THE AMERICAN POLAR SOCIETY —
PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

PART THREE

Competition Concerns
As The Little America Times expanded in content and readership from the Metropolitan Sea Pilot, which had focused on Paul Siple during the first expedition, Howard confronted the commercial concerns of polar exploration in the private age.

Correspondence in the records of the APS show the fear felt by some in the leadership of the Byrd expedition that reporting by The Little America Times would violate the expedition's contracts with other news media. Howard resolved this brief but intense conflict with the support of Admiral Byrd himself. (See August Horowitz to Mrs. Marie Ames Byrd, October 26, 1933, RG 56.16, box 1, folder 6, The Ohio State University Archives.)

Howard's experience with The Little America Times set the stage for the creation of the American Polar Society. The radio broadcasts from Little America II to the living rooms of Americans brought the voice of an American hero to the ears of many. Byrd's solitary and near-death experience and rescue at Advance Base, a weather station approximately 120 miles away from Little America II, gave the second expedition the drama that the first had with the South Pole flight.

American explorer Lincoln Ellsworth, meanwhile, accomplished the feat of flying across the continent in 1935. Clearly, Antarctica had become an arena for American accomplishments in exploration and in science—and Byrd was already planning his third expedition.