Alma record. (Alma, Mich.) 1878-1928, 1889-01-18
TAR ON ICEBEROS.
He Spins Some Interesting Yarns
About One. OF the Great Dangers

About one. or the Great Dangers
of Midocean.
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 a big ship,
rays the New York Mail and Express. He
was an old sailor, having as he said,
''crawled in the hawespipe and como out at
the cabin windows" which being translated
meant that he had worked himself up from
before the mast TO the masters berth
All Of sudden he shifted rather eagerly
In the rather damp, misty air. The reporto-
rial nose could only family trace the Hunt
er's Point aroma that haunts the river, but
the sailor had caught Whit of something
else.
"Do you know" said he, ~ thought /
smelled an iceberg just then. Al sea in high
ATTITUDES you can smell them miles away
and many n ght have kept all hands on
deck smiling and peering around on the
watch for field ice or bergs / tell you il is
no fun TO have half dozen icebergs loafing
around when your ship is lodging nine or
ten knots straight off the reel and you are in
such hurry to make passage that you
don't want TO shorten sail"
The scent had awakened train Of mem
Dry, and, seating himself on one of the dock
piles, he took rge-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 shcllback,
'and have doubled both Cape Horn and
Cape Of Good Hope more times than have
fingers twice over. That's where you see
,ha h<,-, tb1- LIE,
Or so beautiful as those in arctic regions,
but they are much more dangerous; first be-
cause Of their number and extent, and again
because they have submarine formations
that are just like ledge of rocks and project
sometimes half mile or mile out from the
base of the berg. You see, with those fell
lows you might think you were giving them
all the berth they needed and still break
your ship up on one of their reefs
1.-THE biggest Ice island ever heard told
Of by sailors was seen drifting around in
about 81 S. and "a W., almost 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 il
disappeared. II was said to have been
about $50 feet high. 60 miles long and 40
miles wide, and was curved very much the
shape of horse shoe. The two arms of the
rurves embraced bay forty miles across
and perfectly sheltered. a big English en-
igrant ship, called the Guiding Star, think
GIFTED the ice island, but whether because
Of fog or carelessness, nobody knows sailed
slap into the bay between the arms of the
is and and was lost with all hands Pieces
Of her wrcckage were picked near the island
by q steamer bound for Australia.
THE highest berg / ever heard of was
seen in the Southern ocean, whore they are
nOt generally very lofty. ! sailed with a
man who declared that he had seen this
berg and that II was 1000 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 a pretty big chunk of ice, consider
ing that ii is over fifty times as high as the
Brooklyn bridge. I'll bet it made splash
when il fell! That's where the danger is
In warm ATTITUDES the base melts away and
tho first thing you know it falls over. |
have heard OF several ships that had big
chunks fall on their decks, one vessel hav-
ing her mates 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 usually loftier and more
beautiful, with lots of spires and domes,
and when the sun shines on them they
look like lot OF rainbows piled on top Of
each other. These fellows are tall and
draw a lot of wafer. | have heard of them
grounded on the banks of Newfoundland
where there was over 600 feet of water by
the lead. They have been reported in Baf-
fms bay hard aground in 800 feet Of wa
ter.
"Some years there is much more ice than
usual | heard man who had run on
ship named the Swanton say that they saw
over 200 icebergs in single pas
sage in 1912, and most of them were in
about 43 north and about 30 west-that is,
less than 1000 miles about east northeast
from Governors 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
up for fear she would get caught In 1888,
there were plenty Of icebergs, and last
spring or the year before the steamer Con-
cordia reported having seen over fifty ice
bergs aground in the straights of Belle Isle,
one Of the outlets of the gulf Of ST. Law
renee.
Everything considered the loss OF vessels
on account OF ice is not nearly so great as
might be reasonably expected Still there
have been some queer cases, In ls4l big
ice island was seen just off TO the east Of st.
Johns, Newfoundland. Very near the CEN
ter 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 oeen there for years and you can
/ find plenty of old sailors today who believe
them to have been part of Sir John Frank
| Inns expedition. There was 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 and spent eight
months drifting around on their ice island.
When discovered they had drifted way
down to Al N, although the ship struck the
ice somewhere in the fifties.
sometimes icebergs are met in the middle
of the Atlantic, and several ships have re-
ported 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 the ice. Of course in some
months the ice is so solid that little gets
adrift, and then the ordinary northern
course is pretty safe, but from March to
August you are likely to see ice way down
in the rolling forties. The fastest passages
made by the Oregon and Etruria have been
made on southerly tracks"