Commander Jacob "Jack Bursey" (1903–1980) was a polar explorer, U.S. Coast Guard officer, and a lecturer.
Biography
Early years
Bursey was born in 1903 in a small village called St. Lunaire in Newfoundland. He grew up fishing on the Grand Banks from his father's schooner, driving dog teams across the frozen land and bay, and skinning seals for food and clothing. He had two brothers and three sisters. His family worked six days a week, gardening in the rocky soil and fishing in the summer, mending nets, dog sledding, and catching seals in the winter. Bursey's family was a little better off than his cousins, aunts, and uncles because of their schooner and family-owned store where the other residents traded. They also bought and sold all the fish in the village.
With assistance from a doctor in St. Anthony, a neighboring community, Bursey left home at 21 and enrolled at a Boston institute in the United States.
First Byrd expedition
In 1927, Bursey read in a newspaper that Commander Richard E. Byrd was planning an expedition to the Antarctic and needed dog drivers and skiers. Bursey was one of 50,000 American males to apply.
While Bursey was not initially selected, he brought a letter of recommendation from his employer to the expedition office and appealed to one of Byrd's men. The departure was scheduled in less than two weeks.
In two days, Bursey was granted an interview with Byrd. "I was disappointed when I first saw Commander Byrd," he recalled in an interview in 1979 in the Grand Rapids Press. "I had pictured him as a 7-foot giant with fire in his eyes. Instead, he was a slight man. Looking at me from across the desk, he seemed humble and friendly. It was probably the shortest interview on record."
Byrd then told him that all his men were hired but that he would see what he could do.
Luck and experience were with Bursey. He was signed on as a seaman on the barque the SS City of New York, one of two ships Byrd was taking on the expedition to the Bay of Whales, Antarctica. The City of New York, a sailing vessel, was probably one of the last of her kind in the world. Built of wood in Norway in 1882 for the Greenland sealing trade, with sides 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 plane parts, the Floyd Bennett which, when assembled, was to carry Byrd over the pole.
Bursey was on the barque when it left New York on 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 on 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 the 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 landed on top of the barrier, but the wings were floating on large pieces of ice 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 ... we saw the sun for the first time since April 19."
