77 



AVhen the ice patrol vessel stood south along the coast we found a 

 small ice field extendin": southward from Cape Bauld 35 miles, but 

 not offshore more than 12 miles. This was probably the last of the 

 fields which were observed to disappear from the entrance of the 

 Strait of Belle Isle on Ma}' 18. Battle Harbor observed very few 

 bergs and growlers this year before April 1, practically no definite 

 movement to the southward being noted before that date. 



Belle Isle sighted the first bergs between xipril 15 and 20 while 

 Twillingate, on the north coast of Newfoundland, recorded their 

 initial appearance on Easter Sunday, April 20. The patrol obsei^ved 

 52 bergs along the coast from Cape Bauld to Gray Islands, none 

 of which were over 20 miles from the coast; and the nuijority of 

 these had been set inshore and grounded, while the later arrivals 

 appeared to be drifting into a similiar position. Off Twillingate, 

 and from Notre Dame Bay to Funk Island, it was estimated there 

 were between 15 and 20 bergs, some of which had worked inshore 

 into what would at first glance appear to be inaccessible positions, 

 behind headlands and islands. It is believed that such ones would 

 survive well into August before they finally melted. The gi^eatest 

 abundance of ice appeared to lie in a belt which followed the general 

 curve of the coast from Cape Bauld to Funk Island and it is be- 

 lieved that this indicates the normal and general course followed by 

 icebergs southwards along the east coast of Newfoundland. In this 

 connection, this large indentation in the coast line of Newfoundland 

 between the Strait of Belle Isle and Cape Bonavista— the greatest 

 break from Hudson Strait to the Grand Banks plays no small part 

 as an influence on the amount of ice which succeeds in reaching 

 the lower latitudes: that is, the region around the Tail of the Grand 

 Banks. 



Ice in normal Avinters, by the latter part of December, forms over 

 the waters between Fogo Island and the Gray Islands. This ice 

 is augmented after the middle of January by heavy arctic floes, often 

 of large extent which hold within them, when tightly packed, a con- 

 siderable number of icebergs. The flat ice is at a maximum in Feb- 

 ruary and March, between Cape Bauld and Cape Bonavista, with 

 no water to be seen in any direction, and the fields extend offshore 

 sometimes for hundreds of miles. Those bergs which drift south- 

 ward on the ocean side of this pack are under the control of relatively 

 deep-seated currents, it being well known that the latter, due to 

 the rotation of the earth swinging moving objects in the northern 

 hemisphere to the right, tends to set in on the American shore from 

 Baffin Land to Cape Race; but the bergs at this time of year are 

 restricted from working inshore under the natural tendency of the 

 currents by the fender of ice lying in that direction. Such bergs 



