DEBRIS ON ICE

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 857, 28 December 1929, Page 25

DEBRIS ON ICE

MUTE EVIDENCE OF PAST TRAGEDIES FINDS IN ANTARCTICA The discovery of considerable quantities of wreckage at Heard Island by members of the Mawson Antarctic expedition indicates that the drift of the currents has been toward the ice, and the question arises whether the Waratah, and other ships which disappeared, may not have contributed to the flotsam which apparently lines the ice-pack. When the matter was referred to shipping experts by the “Sydney News,” they said it was unlikely that any wreckage from the Waratah would have reached those shores. This liner disappeared between Durban and Capetown in 1911, but, being a new ship, well-bound and closely battened down, everything would have sunk with her. One man suggested that the steamer Port Stephens, which was abandoned with broken machinery when she had drifted far south between South Africa and Australia, might have been responsible for some of the wreckage. The fact that the wreckage does not appear to be of recent origin disposes of the theory that it might belong to the Kobenhavn, the Danish trainingship, which disappeared recently in the Southern Ocean. Many Wrecks However, it is not difficult to account for wreckage in the ice-bound waters, for on the islands south of New Zealand and Cape Horn there have been many wrecks. For example, the Blue Jacket was burnt off Cape Horn, and the Dunedin and Marlborough were other sailing ships which disappeared, it is presumed, near Cape Horn. Another disappearance was that of the small steamer Kakanui, sent from the Bluff to Macquarie Island to bring back the sealers and whalers from that lonely island. The Forty-Fours—44 dangerous submerged rocks near the Chathams, 500 miles east of New Zealand—have also accounted for scores of ships. “Graveyard of Pacific” The rock-bound coast of British Columbia has been called “the graveyard of the Pacific,” but in the’ Roaring Forties more ships have been lost than in any other uncrowded waters, and the. wreckage-lined ice-pack of Antarctica is only a reminder of many a good ship having sailed away, never to be heard of again.