Scientific Cruise
p. 29 · Read in the full issue
"Director" Expedition in the Pacific
ON a scientific cruise through the South Seas, the American yacht “Director ll’’ arrived in New Caledonia re cently from Fiji and during September members of the party were in the interior collecting flora and ornithological speci mens for despatch to the New York Museum of Natural History, She arrived in Brisbane on October 6.
The “Director” left U.S.A. on February 1, 1940, and, having lost two sails in a Cuban storm, stayed six weeks at Panama undergoing repairs (says the “Bulletin du Commerce”, of Noumea). The party then called at Malpelo Island, where four members landed to rectify navigation charts —the first persons on the island since 1860.
At Galapagos Group, the next port of call, men of the expedition found an egg of the rare “Dusky Gull”, the first ever having been recorded. From Tower Island (Isla Genovesa), they went to Charles Island (Isla Santa Maria), where a Ger man named Whitmer has lived alone for eight years. Three weeks’ sailing took them to the Marquesas Group, and then on to Tahiti, where they remained for a month, recording native music.
Pago Pago (Am. Samoa) next saw the expedition and, after a month’s stay there, they went on to Fiji. On Vanua Levu, Mr. Bruce Fahnestock, leader of the party obtained a large number of photographs of rocks covered with curious inscriptions, which he took back to U.S.A. for identification, when he left the “Dir ector” at Suva a short time later. The hieroglyphics were described as “almost identical with designs engraved on stones found in India”.
Heading for New Caledonia, the “Dir ector” put in at Conway Reef, where they found three old wrecks, and a num ber of cannon and cannon balls, dating from 1850. Conway had not been visited since 1903.
Formerly used in the liquor trade dur ing prohibition days, the “Director” was purchased by the Fahnestock family in 1938. She is 137 ft. long, with 25 ft. beam, and has a displacement of 110 tons.
The expedition originally comprised: Bruce Fahnestock, leader (who left the yacht at Fiji and returned to America); Sheridan Fahnestock, captain of the “Dir ector”; their mother, Mrs. Fahnestock; Ned Dair, first officer and artist, who was with the Fahnestocks on their mission in the Pacific in 1935-8: Dr. Jack Morris, who disembarked at Samoa; Coleman Glover, radio operator; George Folster, second officer and assistant to the head of the expedition; Jack Scott, anthro pologist; George Peterson, of the New York Museum (who journeyed as far as Samoa); Laddie Reday, electrician; Roy Glover, chief engineer; together with nine passengers including three women) and members of the crew. It is expected that the “Director” will return to U.S.A. in about a year’s time.