The Calhoun chronicle. [volume] (Grantsville, W. Va.) 1883-1984, 1895-09-24
ICEBERGS.
DANGER TO SHIPS FROM LOFTY
WAN OF THE SEA.
This Year BerGs Have Been Sc,rcer
Than Last Season, When Acct
dents Were Numerous-How
lcebcrgs Are Formed.
TCEBERG stories tbor,

CEBEkG stories, though not
wholly lacking, have been fewer
i than usual this year, and their
9 telling has begun later. Last
year the month of April had not
passed before incoming ships began to
report great masses of floating ice,
away to the south of where it should
be found at that time. SO dotted with
bergs vas the surface of the Atlantic
that disaster to shipping was freely
predicted, and long before the close
ot the season the prediction came
true. the good ship Ems being the
chief sufferer. BY tho fouling OF this
ships screw with the ice, it will be re-
membered, the machinery was so dam
aged that she had to put back to the
Azores for repairs, and for many DAYS
the Fate of the vessel was in doubt.
But the use Of steam in place of
sails, together with more thorough
knowledge CT the iceberg's ways, has
combined to make ice at sea much less
formidable than formerly. 1t is years
now since any considerable craft, aside
from those sailed by Arctic explorers.
has suffered total shipwreck from col
llsion with any Of the ice monarch's
frigid feet.
The stories of iceberg disasters that
have involved great danger to large
numbers of human beings are all
pretty well known. They include the
loss of the sailing vessel Rntlelye.
with 100 lives or more, in 1856; the
collision of the steamer Arizona and
n berg in 1879, when, owing to the
then new wrinkle of watertight com.
partments, no lives were lost, al
though hundreds were put in jeopar-
dy. But every year iceberg adven-
lures come to some of the daring souls
who earn their bread by going down
to the sea III ships, not bit less
thrilling to the adventurers because
lew persons are endangered.
A sort of iceberg accident that is
not often written about is the lifting
of ship by a berg. Ice is SO much
heavier than the same bulk of water
that very often the great mass of the
berg will lie below the surface, the
part in view, even though imposing
enough in size, being really but n
small fraction of the whole. With
this In mind, 1T is easily seen that on
one-quarter of the visible portion of n
berg with sloring sides, or, in fact,
entirely surrounding it, there might
be shoal ice, and that vessel might
be sailing along in fancied security.
apparently merely close to n berg, but
real y directly over portion thereof.
It's n fine thing to see icebergs made.
They are not formed of ice frozen on
the surface of the polar seas, but are
pieces broken from the sea ends of
Arctic glaciers. All interior Green.
land is covered with vast ice cap,
from which, down the valleys tina. ex-
tend between the central table land
to the Atlantic on the east and BAT
fins Bay on the west, in streams so
vast that glaciers or Alpine origin are
not to be mentioned on the same dav.
glides the ice, majestically and resist
lessly to tidewater.
During the brief warm Arctic season
the action of the waves upon the de-
bouching mouths of these great frozen
rivers is such as to detatch literally
hundreds of thousands of tons Mt n
time, and thus blocks of ice as biz as
dozen of the skyscraping buildings
on lower Broadway are launched upon
the surface Of the waves. Indeed. if
all the yarns spun about big bergs are
gospel, some of those which float
south in thelspring to menace shipping
oil the banks of Newfoundland, are
much bigger even than the size here
indicated. Tales have been told, in
deed, OF iceships thousand feet high.
and while there may be cxaggeration
in some of these stories, boating ice
towers quite 500 feet high have nc.
tually been seen, and this means that
below the surface the berg must have
extended at least six or seven times as
far, or about three quarters of mile.
The explosive noise of the breaking
off of these vast bergs 10 much greater
than the biggest Fourth of July dem.
monstration ever heard.
Though the bergs of the Atlantic
are quite large enough TO suit the
most exacting, it is said that those of
the Pacific, from the glaciers of Alaska
and Eastern Siberia, are as much
larger rs the glaciers of these latter
regions are larger than the glaciers of
Greenland, while the Icebergs of the
Southern Seas, both ia tho Eastern
and Western Hemisphere, are de
soribed ms being larger and moro form
liable than those of any of the north
crn1oceaus.
The bergs of the South are not so
often seen, however, for, in the nature
of things, under the Antarctic circle
and for hundreds Of miles to the north
Of the sen is n desert waste Of water
that is rarely sailed by ship or seen OF
mon -Nnp nrk prnr.