THE MENACE OF THE ICE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2902, 27 October 1909, Page 78

THE MENACE OF THE ICE.

' , SOMI* THRILLING STORIES OF IOE- ' • BERG DANGERS IX THE ATLANTIC, i ' ■ Not in modem timts has there beexs an- ; ' othisr spring +in<i summer so prolific in mis- , • haps to Atlantic shipping from contact | v.ith ics. The Newfoundland sea-ling fleet 1 lias esiwially suffered. It may he interesting to recall s few of the more r nokibla ici calamities oi the past 20 or - oO years. Peihaps the most notable int , stance of an ccear liner colliding witr an c ieeb&.-g is the case of the Guior liner Ari- - 7yjna, ;n; n November, 1879. Icebergs are i, found in the North Atlantic it all seasons , n ' of th.3 year, and a record of mishaps to t sei-goinr craft would exhibit disastrous hi.«o adventure", in every weak of the 52. The Arizona at that time was a crack vessel of > Ih-e Atlantic, md had some 600 passent ger« aboard, when in a den c >c midnight ;< fog sh<? ran full tilt agaiut>t an ice mount t i tain, nnd sma-bed In her forepart from |. ' t=t3m to forema&t. If she had not been a 't.aunch!\ -built ?hip jha must inevitably c havo found3i-£d ; as il \va.^, however, she .j. Miccerded in reaching St. John's 48 hours , g lat.c-r. th-s collision having taken place on i the Giand Bank, 150 miles off Cape Race. i — Lost Liners — Tho".& or boarr had a most nerve- ( lacking experience. Wban the collision occurred the passengerr stampeded lor the d°ck, and only the most strenuous ', efforts of the officers and crew prevented a panic. After the panic had been allayed the collision bulkheads became endangered. '' Gradually the ship leaked more and mort;. o and when she leached St. John's 3he bad J1 , almc*t to the water'r edge, and could : « r * not have kept afloat more than a lew m hours longer. Wher the work of repair- ; ing her bs-gan 200 tons of ice were taken '" , from her forepeak, where it had been *" driven by tli© foroe of the collision. Not | al! ooean liners are as fortunate in th«» t* ' ie-.ults of their encounters with ice a* was s ! tli« Arizona. The mere recital of tbe !n names of bag steamers that have gone ' to the bottom from contact with ice in «1 , the last 60 years would fill columns, ir J There b reason to believe that the mystOTjof' ous disappearance of scores of ships, with ct all hands aboard, upon which bo light in ' has ever been or evgr will be thrown, is id | due to collision with ice. Among these 50 | letter may be entucerated the White Star ae ', liner Naronic, in the wjater of 1893 ; j the State liner Georgia, in 1897 ; the Allan n- linsr Huroniwi, in 1902 ; the Lafc« liner in \ Lueo&m, in t 903 ; the FieW liners Not-

field and Froshfiald, in 1904 ; the Atlas liner Athos, in 1907; and the Sydney liner jSfifclifesiad. tl>3 last wister. to nams only a few out of scores. — Thft'iHingi Dangers. — The dangera and discomforts which fall to the ie\ of those aboard ooeaa linei 'j which collide with bergs, and which lose lev or many ©f their personnel in these 'encounters, s:e thrilling in the extreme. In. 1861 the Canadian, of the Allan service, struck a berg in the Belle Isle Stra't aj;d wen I to the, bottom almosi at once, carrying 16 persons with har, while the reraainckc 1 of tha crew and passengers were adrift, for several days n opiai boats beF <ut they made land. On May 20, 1873, trha steamer l)er<?riap was lost off Caps Race by striking a berg at night, and of 30 persons aboard 23 perished. On May 2; 1876, ths steamer Caledonia was lost off Labrador, having struck a berg and foundered soon after. Shx had 82 -persons aboard, only' 11 of whom esaned. These clambered on to the berg, and \.ere c'here.thr-e,'. .d*ys and nights, livin<* on a seal whfeh they had kilted, until a passim? fisheF'tKxit .rescued them. In June, 1875^ tbe Bominion lin-sr Vicksberg collided with a flee off Cage -Raoe, and 47 persons went down ,vith her. On Msvrob 28,, 1887, the v sie»M»3r Susan struck « berg- oft Cape Kace,- -and five- were drowned. -Cannibalism.— Ten. years kter occurred .one of the most appalling tragedies of modern ice-*»J-'g disasto.-s. In April of thai yeac ths Frencli fishing vessel Vaiilaiifc. biund from Brittany lo St. Pierre. Afiquelon, with 74 parsons aboard, crashed into aZ?*SJ* S Cape Race and sank withir 10 mimfEg*. Of her .peopfe 62 want down with hei Tlwj other 155 escaped in two beats, and vrcze adrift foi a week, b'-inir Tnthout food aiN* but pcoriy clcd ; some psrishsd. and tbe otters kept themselves alive by eating the dead bodies. Eventually - tie survivors • became reduced to four, and these, when picked jp, bad their hasds and fest so badly frostbitten that their extremities had to be amputated. A similar experience to the above twfell survivors of the French trawler R.«her, •*« the spiing of 19C0. Tbe vessel had 57 persons a-boayd, of whom only nina survived tbe foundering- o£ the ship. Four of these, having died, served as food for ths five who remained. A rescuing ship on hez way how St. John's to the Queto Bank, came upon the hapless castaways perishing from exposure and thirst. — Melville Bay Horror. — - To a like e'reumstanos, tire destruction of tbe ship by a mass of ice, is due the most teixible occurrence ir modern Arctic annals.. In 1881 the Greetey expedition, sant into th-a Arctic regions by tin United States Gorerrangnt, established itself at Lady Franklin Ba"y for o three veers' sojourn. Two years later the, Newfoundland ssalei Proteus was "sent north with ' stores" and supplies, to be left a.fe Cape Sabine, at the head of Melville Bay, for tha u?e of the explorers when they retreated to that spot. The ship, however, was pushed into the ice in that bay by order of the inexperienced American officer i- charge, and she was crushed so that sn eank within an hour, not , an • article on boar-* beinj, saved. " The crew had to iuak« a -300-anile voyage open"boa~ts to CsOuth Greenland, where a coiljei-. picked them up and brought* them honied again. When -the explorers came south in October they found themselves faced with the apparent- certainty of absolute starvation and .the t-srrib'.s prospect thpt net" a man of ■ th<i party would escape the w,ors^ of I deaths, foi they were maroonec*, on a j desolate Airetic headland, without shelter, ; food, or firing, with not a huroati being i for hundreds of miles, and absolutely n< 5 hop*, of relief, under tue most favourable j prospects, Ioj ¥ six o eight month?.- II is impossible within ths limits of ths paper tc giv< anything like an idea of the tortures tfowe 51 human beings erdured during this dsspevate winter. After they had consumed the -scanty supplies which had been brought with them on their boats i*rom tbs north they had to maintain life bj means ot shellfish caught with their naked hands along the shore, and then to make an unpalatable yet eatable * mess of their sealskin boots and garments, until at last, as thf less robust members 1 of the party died, the others kept themselves alive by -the dreadful alternative of cannibalism. Wher tbe sti-ongest boats (A the Newfoundland seal fleet, purchased by th.3 American Government and Guuipped at the com of £50,000, were pushed north the nest spring, at a date earlier than the Arctic Circle had ever baen entered before, only six oi the party reniain-ed alive to tell the tale of a fight against death unique in the records of adventure in my part jf the known world. I — Sealing Flee' Suffers. — : The worst sufferers, in general, from the iceberg psril are the ships of the Newfoundland s-aaling iloet. These vessels have been, until tbe pa3t yeai or two, practically of the type ot Arctic whales, wooden ship? with bows several feet thick and aides many inches through, the bet-t-er tc enable them to resis* the tremendous ice pressure to which they are often subjected. In 1872 the Huntsman, with a orew of 72 men, was crushed in the ice off Labrador. Only 17 mer snrvivedy and of these only three escaped uninjured. All the others bad legs, arms, or libs broken, and one man, with a broken collarbone, wae 36 hours exposed to wind, wave, and weather or a rock oft the coast before he could bs rescued. In 1874 the steamer Tigress, trtiieh rescued tbe Polaris sur- , vivors, was crushed in the floe in such ' a fashion that her boiler bor^t and killed 31- of' Uer crew, In 1882, the bow of the steamer Aurora was crushed, and the falling timbers killed 17 and wounded 29 of the" 200 me^, on board. The vessel's bow wee so bad* v ,' damaged that she had to sttam 370 lJJtJes stern first till she made the land, a* she assuredly would have foundered Vad she attempted to nutke tti* - voyage by <{ean»ng bow on. In 1898 the steamer G* «nland wae ov«rwhelmed by

the ice ir r furious blizzard, and cf her 181 nw?n 47 met death and 62 weir JBtre fw \e** -erious'\ frostbitten.