At Close Quarters, Among the Icebergs.
Field-ice has its source in the Arctic basin and along the coasts of Labrador and Newfoundland, and is carried south either by the current from the Arctic or that from East Greenland. Fully eighty per cent. of the bergs have their origin in West Greenland, and most of them are fragments of glaciers, broken off in a process known as “calving,” as the glaciers slide into the deep water along-shore. Thousands are thus set adrift each year, and once adrift they begin their journey southward. Only a small proportion of the whole number ever reach the track of the steamers; some ground in the Arctic basin and break up in the frigid zone, to which they properly belong; they are very fragile, and the concussion of a gunshot is occasionally sufficient to shatter them; some are borne across from Greenland to Labrador, and lodge there until they dissolve, or crumble to pieces with the noise of thunder. The journey of those that escape disintegration in the north is slow. If they drifted directly south and met with no obstructions, they would be four or five months in reaching the transatlantic routes; and being liberated in July and August they would consequently beset the path of the steamers in December and January. Few of them, however, are not delayed, and most of them have been adrift at least a year from the time of “calving” before they arrive south enough to trouble the steamers. Some are several years in making the journey; they are held for a season in a shallow; locked up during the Arctic winter; released with the return of summer; caught again for another winter, and when once again liberated, retarded in their southward course by the necessity of ploughing through the field-ice before them. Not only are there wide variations in the date of the appearance and disappearance of the bergs in the transatlantic routes from year to year, but in different years they reach a different southern limit. It is this variability which causes mischief. If their movements were always the same, it would be easy for the captain to choose a course which would avoid them, but a course which may be entirely safe one year is often beset the next season by large quantities of ice, both in the forms of bergs and of field-ice.
The list of calamities from ice is a long one. It was only a few years ago that the Arizona, when going full speed, crashed into a berg and stove in her bows. From her stem to a point about thirty feet aft nothing remained of her but a tangle of shapeless iron, and that she did not sink immediately was due to the smoothness of the sea and the strength of her forward bulkhead, which withstood the pressure of the water and enabled her to reach St. Johns, Newfoundland. In the records of the Hydrographic Office it appears that, from 1882 to 1890, thirty-six steamers were more or less injured by ice in the North Atlantic, though some of these were freighting and coastwise vessels, and not of the class to which this article particularly refers; and the commonest explanation offered of the fate of the missing ships is collision with ice in fog or in the darkness of night.
Having come to this point, the reader is probably of the opinion that the heading of this chapter is a mistake, but the reverse of the picture has yet to be shown. Notwithstanding all the peril from fog and ice, and from the fury of cyclones and hurricanes, the steamers of the transatlantic lines are so staunchly built and so capably handled, that a man is less likely to meet with accidents on board one of them than he would be in walking the streets of a crowded city. Never before have so many passengers been carried as are carried now. The ships that were regarded as leviathans fifteen or sixteen years ago are as yachts compared with more recent additions to the various fleets. Scarcely more than ten years have elapsed since sixteen knots was the maximum speed; now it is twenty knots, with the certainty of an almost immediate increase to twenty-one or twenty-two knots. The tonnage has been increased within the same period from a maximum of five thousand to ten thousand five hundred, and while ten years ago two hundred cabin passengers were as many as any steamer could accommodate with a reasonable degree of comfort on one voyage, it is not uncommon now to find over five hundred as the complement of one steamer. When steamers of sixteen and seventeen knots were built, it was said that they were too large and too fast, and that they would surely come to grief, but experience has proved them to be as safe as any. In fact, those who are best qualified to know, declare that the augmentation of speed promotes safety.
This point was fully discussed by the captains of the principal lines not long ago, and the opinions expressed were almost unanimously in favor of the faster ships. They not only diminish the period of exposure to such dangers as there may be in the transatlantic voyage, but from the superior power of their engines and boilers they are better fitted for overcoming those dangers. They are able to escape from areas of fog and storm sooner than slower vessels, and are more easily handled in thick and in heavy weather. From the rapidity with which they can be manœuvred, they can avoid collisions which would be inevitable under some conditions with slower ships; if a collision becomes unavoidable their impetus enables them to cut the obstructing vessel in two with comparatively little injury to themselves.
It is not conceivable that the element of danger can ever be wholly eliminated from the navigation of the Atlantic, but notwithstanding the extent and difficulty of the traffic, and the size and speed of the ships, which, flying to and fro in all kinds of weather, arrive in port at all seasons with a promptness and regularity quite equal to that of express trains on land, the number of accidents in proportion to the number of passengers is constantly diminishing. More cabin passengers are carried from New York to European ports in one summer now than were carried in the whole of the first quarter of a century of steam navigation on this ocean; but while the latter period was full of disasters, such as the loss of the Arctic with four hundred and sixty-two lives, and the loss of the Austria, with four hundred and seventy-one lives, we now see hundreds of thousands of passengers crossing, with a sense of security which a remarkable record of immunity from accident fully justifies.
Lighthouse, Sanibel Island, Fla.
The improvements in the character of the accommodations have not been greater than the improvements designed to reduce the dangers of the transatlantic trip to a minimum; they are found in the structure of the hulls, the engines, and the boilers; in the apparatus of navigation; in the numbers and discipline of the crews, and in the appliances for life-saving, such as rafts and life-boats. The old ships of twenty years and more ago were built on the lines of sailing vessels, and a poop extended with scarcely a break from the fo’c’s’le to the quarter-deck. When a sea came on board it was held as in a sluice between the high bulwarks and the poop, swashing fore and aft with the pitch of the ship, until it drained off through the scuppers. Most of the state-rooms were then situated below the main deck, and after such a sea they were likely to be flooded; many old passengers will remember how frequent an occurrence it was to find their cabins inundated. This was the least mischief it did, and when several seas were shipped in rapid succession, the vessel was in danger of foundering. The modern steamer is much better protected from incoming seas, and the main deck is completely covered in, instead of the bulwarks there is a simple rail and netting, and any water shipped flows overboard as quickly as it comes on board.