Transport: Ice Southward

The Empress of Australia, which carried the King and Queen of England to Canada last month, got them to Quebec two days late because of icebergs and fog. If Their Majesties had crossed last week, they would have been held up longer, for the bergs were crowding thicker into the North Atlantic shipping lanes. The International Ice Patrol reported no fewer than 800—more than in any year since 1912, when one of the 1,019 icebergs sighted that year sank the Titanic.

One of the ice-monsters reported by a patrol commander last week—or rather, the one-ninth of it visible above water—was 135 ft. high, 600 ft. long. In early May, transatlantic shipping was detoured to a route 45 miles south of the preferred lanes, later moved about 50 miles farther south still.

Iceberg season on the North Atlantic is March 1 to July 1. The bergs are fragments of the mile-thick ice sheet which covers most of Greenland, sends glaciers down to the coast where huge chunks break off. Bergs "calved" on Greenland's west coast are first carried by a northward current tc Baffin Bay, then south in the Labrador current to the Newfoundland Banks. Some are wrecked on the coast, others drift into the Strait of Belle Isle; some float south to the Gulf Stream. This year, more bergs than usual were expected, because of an open winter in Baffin Bay and Labrador, and because the cold water of the Labrador current was reaching farther south than usual.

After the Titanic catastrophe, eleven shocked maritime nations* held a conference in London which resulted in the creation of the International Derelict Destruction, Ice Observation and Ice Patrol Service. They agreed to pay dues on a basis of respective tonnage, asked the U. S. to manage the Ice Patrol. Now two U. S. Coast Guard cutters, during the berg season, patrol the danger area in alternate shifts, report every berg sighted, keep big ones under constant surveillance. They pay little attention, however, to ice fragments less than 100 feet long, for these melt away in a day or less. At night the cutters simply drift, so no harm is done if they bump a berg. Since the Ice Patrol was started, not a single ship has repeated the Titanic's smash.