40 : The Atlantic 



become embedded in the ice pack and after drifting across the whole 

 Arctic are carried by the currents to both the east and west coasts of 

 Greenland. 



This current drift across the Polar Sea has carried more than ice 

 and driftwood. One of the travelers who noted the Eskimos' use of 

 driftwood from Siberia was a tall young Norwegian named Fridtjof 

 Nansen then making the first crossing of the Greenland Ice Cap. He 

 thought about the driftwood and also about the case of the Jeanette. 

 This was an American ship that had entered the Arctic Sea by the 

 way of Bering Strait, had been caught in the ice and wrecked and 

 abandoned off the Siberian coast. Wreckage from this ship and even 

 a box containing some of the ship's papers turned up in Greenland. 

 Out of such evidence Nansen developed his plan for freezing the 

 Fram in the ice and crossing the Pole, and Nansen's example stimu- 

 lated the Russians in recent years to fly a party to an ice island 

 located at the Pole where an observation station was set up. The drift 

 of the ice island followed prediction and the observers stuck with it 

 until it finally disintegrated in a sea of slush off the southeast coast of 

 Greenland. 



In all the above cases we have fairly simple situations in which pre~ 

 vailing winds and currents combine to carry floating objects in set 

 courses. The surprise comes because the objects travel so regularly 

 and so far. 



Let us look now at the surprising result the Atlantic can produce 

 when it sets to work on more complicated materials. This in fact is 

 the extraordinary case of the ship that simultaneously followed two 

 different courses. 



The American sailing ship Fred B. Taylor up to a certain June 

 night in the year 1892 had a quiet and undistinguished career going 

 about the sea on useful but routine errands. Then the vessel's strange 

 and lingering death won for her a special mention in the annals of 

 the ocean. On June 18 she was at sea bound from Le Havre to New 

 York in ballast about one hundred miles southeast of Nantucket Is- 

 land, in 40° 19' north latitude, 68° 33' west longitude. Suddenly the 

 North German Lloyd Line Trave bore down on her, hit her amidships 

 and cut her in two. In fact, Trave literally steamed right through Tay- 

 lor leaving one half of the sailing ship on her starboard and one half 

 on her port side. The mate was killed in his bunk and the carpen- 

 ter drowned. The rest of the crew were ultimately rescued. As for 

 Taylor, nothing could be done to sail or direct her and no form of 

 salvage was undertaken. 



