shack. Hollick-Kenyon followed his drink with a hot bath, fresh clothes, and another drink. Then the reticent Englishman, who had rarely spoken to Ellsworth during their eight weeks together alone in Antarctica, opened a floodgate of conversation and kept the crew up most of the night regaling them with stories of his adventures.
In the morning a second relief party, which included Ommanney, set off to collect Ellsworth and, more importantly, see Little America for themselves. The six-man party reached the radio shack and descended, where Ommanney saw the depressed Ellsworth, “lying on a wooden bunk amid a silence that could be felt.”9
Having trudged seven grueling miles, the relief team told Ellsworth they wanted to rest in the bunks for a while and asked him if he had any food for them. “Hollick-Kenyon said you had,” they insisted. Ellsworth recalled:
I invited them to help themselves. They cleaned up everything, especially praising tea made with snow water, the first any of them had ever tasted. They said it was the best tea they had ever drunk, though I could tell no difference between snow-water tea and any other.
After that they stripped the shack of everything they could find for souvenirs—calendars, strainers, anything.10
After packing their booty on their sled, the ground party added Ellsworth and headed back to the ship. They only stopped once on the way to rest and eat more chocolate. Listening to Ellsworth talk during the sled trip, Ommanney observed he was, “rather a naïf and childlike old boy who hadn’t much idea why he was flying across the Antarctic or what he hoped to achieve by the feat.”11
Ellsworth followed Hollick-Kenyon’s sterling example of a hot bath, a stiff drink, and fresh clothes. Then a pair of glasses was borrowed that suited him well enough for reading and the ship’s doctor attended to his feet.
Three days after Ellsworth was lifted on board the Discovery II, the Wyatt Earp appeared as a small black dot on the otherwise white horizon, threading its way precariously through the ice pack. It took another week to safely clear the floes and it tied up against the shelf on January 25.
A motor launch from the Discovery II transported the refreshed Ellsworth and Hollick-Kenyon to their expedition ship, where they related the details of their flight across the continent. Then, having instructed Wilkins to retrieve Wyatt Earp’s cartridge belt, Ellsworth and Hollick-Kenyon returned to the well-appointed Discovery II.
Wilkins and Lymburner led a small party across the ice to fetch the Polar Star. The journey was made in six and a half hours. Lymburner refueled the plane, spent two hours warming the engine, then got it started. Next the sled, which had been hauled across the ice, was roped behind the plane and, with Lymburner at the controls, the Polar Star was taxied to the edge of the shelf, while the remainder of the team rode on the sled. After four years of planning and two failed attempts, the transcontinental journey of the Polar Star and Wyatt Earp’s cartridge belt was complete.
When the plane reached the edge of the ice shelf, Wilkins saw the launch from the Discovery II approaching again, with Ellsworth and Hollick-Kenyon waving from the bow. The Wyatt Earp crew might have been forgiven for thinking that Ellsworth was coming to express his gratitude for the years of work and devotion that helped him successfully cross Antarctica. They would have been mistaken. Without coming on board his ship, Ellsworth called out for his reading glasses, souvenirs, and cartridge belt, then announced he and Hollick-Kenyon would sail to Australia on the more comfortable Discovery II. Olsen lamented, “They did not seem to mind our being left behind to face once more the most dangerous sea journey in the world!”12
The leader of the expedition bade his crew goodbye and returned to the Discovery II, which cast off and was negotiating its escape from the pack while the wings were being unbolted from the Polar Star. It eventually took the Wyatt Earp six weeks to sail back past the Devil’s Graveyard to Deception Island, before it commenced a ten-week journey to New York via Cape Horn and the east coast of South America.