Qns. teen stows away with Adm. Byrd
WHEN ADM. Richard Byrd’s ships set sail from New York to Antarctica in 1928, one carried some unexpected cargo: William Gawronski.
The life of the then-17-year-old is recounted in “The Stowaway: A Young Man’s Extraordinary Adventure to Antarctica” by Laurie Gwen Shapiro.
Like the rest of the country, the firstgeneration Polish kid was caught up in Byrd-fever. Americans cheered the determined explorer’s quest to be the first man to reach both poles.
Newspapers were filled with breathless accounts of Byrd’s preparation for the expedition. Everyone clamored for any sort of connection to the journey. Wellconnected college graduates angled for jobs as Byrd’s bottlewashers.
Gawronski’s parents had different plans for him. They expected their Billy to go to Cooper Union, then join his father in the upholstery business.
But the Queens teenager longed to travel the world with Byrd.
Too young to apply for this dangerous mission without parental permission, he begged his father. The old man wouldn’t budge. Gawronski decided that he was going anyway — come hell or high water. He chose high water. Pacing the piers of Hoboken, N.J., in his high school graduation suit, Gawronski dived into the Hudson River. A lifelong swimmer, he was strong enough to reach the Manhattan side.
He shimmied up a rope on the side of the docked ship City of New York and scampered to his preplanned hiding place. As flimsy as it seems, he had a plan.
Gawronski was among the hordes checking out the City of New York, one of the four ships Byrd was taking on the expedition. He discovered what appeared to be the perfect hiding spot — a small storage space.
But when Gawronski finally slogged aboard the ship and into his secret spot, he found two people already squeezed inside the small open space. They started arguing.
The end was near, even before the expedition started.
Gawronski got as far as the Statue of Liberty when he was discovered. Byrd asked his name and Gawronski refused to answer.
“Byrd was a gentle interrogator,” Shapiro writes. “He said he understood the tearful kid was an adventurer like him and told him not to be scared.”
At Sandy Hook, N.J., the miserable 17-year-old was handed over to customs agents and sent packing.
His furious father retrieved him, determined this would be the end of his son’s antics. But the daring tale of the teen’s swim, his climb up the side of the AP ship and his attempt away surfaced.
The teenager became famous. And then, two weeks later, Gawronski tried again.
He leaped from his secondfloor bedroom in Bayside — again without even a change of clothes — and made his way to one of the expedition’s supply ships. It was still docked, so he put that great swim stroke to use again.
And yes, he was caught again. Although the captain was amused by his moxie, he gave Gawronski the boot again.
The third time was the charm. Gawronski again left home and hitched rides down to Virginia to to stow meet the crew, which was already having a rough go at sea.
“The crew members, drained from the tempest, faces splattered with grease, cheered out loud,” Shapiro writes. “The Bayside kid! Holy cow!”
The cook told Gawronski he could work as a mess boy — if Byrd approved. Byrd, who keenly understood the elements of a good story, had by now taken a liking to the brash teen.
When word reached New York, the Daily News called Gawronski’s final acceptance into the expedition “the Triumph of the Century.”
Explorers captivated the country then. A Norwegian, Roald Amundsen, had reached the South Pole in 1911 — but Byrd was determined to be the first American to fly over and chart the desolate continent.
Gawronski had always longed for adventure. He grew up in railroad flats in the then-Polish neighborhood around St. Stanislaus Parish in the East Village, and was fluent in Polish.
The small family later moved to Bayside, but Gawronski’s sights were always set way beyond New York.
To make the move to Queens more palatable, his dad had let the boy keep bees. An animal lover at 14, the boy had adopted a stray dog, Tootsie. The pooch won a contest and received a writeup up in The News, Gawronski’s first fleeting brush with fame.
Gawronski helped with milk deliveries and taught Tootsie to balance on top of the milkman’s horse. That ease with animals would come in handy later when he was chasing the penguins Byrd had planned to bring back to American zoos. Sadly, none survived the voyage home.
The expedition was extremely complicated, and costly. Byrd had to raise money in advance, its own rugged adventure in the