Discovery

In 1933, the icebreaker Bear of Oakland , built shortly after the Civil War, and the supply ship Jacob Ruppert leave from Boston for Antarctica on Admiral Richard Byrd's fourth polar expedition, "Operation Iceberg." The ships are loaded with more than 14,000 different items, enough to supply the expedition for two years. When the ships cross the Equator, a ceremony is held for all the people on board who are crossing for the first time. The Jacob Ruppert heads southeast to a little known area of Antarctica, while the Bear of Oakland proceeds directly to Little America, a base built on an ice barrier. When the Jacob Ruppert passes through an area packed with icebergs, Dr. Poulter, senior scientist and Byrd's second-in-command, counts over 8,000 icebergs in twenty-four hours. He names the area the "Devil's Graveyard." During a storm, water gets into the ship's fuel oil and steam pressure in the boilers drops. After the storm abates, the Jacob Ruppert heads south until it is stopped by ice. Then a plane is sent up to continue exploring the area. Later, the Jacob Ruppert heads east for twenty-two days, traveling through dangerous and unknown ice fields. Meanwhile, the Bear of Oakland covers more than 100,000 square miles before ice fields close around it. After the ship breaks free, it continues until it reaches the vicinity of Little America, which was built on the Ross Ice Shelf, an enormous sheet of ice about 500 miles long and 400 miles wide. During the trip, the crew of the Bear of Oakland discovers a new passage through the ice of the Ross Sea. Penguins and seals meet the ship. The expedition then disembarks and searches for the buildings of the Little America base, which has moved a half-mile on the constantly changing polar ice since it was last visited four years earlier. Once the crew finds the base, they begin digging it out from the snow. The crew spots killer whales offshore. On the ice, the men face dangerous conditions, including hidden crevasses in the ice. Occasionally, the ice breaks, stranding men and supplies. The crew uses tractors to move supplies the seven miles over the ice to Little America. When a storm hits before all the supplies can be cached, the men must continue unloading so that the supplies will not be buried in the snow. One plane crashes, but no one is hurt. Before the sea ice freezes, the Jacob Ruppert leaves Antarctica. Later, the Bear of Oakland also leaves the base. At Little America, the men use rooms that are cut from snow and store their planes in snow hangars. The dogs also stay in snow tunnels. An autogiro, which is being used for meteorological studies, crashes when its tail becomes covered with snow, and the pilot suffers a broken arm. When they are not working, the men eat meals that consist mainly of pemmican, a combination of dried meat, cereal, fat, dried vegetables and cod liver oil. They also snack on chocolate, tea, Eskimo biscuits and dried milk. In summer, the members of the expedition are divided into three parties: one party heads south with a dog team; the second heads east, also using a dog team; and the third party heads southeast using tractors. The southern party reaches a point about 350 miles south of Little America. On the journey, two sleds fall into crevasses, but the dogs manage to hold on until they can be rescued. The group reaches the mountains that border the great central plateau of Antarctica, and at 10,000 feet, discover a large vein of coal, which proves that the area was once tropical or semi-tropical. The tractor party measures the thickness of the snow, among other things, and loses one tractor during their mission, The eastern party then finds the remains of a plane that crashed on Byrd's first expedition. Along with evidence of copper and silver, the party also discovers frozen lakes containing microorganisms that come alive when the ice is melted. Flights over Antarctica prove that it is one continent, not two separate islands as had been supposed. One hundred twenty-three miles south of Little America, Byrd, who has been left alone for the five-month winter, makes meteorological measurements. At Little America the men record the data they collected during the summer. When the scientists lose radio contact with Byrd, a tractor party investigates and discovers that Byrd has become ill from carbon monoxide fumes. Byrd recovers and after the sun returns to Antarctica, the expedition is completed, and the men welcome the ships that will carry them home.