The Hawaiian gazette., 1906-12-26
SURROUNDED
BY BERGS

i ht taih ANhh1hhs MHhNU VI
Wednesday afternoon from New York
Is lying at the Fort street wharf, look,
Ing as splck and span as II Just Out
| of drydock instead of having com.
1 rieted a round-the-Horn passage. The
| Nuuanu left New York on August 7
crossing the line when thirty-one days
| out. OF the mouth of the river Platte
| and along the coast OF Brazil strong
| southerly winds and gales were expe-
rienced. and when considerably north
of the regular iceberg limit the bark
ran through miles OF sea dotted with
mammoth bergs.
spun the following yarn, told in a most
interesting manner and containing
facts which are of much more than
passing interest. especially as to the
results of the temperature tests of the
water, made while the bark was cross
ing the equator. Captain Josselyn
says:
"Aftor fifty years travelling on the
water in all oceans, and after many
anxious nights passed on the lookout
for possible icebergs when in the waters
in which they might be expected, my
first sight of bergs was most unex,
pected. 1t came in the early morning
of October 10 last. when the Nuuanu
was speeding south in latitude Al
south, longitude SO west, which is
nearly two hundred and forty miles
north of the recognized northern limit
for icebergs.
Just at daylight on that morning
saw small white cloud on the weather
quarter and q similar cloud on the
weather beam, the wind at the time
being NNW. We were heading south
west close hauled. Looking to leeward.
what appeared to be an island came
into sight, but as I knew full well that
there was no land at that point l
realized that after fifty years at sea 1
was about to have the doubtful pleas
ure of seeing my first iceberg.
LAS it grew lighter we could make
them out in numbers dotting the hori-
2on as far as the eye could see, great,
monstrous masses of ice. and, to my
surprise, as white as snow fresh fallen.
l had always pictured them to myself
as partly, If not entirely, covered with
dirt and looking old and battered, for,
getting that they could never have
Dttl SOlled ny I'll pul ltu pSSi boih
and had lived in air of dustless
purity.
"As we approached the crowded |
bergs we caught a squall of wind and |
rain and were forced to shorten sail
to topsails. Then the wind shifted
into the west, the rain squall passina
and leaving the air clear and cold.
The wind was blowing smart gale,
in which we were pitching, but the
huge ice islands were motionless. The
seas which tossed US about were with
out effect on them, and it was hard to
believe that they were afloat. The
bergs were from one to five miles
apart, but we did not dare to sail in
them. We wore ship and
'ame around to the nor'-nor'west,
that that would be the quick
est way out of them.
I'VE were afraid that we would run
INTO thick weather, but most fortu-
lately it remained clear the whole day
md we had such view of icebergs
Is is had by few. We counted twenty
hree large ones on our port side, bergs
hat varied from 200 TO 700 feet high,
nd some of them a thousand feet long.
We measured one of the smaller ones
With sextants and 1t gave us 290 feet.
AT first all l could think of was
ce cream, huge, massive blocks of 1T,
nd l shall never see ice cream again
Without thinking of that wondrous
anorama OF icebergs. Those twenty
hree big ones also made me think Of
Broadway, for most of them were like
uge city blocks, only bigger than any
itNy II
opposed before that bergs were PIN
acled, with sharp spires. only wish
could describe these to you so as to c
0 justice to their immensely and i
randeur. I have seen most of the {
how buildings of the world and much l
the grandest scenery, but this sur +
assed them all. Imagine IL you can S
Broadway floating out to sea and ev- j
~ great building carved Of white C
larble. t
"Of course We were very anxious all t
he time for fear thick weather would {
0me up, for 1t would have taken only C
ne very smallest of those bergs to C
ave crushed US. And what added to b
lr anxiety was a large quantity Of S
RECON pine timber floating by US all n
lat day. Someone had either lost II
leir ship or a deck load Of timber had t
sen swept overheard, and recently, for s
lie timber was fresh, without bar n
acles, as fresh looking as II it had t.
zen thrown into the water that very c.
~. IL
"All day long from aloft we kept Z"
okout for boat or for distress sig II
Il, but all We saw was the timber,
hich kept sweeping past US all day Il
It'll six o'clock in the evening, by m
hich time we were up to the last of T
Q icebergs. s.
II cannot understand how the bergs Sc
E saw were all SO square, many of 81
EN- exactly resembling great cubes p'
marble. One or two of them were te
arly round and the one we meas al
ed was like great armchair, the A
at being formed evidently by the 81
VS. OF the sun falling on the north to
lie and melting out the hollow. The OF
st berg we saw to wind1 ard of us tn
out five miles looked like a castle tn
d fortress combined. w
All that day we were carrying sail or
clear them, skirting the bergs for tn
out a hundred miles. How much tie
rther south they extended we have
idea, but 1t would seem that We W.