World's End

Only a handful of men have ever gone poking into Antarctica. It is the coldest, loneliest, least known of all the continents; even its coastline has remained an uncompleted puzzle to mapmakers. Last week, a stubby little ship steamed into New York Harbor with some of the missing pieces.

The Port of Beaumont had sailed from the U.S. 15 months ago, with 19 men and two women, under the command of ex-Navy Commander Finn Ronne (rhymes with bonnie). The expedition had had probably the most ambitious scientific agenda of any that ever ventured into Antarctica: data for the U.S. Government, the American Antarctic Association, the American Geographical Society, colleges and foundations.

Puzzle Solved. On two seismographs at their Stonington Island camp, expedition members recorded a full year of earth rumblings. They also charted temperatures, magnetic variations, the intensity of cosmic rays, the rise & fall of tides (average change: 4 ft.), atmospheric refraction that makes distant icebergs seem to dangle in the air. They found traces of coal, copper and uranium (but none worth mining at present), collected evidence that one continent has been slowly rising as its ice cap melts.

Commander Ronne flew 39,000 miles of mapping flights through air so pure that a pilot could see 200 miles ahead. His special trimetrogon cameras (three cameras working simultaneously) could snap horizon-to-horizon photographs every 20 seconds for the mapmakers. The photos would make it possible to chart the last unknown coastline in the world. With the explorer's prerogative, he named places for friends and colleagues: Edith Ronne Land for his wife, Isaiah Bowman Coast (for the geographer-president of Johns Hopkins), Lowell Thomas Mountains, Larry Gould Bay (for the explorer-president of Carleton College).

Ronne wiped some geography off the map, too. He reported that the Weddell Islands, which Sir Hubert Wilkins and Ronne thought they had seen from the air, did not exist. And he solved what Rear Admiral Byrd once called "the world's greatest unsolved geographical puzzle": whether a strait between the Ross and Weddell Seas actually divides Antarctica in two. Ronne proved that there is no strait.

Tempers Shortened. Expedition members learned what others have learned about enforced habitations: tempers grew short, and whole meals went by with no one saying a word. But there was no sickness--only broken arms and collarbones and frozen toes. Physicist Peterson hurtled down a 110-ft. crevasse. There he stayed for twelve hours, his arms & legs pinioned. But when his companions hauled him out, he had only scratches and bruises, happily babbled: "Boy, am I glad to see youl"

The Antarctic is no place for amateurs; and softspoken, leathery Finn Ronne is no amateur. His father was with Roald Amundsen when he discovered the South Pole; and Ronne, brought up in the mountains of Norway, first went to the Antarctic with Rear Admiral Byrd in 1933. When he goes back in a year or two ("There is a lure . . ."), Mrs. Ronne will not be with him. Says she: "Why, I didn't wear a dress the whole time I was there. The next time, I stay home."

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