ICEBERG 



2904 



ICELAND 



Ocean, are fogs and icebergs. One of the great- 

 est marine disasters in the history of the world, 

 the sinking of the Titanic on the night of April 

 15, 1912, when -_*^ 



over 1,600 human 

 beings lost their 

 lives, was caused 

 by icebergs. The 

 Titanic was at 

 that time the 

 largest ship 

 afloat, and was on 

 its first trip from 

 Liverpool to New 

 York. 



How They Are 

 Formed. Ice- 

 bergs are* huge 

 masses of ice 

 which are de- 

 tached from land 

 glaciers. Those in 

 the North Atlan- 

 tic come from 

 Greenland. That 

 great island is 

 largely covered 

 with a huge sheet 

 of solid ice that 

 attains in places more than a mile in thickness. 

 The numerous glaciers on it? surface move 

 slowly towards the sea, and there portions be- 

 come detached from them through the action 

 of the sea and through their own weight. Most 

 of the icebergs are formed on the west coast of 

 Greenland, but a great number also descend 

 from the east coast. After the icebergs are 

 detached they drift across Baffin Bay and Davis 

 Strait to the coast of Labrador. There some of 

 them are caught by the Labrador Current, which 

 flows south, and are carried into the Atlantic 

 Ocean by way of the Newfoundland Banks. 



Description. Icebergs are of varying size, 

 shape and contour, and present the strangest 

 and most picturesque forms. Some of them are 

 of gigantic size and weigh millions of tons. 

 They are sometimes miles in length and rise to 

 heights of about 250 to 300 feet above the sur- 

 face of the sea, but the portion above the 

 water is only about one-eighth of its whole mass. 

 Icebergs consist of clear, compact, solid ice, 

 with a bluish-green tint, and as explained 

 above,' they are formed of fresh water, not of 

 sea water. They reach the routes of the trans- 

 atlantic liners in greatest numbers in April, 

 May and June, but they are sometimes met 



AN ICEBERG 

 Drawn to the average scale. 



earlier, and even later. That is the reason why 

 ships crossing the Atlantic follow a more south- 

 ern route during these months. 



The southern limit of icebergs extends from 

 about latitude 60, southeast of Iceland, and 

 follows a southwesterly direction until it reaches 

 to the south of the Newfoundland Banks. The 

 section of the Atlantic Ocean where they are 

 most frequently met is between 41 to 43 lati- 

 tude and 47 to 50 longitude. The disaster of 

 the Titanic occurred at 41 46' latitude and 50 

 14' longitude. When the icebergs reach farther 

 south they begin to melt, owing to the sunshine 

 and to the action of the warmer water of the 

 ocean. They disappear altogether about 400 

 miles south of Newfoundland. 



Ice Fields. -Icebergs often travel in company 

 and form large ice fields sometimes hundreds 

 of square miles in extent. While some of them 

 show on the surface of the water, others are 

 running almost entirely submerged. The ther- 

 mometer often reveals the presence of an ice 

 field, for its immense frozen mass chills the air 

 and the water, and a sudden lowering of the 

 temperature may warn the captain of a vessel 

 of the approaching peril. Man has no power 

 to destroy an iceberg; it cannot be blown up, 

 it cannot be steered away into another course, 

 it cannot even be approached with safety. The 

 only way to avoid its perils is to keep out of 

 the region where an ice field is known to exist. 

 Icebergs similar to those in the North At- 

 lantic are also found in the south polar regions. 

 ICE BOATING. See ICE YACHTING. 

 ICE 'LAND, one of the most northerly of all 

 inhabited lands, an island which lies immedi- 

 ately south of the polar regions. The Arctic 

 Circle touches it at its farthest north exten- 

 sions. That few 

 places are too in- 

 hospitable, too 

 barren and too 

 rigorous for white 

 men to choose as 

 home is shown by 

 the fact that Ice- 

 land has been in- 

 habited by Eu- 

 ropeans and their 

 descendants ever since its discovery, over a 

 thousand years ago. Its population is sparse, 

 however, for with an area of about 40,000 

 square miles, only one-ninth less than that of 

 Pennsylvania, it has 85,000 inhabitants, or 

 about one-ninetieth as many as the Keystone 

 state. Iceland has a length of about 300 miles 



LOCATION MAP 



