Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1889-02-13
ALL ABOUT ICEBERGS.
An Old Tars Yarns About the
Dangers of Mid-Ocean.
A Berg Sixty Miles Long and Another
One That Reached Thousand Feet
Above and Nine Thousand Be-
low the Surface of the Sea.

Above and Nine Thousand Be-
low the Surface of the Sea.
Out on one of the long docks just below
Wall street ferry a heavily bearded, rather
well-to-do-looking man stood the other day
looking up into the rigging of IA big ship,
says the New York Mail and express. He
was an old sailor, having, as he said,
"crawled in the hawse-pipe and come out
at the cabin windows" which being
translated means that he had worked him
self up from before the mast to the mas
ter's berth.
All of sudden he shifted rather eagerly
in the rather damp, misty air. The repor-
torial nose could only family trace the Hun
ter's Point aroma that haunts the river
but the sailor had caught whiff of some
thing else.
"Do you know" said he, Il thought I
smelled an iceberg just then. At sea in
high latltudes you can smell them miles
away, and many a night l 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 a dozen ice
bergs loafing around when your ship is
logging nine or ten knots straight off the
reel and you are in such hurry to make u
passage that you don't want to shorten
sail"
The scent had awakened train of memory,
and, seating himselfon one of the dock piles,
he took a large-sized chew Of plug and
settled himself TO talk about field Ice and
bergs.
Il was for nearly twenty years master Of
a deep-sea Ship began the old shellback,
''and have doubled both Cape Horn and
Cape of Good Hope more times than 1
have fingers twice over. That's where
=, -
so lofty or so beautiful as those in Arctlc re-
gions, but they are much more dangerous;
first, because of their number and extent,
and again because they have submarine
formations that are just like ledge of
rocks and project sometimes half a mile or
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 shlpup on one of their
reefs.
''The biggest ice island l ever heard told
OF by sailors was seen drifting around in
about 81 S. and "a W., almost III the track of
the English Liverpool boats bound to Mel
bourne. 1t was in 1853 that it was first
sighted, and the same chunk of ice was re-
ported from that vicinity until 1855, when
1t disappeared. 1t was said to have been
about $50 feet high, 60 miles long and forty
miles wide and was curved very much in
the shape of a horseshoe. The two arms of
the curves embraced a bay forty miles
across and perfectly sheltered. A big En-
glish eInigrant ship, called the Guiding
Star, think, sighted the ice island, but,
whether because of fog or carelessness no
body knows, sailed slap into the bay be-
tween the arms of the island, and was lost
with all hands. Pieces of her wreckage
were picked up near the island by a steam
er bound for Australia.
''The highest berg 1 ever heard of was
seen in the Southern Ocean, where they
are not generally very lofty. sailed with
q man who declared that he had seen
this berg, and that it was 1,000 feet high
above the surface of the water. Now, as
there is always nine times as much of a
| berg below the water as there is above,
J that would make this fellow 1900 feet from
the base under the water to the highest
point above. That's pretty big chunk of
ice, considering that 1T is over fifty times as
high as the Brooklyn bridge. I'll bet it
made splash when it fell! That's where
the danger is In warm latitudes the base
melts away, and the first thing you know
| it falls over. 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 wa
| ters, but they are nsualy loftier and 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 tail, and draw
! lots of water. l have heard of them ground
ed on the banks OF Newfoundland where
there was over 600 feet of water by the
lead. They have been reported in Baiin's
Tls,x-1 doc
Some years there is much more ice than
usual. | heard a man who had run on a
ship named the Swanton say that they
saw over 200 icebergs in a single passage in
1872, and most Of them were in about a
/ north and about so west-that is, less than
| 1,0J0 miles about east northeast from Coy
| ernor's Island The Swanton had a hard
time getting through the feet of bergs
| and passed between two that were so close
| that she had to brace her yards sharp Ut
| for fear she would get caught. In 1855
there were plenty Of iccbergs, and last
spring or the year before the steamer Con.
cordia reported having seen over fifty ice
| bergs aground IN the straits of Belle Isle
one of the outlets of the Gulf of st. Law,
renee.
Every thing considered, the loss of YES
sells on account of ice is not nearly 50 great
as might be reasonably expected Still
there have been some queer cases. Ia 1871 q
big ice island was seen Just OF to the easi
of st. Johns, n. F. Very near the center
OF the island, and bedded between
two big hills of ice, were two ships
their masts gone and not slgr
of life appearing They may have been
there for years, and you can find plenty o1
old sailors to-day who believe them to have
been part of Sir John Franklln,s expedition
There was a German ship named Hansa
that went to pieces on an ice island, and the
crew took refuge on the ice, built a hut out
of wreckage aud spent eight months drift
ing around on their ice island When dis
covered they had drifted way down to a
N, although the ship struck the ice some
where in the fiffies.
Sometimes icehergs are met in the
middle of the Atlantic, and several ships
have reported that they stopped and killed
seals that were found on the Ice. In
crossing from here to England the big
ocean racers take the most southerly course
possible, and in that way avoid tue ice Ol
course, in some months the ice is so SOLID
that little gets adrlft. and then the ordinary
northern course Is pretty safe, but from
March to August you are likely to see ict
way down IN the rolling forties. The fast
est passages have been made on southerI,
tracks y