WHY GREAT ICEBERGS TERRIFY SAILORS.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 24, Issue 18, 7 March 1913, Page 2

WHY GREAT ICEBERGS TERRIFY SAILORS.

THEY ARB RESPONSIBLE FOR MORE ►MISSING” SHIPS THAN ANY OTHER CAUSE KNOWN.

It is often reported that a derelict Vessel—that is, one that has been, abandoned by its crew and yet has continued to float —is junketing about on the high seas, a menace to shipping. But such a menace is trivial compared with the vast fleets of derelict bergs which the spring sets loose from the Arctic and Antarctic fastnesses to drift, without chart or compass, across the great ocean routes. For one derelict ship there are ten thousand derelict bergs, and many of these, in bulk, make even a Titanic appear a mere pigmy. They are veritable floating mountains of ice;

The frightful disaster which has overtaken the .largest vessel launched has drawn the attention of the world to this ocean danger* yet few people know by what process these ocean leviathans are fashioned in Nature’s marvellous workshop. Most people' think they are formed, by the piling up of the ice of the Polar seas. But this is not the case. Icebergs are a product of the land, and not of the sea. They are huge chunks broken off the ends of innumerable gigantic glaciers, and.,' as far as the Arctic is concerned, Greenland ds their most prolific mother. She produces tens of thousands of bergs every year. ARCTIC . AND ANTARCTIC GLACIERS. At the present stage in the earth’d history Greenland lies buried under a prodigious ice-cap, of almost incalculable thickness, exactly as Britain did at an earlier period. The mighty glaciers of which this icecap consists, and in comparison with which theTiggest Alpine glaciers, are really ice rivers* and slowly but surely slide off the sloping land to-? wards the sea.

Alpine glaciers end in rivers, but this cannot happen in the Polar regions, seeing that the snow-line is at sea-level. Thus it comes to pass that the glaciers of Arctic aiid Antarctic lands actually jut out into the ocean. The great ice barrier of which we have heard so much lately in connection with the search for the South Pole is simply the ocean end of the biggest glacier on the globe, which extends scores of miles from land.

In tho- same manner hundreds of glaciers poke their noses inflj the sea all round the coast of Greenland, and are ever being pushed ‘farther and farther out into deeper ancT deeper water. Now ice, bulk for bulk, is about one-ninth lighter than water, so that there is a constant tendency for the half-submerged glacier to be lifted. Presently this upbearing pressure from below becomes too strong for the glacier to resist,, and huge fragments are broken upwards, and these fragments —often of gigantic size—either float away at once, if the sea is open, or at least take the earliest opportunity of doing so. They go shouldering their way through the loose ice-floes, colliding with one another, breaking themselves up into perchance a dozen smaller bergs, until quite frequently the sea is dotted with them as far as the eye can see. STRIKING AN UNKNOWN GIBRALTAR. : This is by far the most usual way in which icebergs get adrift. But at points on the Greenland coast the glacier juts over a cliff, and great fragments break oS and fall into the ocean. Nevertheless, the main point holds true that the glacier is the ihother of bergs.

If the here were wholly visible the danger would not be so great, but, on the contrary, only about a ninth of the bulk of most glaciers shows above water, and this protruding portion generally consists of the peaks and pinnacles which jut . out of the main mass of the berg, which is wholly submerged. Thus a great vessel like the Titanic, which draws so much water, might apparently clear the visible* berg and yet strike the submerged portion, extending to an unknown area. A ship might just as well strike an unknown Gibraltar I

Bergs have the uncanny power of wrapolng themselves in an enveloping fog;.. In the clear, cold air of the Polar regions, where nearly all" the mbisture is frozen out of the atmosphere, they generally stand grim and splendid In full view, but when they drift into the warmer waters of the Gulf Stream and their icy surface comes into contact with the moisture-laden atmosphere it will readily be seen that the result is a local fog, in the midst 8f which the derelict iceberg floats. Indeed, the presence of fog is generally regarded as a sign of the neighbourhood of ice, especially if the sea shows a sudden drop in temperature of the ocean in these circumstances at frequent intervals. And even in a fog the presence of bergs can often be detected by a sndden and Efharp blast on the foghorn. An answering echo comes from the jagged and mountainousl aides of the hidden berg, and by its clearness and the interval of time which elapses between the blast and the answering echo the nearness or distance of the menace may be rough-, ly ascertained. Of course, the North Atlantic, being the greatest ocean highway in the world, is most notorious for its bergs, but they are really much more frequent in the Southern Ocean, for the simple reason that the South Pole is situated in the middle of a "ast continental area .which breeds

oergs ny tne million, and, further, there is no land north of this Antarctic continent to keep them in check. Thus Cape Horn is simply hustled with derelict bergs. ■, On the contrary, the great land barrier which almost locks the Arctic Ocean imprisons myriads of bergs. In fact, almost their only way out is by way of the North Atlantic, and into that ocean they crowd every spring as if rejoicing in their freedom, and meet their fate in the w 7 arra waters of the Gulf Stream, Unhappy the ship which happens to encounter one of these derelicts before the time of its dissolution Iff accomplished !—‘‘Tit Bits.”