SCIENTIFIC liESULTS 169 



ice-cap where she was beset northwest of AVraiiiiel Ishiiicl, Siberia. 

 The latter part of the nineteenth century on four different occasions, 

 viz., 1871. 1876. 1888. and 1896, witnessed a series of unexpected 

 " freezes." when the American whalino- fleets were crushed in the 

 pack ice east of Point Barrow. Alaska, with a total loss of more than 

 50 ships. Whaling, fur trading', and scientific explorations have 

 done much to educate the many able seamen of both steam and sail 

 in the art of ice navigation, liartlett (1928). one of the best known 

 of present-day sailing masters, has discussed some of his rich and 

 varied experiences in northern seas and published a few valuable in- 

 structions on the art of ice navigation. 



But the state of the ice in the Arctic is far different from such 

 conditions in the more open, yet ice-infested waters of temperate 

 latitudes. The pack ice and the beset ship of the far North gives 

 way in the North Atlantic to the massive iceberg and the sudden 

 im])act of disastrous collision. Modern attainments in the art of 

 shi])building have ])laced in commission enormous hulls, aggregat- 

 ing 50,00(1 tons, costing $5,000,000 to $15,000,000. and driven at rail- 

 road speeds of 20 to 25. or more, knots per hour. On board one of 

 these new-day leviathans travel 3,000 to 4,000 people, as many souls 

 as constitute a fair-sized village on shore: 1,500 to 2,000 total indi- 

 vidual passages are made through, or past, the ice regions olf Ncav- 

 foundland every season, and this re})resents approximately $10,000,- 

 000.00(» of i^roiierty and 1.000.000 lives that come each year within 

 the shadow of the ice menace. 



The icebergs off Newfoundland have for centuries been one of the 

 most dreaded dangers of trans-Atlantic navigators. John Cabot 

 describes sailing past these towering monsters shrouded in Grand 

 Bank fogs on his first voyages to America early in the six- 

 teenth century. Pioneer navigators of the North Atlantic soon 

 learned to determine their latitude ai^proaching western sliores by 

 the sliarp line of Arctic waters thrust soutliward along the forty- 

 seventh meridian. (See fig. 110.) Benjamin Franklin through his 

 relative Capt. Peter Folger of Nantucket, pointed out the Gulf 

 Stream and a path to avoid most of the Newfoiuidland fog and ice. 



A perusal of trans-North Atlantic sailing ship disasters impress 

 one with the great ninnljer of casualties that befell those vessels 

 which followed the shortest route (great circle course) across the 

 ice longitudes. Strange to relate, however, the risk of collisions 

 between ships, boimd on opposite courses, especially in the fog 

 regions south of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, first elicited more 

 anxiety than did the dangers of the ice. Early in the nineteenth 

 century an unusually appalling disaster about 50 miles east of Cape 

 Race, between the French steamer Vesta and the American ship 

 Arctic with the loss of 300 lives brought an acute realization that 

 remedial measures must be taken. Lieut. M. F. Maury of the United 

 States Navy was tlie first to propose seperate lane routes in his Sail- 

 ing Directions, pulilished in 1855. Another active advocate of sepa- 

 rating the east and west bound traffic Avas Mr. R. B. Forbes, of Bos- 

 ton, Mass. whose proposal to run the westbound lane diagonally 

 across the Grand Bank just south of Cape Race. Avhile the eastboimd 

 tracks were to cross about 15 miles north of the Tail of the Grand 

 Bank (latitude 43^ at longitude 50° W.) was the one eventually 

 adopted. 



