AFLOAT ON ICEBERG.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18897, 20 December 1924, Page 22 (Supplement)

AFLOAT ON ICEBERG.

TRIP OF 600 MILES.

DANES' STRANGE VOYAGE.

LOSS OF A DANISH SHIP.

JAMMED IN ICE-PACK.

Twenty-one white-clad Danes with high seal-hide boots came tramping over the cobbles of Reykjavik, in Iceland, in the first week of September. They were a queer sight, and all the Icelanders stood by the wharf-side to stare at them, for these men had sailed the Arctic seas not on a ship but on an iceberg, and had been plucked from death by a miracle. They had lost their ship, their iceberg had split beneath their feet, a storm had carried them to imminent destruction, and then the wind, veering round, had carried them within sight of safety. Peril from drowning, peril from freezing, peril from starving to death, they had survived them all, and here they were back in Iceland, safe and well. No wonder the Iceland sailors and fishermen, who know what peril means, stared at them. Given up for Lost. They were the crew of the Danish chip Teddy, which'was sent last year with furtrappers and explorers to see whether Greenland could be lived in. They got there, did their job. started back in August, and were caught in the ice-pack eleven days out at sea, and stayed there till at home they were given up for lost. Being caught in an ice-pack is all in the clay's work for an Arctic expedition. The ships ajre built for it. but the crew of the Teddy had an experience such a* no men ever had before. Their ship was jammed there for a month. Luck might have got it out, but it did not. The Teddy cracked under the strain. She leaked so that the pumps could not keep the water down. The first thing to do was to put the 1 best man they had in command. So the I crew elected the young third officer, Louis Jensen, captain. Jensen was only 23, but he was the square peg in the leaky hole. j " We'll get to Angmakslik for Christmas," said he. And he did. Angmakslik is a settlement in Greenland. The first thing Jensen did was to take his men off the ship on to the biggest iceI berg that had crushed them. It was ,a ! tidy-looking berg, 300 ft. across, a good deal bigger than the little Teddy, which ; it towed beside it like a dinghy, and the strange companions bore south at about a mile an hour. A Visit from the Bears. The deck-house and all the stores were moved to the iceberg. In the middle stood the deck-house, with the hammocks slung inside, the stores packed behind, and a; workshop put up where sledges and sleep- ; ing bags and winter-clothing could all be : got ready. What a life they led in those desolate, ice-packed seas! Not entirely desola :e, for polar bears would sometimes join them. As the crew were short of fresh meat, the visitors were sometimes shot. On the other hand, if they had not been shot, they would probably have eaten the explorers. But it is pleasant to record that one shaggy old polar bear who came prying about the deckhouse when there was no meat-shortage was . treated as a visitor. Someone played a tune on a concertina for him. He slept. He left next morning without breakfast. That was all very well when the weather was fine, though even so, the chances of reaching Angmakslik, 600 miles away,, by Christmas were not rosy. Suppose the weather changed, and the wind blew ? It did. It blew a hurricane. - A ship in a Greenland hurricane is ho bed of roses. But a brittle iceberg! In the dark waste and middle of the night' when all but the watch were in their hammocks, there v.'as a crack like a cannon shot. Someone cried, "We're flooded!" In the middle of the deckhouse the iceberg bad split. A crcvasso six feet wide had opened beneath the hammocks, and the water was flooding up. The deck-house broke in half. The men, slipping and falling, made for the Teddy, their only raft in the storm.

i The Last of the Teddy. Morning came, and the Teddy broke away, giving them only just time to scramble back to one half of the ice-berg. The Teddy drifted away half a mile to the south. There was but one desperate chance for them. They must sledge it over the broken, fragments of the ice-pack, if they could, and try to reach the distant shore of Greenland. When they got thereit might be merely to starve, but it was the only way. So they started out with the sledges, and in the first day they made only half a mile! The next day proved to be a little better. Thev actually overtook the Teddy, boarded "her to take off stores, and left her. She sank two days later. The men were Hearing their worst day now, for after another blizzard the ice to the south deserted them, and left them drifting toward the blackness and the certain death of the Arctic Sea. Then again the wind changed, and bore them to the coast, and after a last threat to smash them against the granite cliffs a sudden calm allowed them to land. . Many perils and hardships still awaited the crew, but then came another miracle which led them to an Eskimo settlement The worst was now over. They did reach Angmakslik by Christmas, and there they were found bv the relief ship sent to look for them. The ship brought them home. It was Shackle-ton's Quest and surely it was a fitting thing for such a ship to do ?