DE-ICING SYSTEM ON TRAWLERS

Press, Volume XCII, Issue 27733, 10 August 1955, Page 13

DE-ICING SYSTEM ON TRAWLERS

Possible Use In Arctic

(Rec 8 p.m.) HULL. August 8. British trawlers operating in the {Arctic might soon be electrically heated to prevent them from icing up, an official inquiry was told today. A trawler company’s chief engineer (Arthur Walker) told the Court that a system of heating shrouds and fittings with electrical apparatus is now being investigated. De-icing paste had beep tried, but it had not proved very successful. He was giving evidence at the investigation into the loss of two deep-sea Hull trawlers, the Roderigo (810 tons) and the Lorella (599 tons), which were lost with all 40 men on board last January in a violent blizzard off Iceland. The evidence today suggested that the ships had been put out of action and sunk by waves of frozen spray. The dreaded “black frost” of the Arctic—a freezing mist which forms ice quicker than it can be hacked away, was not likely to have been the cause, as a gale was blowing. Walker told the Court that the practicability of getting rid of such quickforming ice from spray or fog had been discussed at great length, and no satisfactory answer had yet been found.