Richard E. Byrd's Antarctic Adventure, with stowaway Billy Gawronski

July 16, 2019 1:20 PM

The Roaring Twenties in the United States was a time of numerous publicity stunts. One such example was Richard E. Byrd’s 1928-1930 Antarctica Expedition, which was sponsored by mass media (JStor Daily article) and the companies who provided typewriters to candy, paper to Byrd’s desk. His first exploration was recorded and presented in With Byrd at the South Pole and documented by Byrd in Little America : aerial exploration in the Antarctic, the flight to the South pole (documentary and book on Archive.org). But he was not the only self-promoter on that journey: meet the teen who snuck aboard a polar expedition (Nat Geo), a scrappy Polish American kid from New York’s Lower East Side named Billy Gawronski (New Yorker).
posted by filthy light thief (5 comments total)

So many fun links! I think the thrill of these sorts of stories is that they allow you to have splendidly vicarious adventures of the sort you would NEVER consider yourself. I feel vaguely guilty bothering people with my purchased ticket for a ride. Stowing away takes a different sort of mettle.
posted by meinvt at 6:46 PM on July 16, 2019

See this AskMe, in which RevRob330 is unafraid to ask the hard hitting questions about Admiral Byrd and Necco Wafers.
posted by zamboni at 8:00 PM on July 16, 2019 [3 favorites]

The story of the teenage stowaway is amazing. A fantastic read. Thanks!
posted by hampanda at 10:12 PM on July 16, 2019

See this AskMe, in which RevRob330 is unafraid to ask the hard hitting questions about Admiral Byrd and Necco Wafers.

Which I commented in, but I had forgotten in the intervening 7 years. Thanks for bringing that full circle!
posted by filthy light thief at 8:57 AM on July 17, 2019

I hope his widow has arranged for all his papers and memorabilia to go somewhere after her own death -- I'd hate to think of all that history getting tossed into a dumpster. At very least I'd hope the papers would be deposited somewhere.
posted by tavella at 10:08 AM on July 17, 2019