Los Angeles herald., 1907-11-03

| to pieces. Cool heads and quick hands
were there, and the boats were cut adrift
and everything made ready to leave her
| IL 1t proved necessary. The wait OF
twenty minutes was q trying one, the
ship being drawn nearer every roll of
the sea, and when it was clear that the
ship would hit the berg and go to pieces
all hands made for the boats to get
away. Just then the unexpected hap
pened.
The berg careened away from the ship
| like a living thing and slowly tumbleG
/ over, the great mass of ice rising under
the doomed vessel and lifting her till the
water left her, then rolling her over, to
slip off and fall bottom up into the water
like huge bundle of sticks, where she
broke into thousand pieces. filling the
surrounding sea with lumber and swamp
ing all the boats, throwing all into the
water. Those who were not instantly
killed were jammed between floating tim
ber and wreckage, excepting four men, in
cluding the mate, who clambered onto
the after part of her, which was packed
with lumber and could not sink, and all
through the night they held a precarious
foothold on this wreckage momentarily
expecting the berg to careen again and
hurl them into the sea. AS morning
dawned passing Quebec liner saw and
members of the crew were drowned.
Icebergs as Naval Targets
The life of an iceberg rarely takes it
south past the 30th parallel and when
1t does it becomes a menace to all ship
ping for the reason that a common center,
toward which ships from every CLINE
tend, is the 500 miles square just off New
York harbor From north, south and east
i,fn 7, ,ic dfafri an a hnrey
afioat there is grave danger. In 1863
huge berg was so reported and the United
States steamship Monongahela was dis
patched to attempt to demolish it with
her great eleven-inch smooth bore guns
There was difficulty in finding it. for the
reason that all calculations made on any
thing else that floats are not applicable
to an iceberg Only one-eighth of 1t Is
out of water, and the seven-eighths sub
merged reaches frequently to an under
current and the berg goes directly against
the surface current in consequence.
Naval men are expert navigators and
found the berg. 1t was once an inn
mense mountain of ice, but sun and
water had graved the most fantastic
forms on it, so much so that the ships
Officers and men who had been in all
lands and had seen all the noted archf-
tectural piles of earth, readily recog-
nized some form they had seen before.
At one end of the berg a great wall of
ice stood and at this the guns were
pointed The first discharge of an
eleven-inch shell hit fairly in the CEN
ter of the wall, and owing to the mass
being split and scanned by the suns
rays the whole wall fell apart as If by
magical action and thousands of tons
of huge ice blocks fell over into the
sea with deafening roar. The new
surfaces and angles made were lighted
by the sun and the officers reported 1t
to be the grandest transformation ever
known So much weight was detached
that the great submerged base was
lifted in air. and rolling from side to
side to gain equilibrium, the captain
reported it ''looked like stupendous
diamond in a sea of liquid silver and
assumed all the forms and types known
to classic architecture"
The berg was then in SO degrees 80
minutes, and about thirty miles east of
Barnegat light, and had caught the full
force of the northeasterly current of
the gulf stream, and was followed by
the ship for ten days and nights, and
by the use of Costou's night signals
vessels were warned OF it's presence till
it was far enough off the land to be out
of beaten course and small enough to
be of no great danger.
In 1884 the ship Semiramis of Mon
treaI, from Cardiff for Brooklyn with