ATLANTIC ICEBERGS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLIX, 17 August 1929, Page 11

ATLANTIC ICEBERGS.

. - 'i PERIL EVERY SPRING. gTE'AMERiS arriving in Europe and 'Canada at the end of June reported large masses of ice on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. The floes were moving in various directions and constituted a menace t<> shipping. The captain of the Furness liner Nova Scotia, which has arrived at Halifax. Nova Sc-otia, from .Liverpool, declared that he has never seen so many icebergs on the Grand Banks in liis long experience. He counted over a hundred in one day, many of them of large size. A German steamer, which arrived at Hamburg, reported that 33 icebergs wore met with during the voyage from Canada. The bergs covered an area of 20 square miles, and the biggest was

described as being nearly as large as the island of Heligoland, and rising 200 ft. from the surface of the water. The German steamer Entden. from Montreal, reached Hamburg with damage to her stem through striking an iceberg in the North Atlantic.

The break-up of Arctic ice in the late spring and early summer months and its drift southwards across the North Atlantic must always form a menace to shipping, but since the lesson of the Titanic in 1912, when 1517 lives were lost through the liner’s collision with a berg, such stringent measures have been taken that actual danger has been reduced to a minimum. Following the loss of the Titanic, the representatives of 14 maritime nations met ia London, and out of their discussions grew the North Atlantic ice patrol, the cost of which is proportioned among the 14 countries. Every year on April 1, two United 1 States vessels go northward and work i

in ld-day relays to warn shipping of the position of bergs and floe ice from the Arctic. In the 16 years which have intervened since the inception of the patrol not a single life has been lost through collision with icebergs.

Last year during their patrol the cutters sent out 450.460 messages of warning to 644 ships, which might have gone into danger from the ice. The futter.s themselves are frequently in danger, although the perfection oif devices for indicating the approach of bergs has increased their immunity from the menace. The patrol uses shell fire and explosives to shatter some of the bigger icebergs, large enough to continue of dangerous size until they reach further south than usual. Vessels crossing to New York take a more southerly course in summer so as to meet the warm and ice-free current of the Gulf Stream.