U.S.S. GLACIER DAMAGED

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28481, 10 January 1958, Page 12

U.S.S. GLACIER DAMAGED

Keels Tom Off Icebreaker

(New Zeaiuna ' Press Association) • WELLINGTON, January 9.

The 8600-ton United States Navy icebreaker Glacier arrived in Wellington from the Antarctic yesterday without her stabilising keels and with damaged propellers.

The keels, 20ft long and sft deep, were shorn off by pack ice ip the Ross Sea. Without the keels the ship roiled badly on the journey to Wellington. In heavy seas south of New Zealand at least one 45deg roll was measured. "That’s a pretty steep roll,” an officer said today. "It’s possible to stand upright, but you have to hang on to something, and everything is lashed down hard.” The keels, often called bilge keels, are metal and welded. Damaged in previous Antarctic trips, they had been replaced with new ones.

Damage to the icebreaker’s propellers has not yet been inspected but it is thought that one blade is shorn off, and another bent. The propellers are 14ft in diameter.

The absence of the keels was discovered this afternoon by a Wellington Harbour Board diver, Mr R. Jardine, who spent*about ah hour and a half working under the ship. The icebreaker , will go on the dry dock tomorrow morning for repairs which are scheduled to take about a week.

The Glacier • spent a month breaking ice in the Ross Sea ice nack off Little America and McMurdo Sound.*

She broke about 4,500,000 tons of ice Bft to 10ft thick at Little America to open the way for the supply ship, the Greenville Victory. At McMurdo Sound the Glacier smashed a channel 12 miles long and moved 27,000,000 tons of ice to open up a re-supply channel.

Her crew and members of the Helicopter Squadron II also moved 90 tons of cargo into the McMurdo area. Much of this was pulled three miles across ice in two-man sledges.

The Glacier may visit Lyttelton before returning to the Antarctic.