ICEBERGS.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 24, Issue 19, 11 March 1913, Page 2

ICEBERGS.

f- —-— DREADED PERIL OF THE SEA

: That dreaded peril of the sea—the 'iceberg—which proved so disastrous to the Titanic, has been responsible (or the loss of man/ shi. u and lives., tho.igh, e vary thing to. sidered, the loss of vessels on account of ice is not nearly so great as might reasonably he expected. Still, there have been many serious casoaUties. The sea-lane oil the Newfoundland (’rand Bank, when the ice is beginning; to break up in the Arctic and comes south, is menaced by a vast chain of icebergs, whose length is estimated at anything up to seventy miles, with a breadth of thirty-five. The bergs are frequently of vast sice—veritable islands—on which a fhip, even of such enormous proportions as the Titanic’ would crumple like paper. Only one-eighth of the bergs is above water ; the rest is submerged. And w hen it is remembered that bergs miles in length and with peaks many hundred feet above water have been seen, the terrible danger of tfeese floating, unsuspecting islands become very real. It sounds queer to hear that more icebergs are met with in summer than in winter g but it is not difficult to comprehend why it should be so.

Ab iceberg Is the sea-end of a glacier or frozen river. The glacier is being continually pushed into the sea from the weight above, and, finally. great masses become detached. Sometimes these masses break up into comparatively small pieces, and are called drift ice ; if they form flat surfaces, it as called field or floe ice, and when they are piled, they are called icebergs—that is, ice mountains. Sailors tell astonishing yarns about icebergs a thousand feet high, but their eyes, no doubt, magnified the monsters. Icebergs are sufficiently monstrous without exaggeration. Northern bergs are neither so large aor so numerous as those seen in southern waters ; but they are usually loftier and more beautiful, with spires and domes, and, when the sun shines on them, they look like a fairy city. It may be said, however, that passengers on board ship appreciate the beauties of icebergs much more than the officers and crew.

And that brings us back to the explanation about the iceberg season, la the winter the lower Polar regions are a mass of ice, and it is not until the sun begins to exert its influence that the southern movement of the ice begins.

In March, the mid-Atlantic is warm and the Polar sea cold,; the winds, in consequence, blow from North to South, and impel the floating ice and bergs in the same direction. Drift and floe ice soon melt in the warm current which flows over the banks of Newfoundland ; but icebergs being so thick, float down as low as latitude forty—that is, as far down as Philadelphia.

Now, ia crossing from America to England, the track of the ocean steamships carries them diagonally (across the iceberg tracks, and there is danger of collision during a fog in daytime or the darkness of the nigM. A steamer at full speed ' sighting an iceberg dead ahead with;in half a mile could not stop or back in time to avoid a crash. Therefore, many liners take the southerly course from March to August, or until the iceberg season 1 is considered over.

' Some very queer stories have been i told of these ’lce casualties. In 1841 a big ice island was seen off the coast of St. John’s Island, Newfoundland. Very near the centre of the Island, embedded between two big hills of ice, were two ships, their masts gone, and evidently destitute of life. It was impossible to ■ reach them, oven if it had been worth while i but many old sailors believe that they were a Part of Sir John Franklin’s expedition. Another strange case was that of a German ship, the Hansa, which wont to pieces on an ice island in latitude forty-two degrees. The crew took refuge on the ice, built a hut out of the wreckage, and spent eight months drifting about, until they were picked up in latitude fortyone degrees, about 753 miles south. Arctic navigators who venture far North often see a score or more of great bergs in a day, from which? fact the tremendous glacial activity in this region can be appreciated.

The field which comes southward on the Labrador current in February of each year sometimes extends outward a hundred miles to the north. Great sections of it may present a solidly frozen surface without a rift of water, while another portion may he of floes rnd individual cakes separated by lanes of open sea. It is on this field that the hair seal, is born, and hers is the scene of the annual seal-hunt. But this ice is soft, compared with what is called the “Arctic pack.” Masses of ice 15ft. and 20ft. in thickness are sometimes broken from the pack in the Arctic basin, and come south with the new ice, gradually melting until the surface is just a wash. The islanders and sailors call such pieces "growlers,” because they are so hard that they v/ill pierce an iron as well as a wooden hull, and, lying almost entirely below the surface, they may not be seen until the vessel strikes

thoir sharp edges. Next to the berga, the Arctic pack is the oldest ice which is brought into the Atlantic by the Labrador current. A study of its composition leads investigators to boheve that some of it may have been formed a century

• it was detached from the main body, which lies ;ni.cs to the „ nvrtl •*;:&' <4 Newfoundland,—“Pp/irc 'MMUMKt#.'’