Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1889-01-05
A TAR,s TALE OF THE ICE.

old foremost hand, mate or ex-master.
These old mossbacks often branch off into
land work, but they never forget their
love for tarry smells and ship gear.
On the East river, below the bridge
among the empty clippers and little fat
briggs one can find half dozen loafing
around every day, knowingly coming the
top hamper of the sailing craft and sniff
fling contemptuousy at the steamers. or
"tea kettles" as they call them. Out on
one Of the long docks, just below Wall
street ferry, heavily bearded, rather
well-to-do looking man stood the other day
looking up into the rigging of big Amer.
lean ship. That he knew what he was
looking at was as evident as was the fact
that he wanted somebody to talk to, and it
only required pleasant salutation to get
on speaking terms with him.
He was an old sailor, having, as he said,
"crawled in the hawsepipe and come out
at the cabin windows" which being trans
lated means that he had worked himself
up from before the mast to the masters
berth. He was an old-time American
master.
g 1t wasn't so strange to see an Ameri-
can flag at a lofty gaff' in those days." said
he. ave had the finest and fastest ships
in the world, and when lime juicer sailor
for Englishman) saw cotton canvas on
royal yard, he knew that it wasn't any use
trying to catch that bloody Yankee as
they always called ship from the
States"
Just then the old sailor shifted rather
eagerly in the rather damp misty air. The
reportorial nose could only family trace
the Hunters Point aroma that haunts the
river, but the sailor had caught Whit of
something else.
DO you know" said he, al thought 1
smelled an iceberg just then. At sea in
high ATTITUDES you can smell them miles
away, and many night | have kept all
hands on deck shifting and peering around
on the watch for field ice or bergs. tell
you it is no fun to have half dozen ice
bergs loating around when your ship is
logging nine or ten knots straight off the
reel and you are in such a hurry to make
a passage that you don't want to shorten
sail"
The scent had awakened a train of mem
DRY, and, seating himself on one of the
dock piles, he took a large-sized chew of
plug and settled himself to talk about field
ice and bergs
" was for nearly twenty years master of
deep sea ship" began the old shellback,
and have doubled both Cape Horn and
Cape of Good Hope more times than |
have fingers twice over. That's where
you see ice. The bergs down there are not
so lofty or so beautiful as those in Arctic
regions, but they are much more danger
Gus; first, because OF their number and ex-
tent, and again because they have subma-
rine formations that are Just like a ledge
Of rocks, and project sometimes half a mile
or a mile out from the base of the berg.
You see, with those fellows you might
think You were giving them all the berth
they needed, and still break your ship up
on one of their reefs,
A MONSTER ICEBERG.
"The biggest ice-island | ever heard
told of by sailors was seen drifting around
in about 800 S. and 240 W., almost in the
track of the English Liverpool boats bound
to Melbourne. 1t was in 1858 that it was
first sighted, and the same chunk of ice
was reported from that vicinity until 1855,
when it disappeared. 1t was said to have
been about $50 feet high, sixty miles long
and forty miles wide, and was curved into
very much the shape of horseshoe The
two arms of the curve embraced bay
forty miles across and perfectly sheltered.
A big English emigrant ship, called the
Guiding Star, l think, sighted the ice
island, hut whether because of the fog or
carelessness, nobody knows, sailed slap into
the bay between the arms of the island and
was lost with all hands, Pieces of her
wreckage were picked up near the island
by steamer bound for Australia.
"The highest berg / ever heard of was
seen in the Southern Ocean, where they
are not generally very lofty. sailed with
a man who declared that he had seen this
berg and that it was thousand feet high
above the surface of the water Now as
there is always nine times as much of
berg below the water as there is above.
that would make this fellow 5000 feet
from the base under water to the highest
point above. That's pretty big chunk of
ice considering that it is over fifty times
as high as the Brooklyn bridge Pll bet
it made q splash when it fell. That's
where the danger is. In warm ATTITUDES
the base melts away and the first thing
you know it falls over. l have heard of
several ships that had big chunks fall on
their decks, one vessel having her masts
carried away and several of her crew
killed.
"Northern bergs are neither so large
nor so numerous as those seen in Southern
waters, but they are usually loftier aud
more beautiful, with lots of spires and
domes, and when the sun shines on them
they look like a lot of rainbows piled on
top of each other. These fellows are tall
and draw lot of water. | have heard of
them grounded on the banks of Newfound-
land, where there was over 600 feet of wa
ter by the lead They have been reported
in Baffin's bay hard aground in 900 feet
of water.
LESS BERGs NOW THAN FORMERLY.
"Some years there is much more ice
than usual l heard man who had
run on a ship named the Swanton, say that
they saw over 200 icebergs in single
passage in 1912, and most of them were in
about 43o north and about 500 west; that
is less than 1000 miles about E. n. E.
from Governors Island The Swanton
had hard time getting through the feet
of bergs, and passed between two that were
so close that she had to brace her wards
sharp up for fear she would get caught. In
1888 there were plenty of icebergs, and
last spring, or the year before, the steamer
Concordio reported having seen over
fifty icebergs aground in the Straits of
Belle Isle, one of the outlets of the Gulf of
St. Lawrence.
Everything considered, the loss of YES
sells on account of ice is not nearly so great
aS MIGHT no reasonable ax,acfaJ Sill
there have been some queer cases. In 1S41
big ice-island was seen Just off to the
east of st. Johns, Newfoundland. Very
near the center of the island, and bedded
between two big hills of ice, were two
ships, their masts gone and not sign of
life appearing. They may have been there
for years, and you can find plenty of old
sailors to-day who believe them to have
been part of Sir Franklin's expedition.
There was German ship named Hansa