HEROES OF THE ICE PATROL

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12459, 29 May 1926, Page 11

HEROES OF THE ICE PATROL

ARCTIC EXPLORER SAVES 150 LIVES

UST now swift J cutters are putting out from their main base to give battle to the silent foe of the All anti c* Moving against them in slow but awe-inspiring procession, the fragments of the frozen continent of the North glide, glittering in the pale sunshine, down the barren coast of Labrador. The trim little vessels, with their technological officers,' have three tasks to perform —tasks calling for first-class quali-

ties of seamanship, scientific skill, and cool courage. .Their job will keep them busy until August suns melt the last of the marauders and leave the ocean paths clear. They have to chart the easterly, southerly, and westerly limits of the southward-moving bergs. SINISTER QUARRY So far every effort of the officers of the United States Navy Department to chart the regular courses taken by the great processions of icebergs hove failed. It is now known that they follow no known course, but drift far into the ocean, separately and scattering. In fine weather or foul, by day and by night, the swift cutters will hunt their sinister quarry. It is dangerous work, for many an iceberg floats beneath the swirling waters, morn deadly than any submarine. And of those that lift their opalescent turrets far above the surface of the water, only a mere tenth part or less is visible. RADIO MESSAGES T’le ice patrol, when it comes up with the head of the berg procession, heaves to and stands by, drifting away from the frozen North with the bergs. At frequent intervals its radio speaks with the great station at Cape Race, reporting its position. Cape Race, using its higb-powei radio plant, broadcasts its flP&ruing to the shipping of the Atlantic, giving the bearings of the southerly ice floes. This broadcast from Cape Race goes out at two-minute intervals, after the call QST on a 600-metre wave-length. Had 6uch scientific means of icefighting been known m 1912 there would have been no Titanic disaster. SHELLING THE BERGS Some time before the present ice patrol system was inaugurated efforts were made hy the United States Navy to shell the "bergs to pieces. The method was not a great success. The vast proportions of the icebergs proven invulnerable to the lfirgest calibre

On April 10th, 1012, the Titanic, steaming at record-break-ing speed, hurtled through the calm Atlantic night. On deck, wealth, luxury, carnival; below a lurid inferno in which men fed those insatiable furnaces with yet more fuel. And in the liner’s path, unseen, unsuspected, the menace of the icy island cast off from a continent of ice. So to the end—the death plunge and' the death-roll which appalled the world. Could such a disaster occur to-day? For fourteen years experts have grappled with this spring-time menace of the Atlantic ocean paths. The result is the Ice Patrol, one of the most romantic insti.tions of modern times.

naval guns, tho damage don© negligible. The ultimate conquest of the spring I menace to shipping, it is now realised, will come when the waters of the Polar regions are understood, and the weather of that icy waste is meteorologically charted. ARCTIC BULLETINS Shortly before the Titanic disaster a young Norwegian explorer, who happened to be equipped with a scientific education, decided to make meteorological observations in Arctic. He bought a small boat, provisioned her, and set out for the lonely, icebound island of Jan Mayen, where years ago Dr. Nansen set the flag of Norway. He built himself a: small hut and settled down- to his self-imposed task. During his long and lonely days he conceived the project of establishing in the far North a wireless station from which he could send radio weather bulletins to Norway. The next year he returned, set up the * world’s farthest North radio station, and started sending through his bulletins.

Battling With the Victors of the Mighty Titanic

The Norwegian Government immediately realised the value of weather reports which would give them advance information of conditions in the Arctic. It meant that the meteorologists of Norway, working with the radio-transmitted information, could make more accurate forecasts for the fishermen of the fjords. SAVED FROM DISASTER Thus the dream of Hagbard Eker. old took shape. His Government advised him that his radio-weather service from far-off Jan Mayen had saved 150 lives and eight million kronen’s worth of property. Ekerold next developed his idea further. Why should ho not set up a radio service advising the movements of the ice-floes and the main set of their currents to the great station at Cape Race? Norway then had two ships patrolling Polar waters; they were told to co-operate with the intrepid engineer. Thus working in conjunction with the Polar front and the Isfugen, Ekerold started to collect a vast amount of information about hitherto unknown waters. THE HEROES OF PEACE . To-day that far-off radio station sends out its information to Norway and to Cape Race. Cape Race talks to her ice-patrol cutters, her cutters answer across the ice-bound waters, and the last word in ice intelligence flashes through the ether to the tall antennae of the world’s Atlantic shipping. And liners on the northern lane shift helm and steer for safer waters. They hare been saved the fate of the Titanio; they have been saved_ by knowledge, courage, and imagination. It is a truism that the heroes of peace are no less flTan those of war. Here are men battling incessantly and in silence against the perils of the deep; they risk their lives that voyagers may he safe. It is well that they should be remembered.