60

Presentation lighter given to the captain of a ship on Admiral Byrd's first Antarctica expedition.

Great Ice Barrier, Antarctica, 25 December 1928
Brass and alloy "Beacon Lighter," 2 x 1¼ x ½ inches, with patent 1,022,140 dating to 1912; functioning cap lever, light tarnishing and wear; engraved on one side "Presented by Mrs. R.E. Byrd, Christmas Day 1928, Great Ice Barrier, Antarctica" and on the other "Byrd Antarctic Expedition, Base at Great Ice Barrier 1928-1930, Captain G.L. Brown, S.S. Eleanor Bolling," with a view of a polar base camp.

A memento of Admiral Richard Byrd's first expedition to Antarctica, during which he led the first flight to pass over the South Pole. 

The explorer's wife Marie Ames Byrd did not accompany the expedition; she bid them farewell from the dock in Los Angeles in October 1928. The advance party of the expedition, including the S.S. Eleanor Boling supply ship commanded by Captain Gustav Leon Brown (1892-1950), sailed from Dunedin, New Zealand on 2 December, and by Christmas was frozen "within sight of the Ross sea ice barrier" according to an Associated Press report. The lighter was apparently engraved on shipboard and presented in Mrs. Byrd's honor.

We have traced two other examples of this model lighter being engraved for presentation by Mrs. Byrd on Christmas 1928, both of them dated Dunedin, New Zealand in a less decorative style, without illustration. 

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