ITEM DESCRIPTION:

   This unique personal missive to an old friend thanking him for his detailed letter about the second Byrd Antarctic Expedition is from Vice Admiral Russell Willson to John McNamara to Boatswain of the Jacob Ruppert on Admiral Byrd’s Second Antarctic expedition and namesake of McNamara Island in Antarctica.

Vice Admiral Russel Willson (December 27, 1883 – June 6, 1948) had a long and distinguished career with the United State Navy until his retirement in 1943. In 1917, during the First World War he invented the Navy Cipher (code) Box. In 1941 he became the Superintendent of the United States Naval Academy of Annapolis. While the letter updates McNamara on family matters he also mentions the powder-keg situation in Central Europe with the assignation of Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss and the terminal illness of Paul von Hindenburg.

The letter reads as follows:

ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND

DEPARTMENT OF SEAMANSHIP AND NAVIGATION

2 August, 1934.

My dear McNamara:

I have received no letter in many years which gave me a more pleasant surprise than yours written from Little America. I have always remembered our service together in the Mason and the many trials through which we went.

I took your letter very nearly six months to reach me. How much of this was due to Antarctic postal service and how much to the Navy Department, I do not know but it was a great pleasure to read your interesting and intimate description of life with the Byrd Expedition. When you eventually return I hope we are in the same part of the world and you can tell me some more such interesting yarns.I passed your letter around to several officers and all enjoyed it thoroughly. You say that you expect to return about May, 1935. About that time or shortly thereafter, I shall be leaving the Naval Academy and probably going out to the West Coast to join the Fleet. I have hopes of commanding a battleship, which will be perhaps a step up from the Mason but [^ one] which I hope will have not quite as many thrills as did that ship. You will be glad to know that Mrs. Willson and the children are all very well and were delighted to hear from you. They still remember the day we spent at the Washington Yard after that all night trip up the Potomac. My oldest daughter, Eunice, whom I think you amused on that occasion was graduated last June from college, the second daughter is now seventeen and the boy, whom you probably have not seen, is fifteen and studying to enter the Naval Academy. If you ever get around where they are you might as well stay put for awhile because they will want to hear all about the expedition. I must repeat that your letter was really a great pleasure indeed and I deeply appreciate your thinking of me after these many years. I wish I had as many interesting things about which to write you but in this part of the world everything seems to be topsy-turvy with the “New Deal”, strikes, and much uncertainty on every hand. Somehow, I feel that you chose a good time to retire into the Arctic wastes until the inhabited part of the world has a chance to get back on its feet. Just at this moment everything in Central ... (only front page available at this time)

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