PERIL AT SEA

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 69, Issue 159, 18 April 1949, Page 2

PERIL AT SEA

Fishing’ Off Iceland WOMEN’S ANXIOUS DAYS

(Bv Carl Kelvig.—British United Press. REYKJAVIK (Iceland). For the next four months the Icelandic fishing grounds will be at their best and few places in this hungry world can equal the quality and numbers of cod, haddock, and halibut they produce. For those same months the Arctic weather will .reach its furious worst, with at least four gales of 70 m.p.h. or over to be fought by the daring trawler crews.

The recent' loss of the Grimsby trawler Sargon started the annual toll taken by these perilous waters. Now in ports, ‘like Grimsby, Hull, FleetAvood, and Aberdeen the womenfolk have once again almost become used to their season of waiting anxiously for news of ships that frequently are overdue for days because of sudden storms Avhich may spring up out of a week-long period of clear skies and calm seas.

British trawlers are smaller and much older than most of the Icelandic A’essels and must seek shelter Jong before the native ships Tmd it necessary. Only the, most powerful British trawlers can fish the 900-feet-deep Halamid ground,, the best of all, 50 miles off north-west Iceland, where lUhSt of the Icelandic trawlers as well as a few British, some German arid Faroese make enormous catches. The favourite area for ships from Britain is one ground off the east coast of Iceland, and there are two banks off the south-west tip Avhich are at their best from February to May. Under good conditions a traAvler with a ci'eAv of about 26 can catch up to 300 tons of fish in- 10 or 12 days. Examples of this size catch being secured inside a week are rare. A temperature constantly around freezing point in winter, dangerous shoals, and seas which hammer so fiercely that it is unusual for a trawler to escape even one trip without some ’sort _of damage to her superstructure haAung taken a heavy toll of life. In the first quarter pf this century 1960 men died around the coast of Iceland Avlien 337 A'essels of different nationalities were lost.

Fine Live-saving Record

Since the Icelandic Life Saving Association was formed in 1928, 115 ships have gone down or aground, but out of the 2031 men in tliemfonly 183 were drowned and 10 died from exposure - Between 1945 and 1948 seven British and 20 Icelandic, fishing vessels Avere among the 37 ships wrecked around Iceland, and of the 72 lives lost 44 were British. . Apart from three .modern hospitals in Reykjavik itself, a sailors’ home run by a charitable organisation, and a Salvation Army sailors’ home, there is in Oenunder Firth, 50 miles from where the Sargon ran aground, a hospital specially built for fishermen whd* may get sick or injured olf the dangerous north-west coast. The Icelandic Life Saving Association has 18 shelters for shipwrecked sailors and five more are being built. Most of these are along the desolate south coast where there is no harbour. Split into 57 units, the Association has motor-boats, vessels specially built for rowing through surf, and a motor schooner for rescue work. In eight years the schooner has helped 224 ships. These northern Avaters may yield riches from the icy deep, but it is a stern and constant struggle, and the men in the tiny boats bring back the fish in the face of every obstacle that jealous Nature can devise.