TRAPPED IN ICE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1732, 30 June 1917, Page 4

TRAPPED IN ICE.

rHIRTY HUN SUBMARINES REPORTED LOST. From Copenhagen comes an extraordinary story of the loss of. a large number of German submarines in the ice of the Baltic (says the New’s of the World). The story is told by Knud Rasmussen, the well-known Danish explorer, who declares that he saw 30 German submarines imprisoned in the ice. Copenhagen has had a polar winter. A fortnight ago the Sound was frozen over. Even now thick iee stretches far out into the Caltcgat,and a Swede walked from the mainland to the island of Marstrand. Different untruths have been told about the ice-trapped submarines, but Rasmussen knows the real truth. “They were trapped at the narrow part of the Sound just above Ilelsingborg. That happened tw’o days after the submarine campaign began. The thirty were all making north —of course from the same Baltic base —when the east wind blew the loose ice together, and as it was freezing hard, soon all (lie submarines were moving with only their .periscopes up. Some of them smelt danger in time and managed to rise. Those got wedged in with their decks showing. Others wore caught under the ice, and only (heir periscopes showed.- I myself walked across the ice to them, and my mate even tried to look down u periscope. Then the slip-ice —that is loose ice which always drifts under the pack —snapped the periscope tubes. The submarines perished miserably. . . .” “How did they perish?” “Miserably. Some after three days’ imprisonment tried to get away under Hie ice, 1 know Hint seven submarines were smashed in and all on board were drowned.”