CHAPTER XXV. OTHER GREAT MARINE DISASTERS
DEADLY DANGER OF ICEBERGS—DOZENS OF SHIPS PERISH IN COLLISION—OTHER DISASTERS
THE danger of collision with icebergs has always been one of the most deadly that confront the mariner. Indeed, so well recognized is this peril of the Newfoundland Banks, where the Labrador current in the early spring and summer months floats southward its ghostly argosy of icy pinnacles detached from the polar ice caps, that the government hydrographic offices and the maritime exchanges spare no pains to collate and disseminate the latest bulletins on the subject.
THE ARIZONA
A most remarkable case of an iceberg collision is that of the Guion Liner, Arizona, in 1879. She was then the greyhound of the Atlantic, and the largest ship afloat—5750 tons except the Great Eastern. Leaving New York in November for Liverpool, with 509 souls aboard, she was coursing across the Banks, with fair weather but dark, when, near midnight, about 250 miles east of St. John's, she rammed a monster ice island at full speed eighteen knots. Terrific was the impact.
The welcome word was passed along that the ship, though sorely stricken, would still float until she could make harbor. The vast white terror had lain across her course,
{illust. caption = THE SHAPE OF AN ICEBERG
Showing the bulk and formation under water and the consequent danger to vessels even without actual contact with the visible part of the iceberg.}
stretching so far each way that, when described, it was too late to alter the helm. Its giant shape filled the foreground, towering high above the masts, grim and gaunt and ghastly, immovable as the adamantine buttresses of a frowning seaboard, while the liner lurched and staggered like a wounded thing in agony as her engines slowly drew her back from the rampart against which she had flung herself.