PERIL FROM ICE-BERG

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 73, Issue 91, 17 April 1930, Page 6

PERIL FROM ICE-BERG

NORTH ATLANTIC OCEAN Liners on the North Atlantic look like having a particularly troublesome time with ice this year, for, although the season has not really started, large icebergs have appetuea c-tse to the Transatlantic trade lanes. Contrary to the ideas of most people, the summer is the dangerous season for ice in the North Atlantic and not the winter. It is not usually until the spring that the glaciers on the Greenland and Labrador coasts begin to break off at the edges, making huge icebergs, which are carried down by the currents into the more temperate waters of the mid-Atlantic. But this year it started earlier than usual, and special warnings were sent out to shipping. The United States Coastguard Force hurriedly commissioned the cruiser Tampa, and she was sent out to the neighbourhood of the Grand Banks to keep an eye open for icebergs, which she will report by wireless to all ships in the neighbourhood. Her sister ship and consort Modoc will join her as soon as she can be fitted out, and they will work together until the autumn, when it may be safely assumed that all the icebergs have got into the warm Gulf Stream and have melted, if they have not stranded in shallow water on their way down to it. i

The International Ice Patrol has been maintained by the United States Coastguard Force, which does many other things beside running down rum runners, but all the maritime powers whose ships use the North Atlantic contribute toward this cost.

The idea began soon after the Titanic disaster, when the British Government got into communication with the Atlantic shipping companies and discussed the possibility of chartering a ship which should be equipped with wireless telegraphy and give due notice of any icebergs, preventing another ship going down like the Titanic.

This led to the famous Dundee whaler Scotia, which had been ■ sed for the Scottish Antarctic Expedition, being chartered and fitted out to undertake the duty, carrying out important oceano-graphic experiments at the same time.

Like most of the old-time whalers, she was built with colossal strength, and in spite of her small size—she was only 357 tons —she did splendid work in mid-Atlantic.

But it was felt that she was too small for the job, and soon afterwards the United States Government was asked to undertake the work, putting on to it one of its big coastguard cutters.